What Eating disorders are Really About – This Resonates

“It’s not about food or weight…It’s about feeling unsafe in the world. It’s about feeling like we can’t trust anyone, not even ourselves. The Eating Disorder becomes “the reliable one”.

It’s about the feelings we can’t verbalize, that can’t be expressed through words so we try to “say” it with our bodies.

It’s about an extreme, intense feeling of being inadequate.  Like nothing we do or say or feel is “right”. “Not thin enough” often means something more painful to admit. That we are not enough. full stop.

It’s about feeling overwhelmed by life. Like nothing makes sense. Nothing is simple. The Eating Disorder gives us a sense of calm…to an outsider our life may look like it is in absolute chaos but it gives us the false sense of security we so desperately need. Problems that seem too big and complicated to deal with, feelings that are uncomfortable to sit with; the Eating Disorder provides us with simple, concrete answers to our distress. Our bodies are the problem and we need to fix the problem by losing weight.

It’s about needing to feel loved and comforted but feeling unworthy of real love and comfort. It’s about hating having needs and desires. For some of us, needs make us feel greedy and selfish. For some of us, having needs means we can easily get hurt if those needs are not met. For some of us, we don’t believe we deserve to have our needs met. We try to convince ourselves that we don’t need anything by avoiding food, one of our greatest primal needs.”

Read the rest here.