Healing Your Relationship with Food, Yourself, and Others (Part V)
This is Part 5 of a blog series that addresses healing your relationship with food, yourself, and others. I’m recording this as a podcast series as well, and what follows is a transcript of the episode. (Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Q&A Part 4 of the blog series).
This final post of the series is another Q&A post where I’ll answer your questions about this topic. Between Part 4 and this post, I’ll discuss nearly every question that I was sent from my email subscribers, but I did group some questions together if they were very similar. All questions are anonymous; I used only the first initial of the person who sent me the question. If you want to be part of any future Q&A episodes or posts on various topics, and if you want to get more support in your recovery, you can join my email list by signing up to get my free Inspiration Booklet.
Question 1: Low confidence, loneliness, and bulimia
S wrote about how bulimia led her to withdraw from relationships, but also, she talked about thinking that her own difficulties with connection—things like low self-esteem, shyness, and insecurity—may have contributed to the bulimia in the first place.
It’s definitely been a theme throughout this series that eating disorders commonly cause isolation and cause people to withdraw from relationships. When you’re caught in the binge eating cycle, socializing can feel very overwhelming—either because you’re worried about food, you’re worried about your body, or you’re feeling those awful physical and emotional effects of the bingeing and purging, which just kind of makes you want to stay home. Over time, it can really seem easier to pull back from people altogether.
In Part 3 of this blog series, I talked about how you can start to overcome this and gradually build skills to connect with people again, so I definitely recommend you read that post.
I also want to acknowledge your thought that maybe your shyness and insecurity were risk factors from the start, and I want to say that’s entirely possible. Many people who struggle with eating disorders can look back and see ways that their personality traits or their life circumstances might have made them more vulnerable. And it definitely helps to look back to your past self with all the compassion in the world, because you were simply doing the best you knew how to do at the time. But now in the present, I just want you to know that seeing something as a risk factor does not mean it has to doom you to the behavior now or in the future. Those same traits can and do exist without bingeing and purging. This connection is not permanent.
The connection between shyness or loneliness and the development of bulimia can come from a belief that if you change your body, then that will somehow help with the self-esteem or the insecurity—by possibly making you feel more accepted. You may think that if you lose weight, you may be more confident socially, or you’ll be somehow better in relationships. That desire to change your body or to fit in—to help solve some of the insecurity—can lead to unhealthy dieting behaviors, which then can set the stage for that survival response of binge eating, and then eventually bulimia. Then all of that has the opposite effect that you originally intended, and instead of fitting in more, you find yourself more and more isolated.
I think it’s helpful to realize that you may always be someone who has tendencies towards shyness or insecurity—and that does not mean you can’t work to improve your skills in that area—but I think it makes sense to acknowledge that these might be your tendencies, and that’s okay. You can acknowledge that while also deeply recognizing that those tendencies don’t need to result in binge eating or in restriction.
Tendencies are not destiny, and while you can work on any tendency, it’s also really useful if you start to recognize that you can be alone and not binge; you can feel insecure around others and not binge; you can have negative thoughts about yourself and not binge. Internalizing that truth is a big part of loosening the grip of the habit, because you’re no longer giving your tendencies so much meaning in terms of your recovery. You’re no longer giving shyness or insecurity the power to cause bingeing in your life now and going forward.
What can also help is to see the gifts in your own tendencies. The world often treats shyness or introversion as if something is wrong with you, but it doesn’t have to be wrong. People are naturally on a spectrum between introversion and extroversion and have very different social needs. You get to decide what your social needs and wants are, in terms of how and when you want to connect with others. Don’t assume there’s a problem just because society says you should have a big group of friends or you should have a busy social calendar.
As a fellow introvert who loves alone time, I can tell you that you can learn to accept and even value these parts of yourself while still challenging yourself in the areas where you do want to grow. Now, I realize that introversion is one thing, but if you’re having deep feelings of insecurity, this is always something to address—not in terms of a way to prevent bingeing, but as a way to relieve that harsh criticism you may be putting on yourself.
