Food plays an important part in our lives. As well as providing essential nourishment, eating can become connected with how we feel about ourselves, our relationships, our body image and how we manage difficult emotions.
Many people experience temporary changes in their eating habits. Stress may reduce our appetite, while loneliness, anxiety or emotional difficulties may lead us to eat differently or use food for comfort. When changes in our thoughts and behaviours around food become persistent, distressing or begin to affect our physical or emotional wellbeing, it may be important to seek professional support.
How do I know if I have an eating disorder?
Eating difficulties can take many different forms and are not always obvious to other people. You may find yourself increasingly preoccupied with food, eating, weight or body shape, restricting what you eat, eating large amounts of food in a short period, or developing routines and behaviours around eating that feel increasingly difficult to control.
Not everyone experiencing difficulties with food will meet the criteria for a particular eating disorder. However, if your relationship with food is causing distress, affecting your health or taking up a significant amount of your thoughts and attention, it is worth seeking appropriate professional advice.
What is an eating disorder?
Eating disorders are mental health conditions involving persistent difficulties with eating behaviours and often with thoughts and feelings about food, weight or body image. They can affect people of different ages, genders, backgrounds and body sizes.
Eating difficulties can also be closely connected with other emotional experiences, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, difficulties in relationships, experiences of trauma and a need to manage or gain a sense of control over difficult feelings.
What are the common types of eating disorders?
There are several recognised eating disorders. Anorexia nervosa commonly involves restricting food intake, an intense concern about gaining weight and difficulties around body image. Bulimia nervosa involves episodes of binge eating followed by behaviours intended to compensate for eating, such as self-induced vomiting, fasting or other forms of purging. Binge eating disorder involves recurrent episodes of eating large quantities of food while experiencing a sense of being unable to control the eating.
There are also other recognised eating and feeding disorders, and a person's difficulties do not need to fit neatly within one particular diagnosis for them to deserve support.
What can contribute to eating difficulties?
There is rarely one simple explanation for an eating disorder. Difficulties around food and eating may develop through a complex combination of emotional, psychological, interpersonal, social and biological factors.
For some people, eating behaviours can become a way of coping with difficult emotions or creating a sense of control when other areas of life feel uncertain or overwhelming. Therapy can provide an opportunity to explore what food, eating and body image have come to represent for you and to understand the circumstances and experiences that may be contributing to these patterns.
How can psychotherapy help with eating problems?
Psychotherapy can provide a dedicated and confidential space in which to explore difficulties around food and eating in greater depth. Your therapist can help you understand some of the thoughts, feelings, experiences and relationships that may be connected with your eating behaviours and identify situations or emotions that make those difficulties more pronounced.
Therapy can also support you in developing different ways of understanding and managing difficult emotions and patterns of behaviour. The approach taken will depend upon your individual circumstances and the nature and severity of the difficulties you are experiencing.
When is additional support needed?
Eating disorders can have serious effects on physical as well as psychological health, and in some circumstances they can become life-threatening. Psychotherapy may therefore form only one part of the support that someone needs.
Depending upon the nature and severity of your difficulties, your therapist may recommend that you also seek medical assessment or specialist eating disorder support. If there are concerns about your physical health or safety, these need to be addressed appropriately alongside psychological therapy. Your therapist can discuss this with you and help you consider the most appropriate sources of support.
Eating difficulties can include:
- Restricting food intake
- Binge eating
- Self-induced vomiting or other compensatory behaviours
- Preoccupation with food, weight or body shape
- Fear of gaining weight
- Difficulties with body image
- Using food to manage difficult emotions
- Feelings of shame or guilt around eating
- Rigid routines or rules around food
- Feeling unable to control eating behaviours