You can work on this gradually by starting with situations and relationships and people who you do feel more comfortable with, and you can learn to own who you are and own your unique gifts regardless of others’ opinions. Always remember that recovery does not require perfect confidence, but as you gain freedom from the binge-purge cycle, your self-worth will improve. Then, you can make even more empowered decisions about how to connect on a social level and how to build relationships that feel safe and nourishing to you.
Question 2: Embarrassment around food choices, which is limiting relationships
E wrote about feeling embarrassed to eat certain meals in front of others—meals that work well for him and help him feel good—because of a fear that people will think he’s weird. E also mentioned feeling embarrassment around avoiding certai foods, which can sometimes lead to him skipping social events that are centered on food.
In Part 4, I addressed a couple of questions about sharing binge eating or the effects of bingeing with others, but this question is a little different. It’s more about wanting to hide certain food choices from others or feeling judged, and that leading to wanting to avoid the social situations altogether.
The first thing I’d encourage you to do, E—which it does seem like you already have a lot of insight about—is to get clear with yourself about what you need and want in terms of eating, especially in social situations. It’s possible that some of the embarrassment or insecurity you feel may be rooted in your own uncertainty about your choices. If maybe you’re not sure about whether or not you truly want or need to be avoiding a certain food, you might have the tendency to gauge others’ reactions—possibly looking for approval—even if some of this is going on at an unconscious level. This makes other people’s reactions, especially the negative ones, seem really discouraging.
A summary of this is simply that uncertainty with yourself can make fear of judgment dictate your actions, instead of you taking confident action—knowing what’s best for you. I’m not saying that you’re definitely uncertain, but when you’re really worried about being embarrassed or looking weird, I just want you to look a little deeper and confirm with yourself that you are on the right path for you.
Sometimes with eating disorders, this can get a bit confusing, and it can feel hard to fully trust yourself. You may have competing voices in your head—you may have a restriction voice telling you to avoid more and more foods, while the binge voice urges you to eat everything in excessive amounts. But you can learn to get in touch with your wise voice—that’s neither the restriction voice nor the binge voice—and when you’re in touch with that wise voice and you’re confident in your own choices, it becomes much easier to handle comments or questions from others without letting those comments derail you.
That confidence does not come from convincing anyone else that your way of eating is right, and it also doesn’t come from anyone else validating your decisions. It comes from knowing inside yourself that your choices are serving you. That’s why I see this question as more about the relationship with yourself than it is about your relationship with others. It’s about learning to look inward and connect with the part of you who has your best interest at heart and never wants to guide you toward deprivation or extreme overindulgence.
Once you know what genuinely nourishes you, and that you enjoy, and that makes you feel good—which, again, it seems like you already have a pretty good idea of—you can start owning those choices, even if those choices don’t match what people expect or what may be common in a certain social setting. You can realize that others possibly thinking you’re “weird,” or feeling a little embarrassment, is much better than abandoning your wise voice and abandoning your own self-care.
Also, something really helpful to realize is that others are probably not thinking as negatively about you as you think they are—and they may not be thinking negatively at all. Most people are pretty self-focused and are likely dealing with their own insecurities and may be worried about what you think of them.
If you start to have any feelings of embarrassment or judgment come up in social settings, you can have a simple mantra to say to yourself, like: I’m allowed to nourish my body in the way that works for me. And if you do encounter anyone who is openly critical, you can address it kindly but directly. You can say something like: I’m learning to eat in a way that makes me feel good, and this is simply what’s working for me right now. If the person continues to push or tries to pressure you into eating in a way you’ve already said is not right for you, it’s worth reevaluating whether that’s someone you want to spend time with.
Question 3: Marginalization, gender identity, and access to healing
This question addresses the larger social context. X wrote to me with a layered and deeply important question. They shared about being non-binary and an ethnic minority, a displaced person, and sociopolitically vulnerable—living much of their life without the safety or support that many take for granted. They’ve also been estranged from family and the larger community due to a lack of acceptance.
X also expressed how eating disorders can be tied to gender dysphoria, and weight and shape control through food and exercise can be a way to align one’s body with one’s identity. They wanted to know: How can we help our most vulnerable populations heal, and how do we truly acknowledge that a lack of safety can make recovery more complex?
First, X, I want to acknowledge everything you’re saying—that yes, some people do have a much harder path than others when it comes to getting support, or accessing resources, or just having that basic safety. Even though it’s my belief that the capacity for neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself over time—is something that’s available to the vast majority of us, the process of creating those changes, and the challenges faced along the way, is not the same for everyone.
There’s individuality and uniqueness in how each brain operates, and then when we go beyond the brain to the greater context of relationships and social structures as a whole, the challenges can become even more complex. Personal, relational, social, and cultural factors can add layers of difficulty, and those difficulties can be compounded by marginalization—as you’re pointing out.
I’ve talked about some of the challenges that specifically relate to gender identity in Episode 154: Eating Disorders and Recovery in the LGBTQ Community with Quinn Haisley. Quinn works extensively with LGBTQIA+ clients and brings important lived experience to these conversations, and I highly recommend that you listen to that episode.
An important thing to point out here is that if you’re in a situation that’s unsafe—whether that’s because of an abusive relationship (like I talked about in Part II of this series), or whether that’s because of a broader social environment where your safety is compromised—getting to safety becomes your first priority. Part I of this series addressed Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and I talked about how the basics of safety make other goals possible and make other forms of healing possible. If you can find communities, resources, or even a single person who understands and affirms you, that support can be a lifeline and a launching point toward deeper healing.
Now, beyond that, I want to go back to talking about neuroplasticity and changing habits being something that the majority of us can learn to do—even in the most difficult circumstances (once basic safety needs are met). Recovery—at its most basic level—comes down to the two things that I talk about all of the time: dismissing urges to binge and eating adequately. If you find that you cannot do one or both of those things right now based on something you’re going through, it’s really important to dig deeper and ask yourself what specifically is getting in the way.
With your own lived experience in mind and the realities of being marginalized, what specifically do you feel is holding you back from dismissing urges, and what is specifically holding you back from eating adequately?
You’ve already pinpointed something that you find is holding you back from adequate eating in terms of your gender identity, and that’s really insightful and important, and I’ll address that next. But by reflecting on these questions—about what specifically is preventing you from dismissing urges and eating adequately—what you’re doing is trying to make things just a little less overwhelming for yourself as far as recovery goes.
If you believe that so much needs to change out in the world or within your community in order for you to recover, it’s possible that this may get in the way of you taking steps toward healing, and it may put you in a situation where you continue to harm yourself because of issues that you’re not able to control at this point. Now, that does not mean to ignore those issues, and I fully realize that not being part of a marginalized community myself—that my perspective is very limited, and I don’t have the authority or the lived experience to speak directly to what that’s like.
My role here is to help people stop bingeing, and I never want to tell someone that their circumstances make recovery impossible. As much as I can, I want to try to help people to stay focused on solutions as far as the bingeing goes—even though I do not have all of the answers for the terrible things that go on in the world. Just like I encourage people not to wait until their relationship issues are resolved to stop bingeing, we also can’t wait for the culture to change or for others to treat us the way we deserve before we start believing that we deserve to treat ourselves with respect and care no matter what.
That never means to just accept abuse or mistreatment. It just means that, as much as possible, you can start to disconnect binge eating from those terrible things. And when you stop bingeing in response to things going on outside of yourself, you become better resourced to take whatever steps you need to take to deal with the complex and difficult things that are going on in your life.
All of that being said, I want to bring you back to the main point that I was trying to get across here, which was that there absolutely may be things you uniquely feel are holding you back—and although you can’t solve everything or wait until the world changes to stop bingeing—there may be things you need to address before you feel like you can approach recovery (with your basic safety being the priority).
To guide you as you reflect on what you may need to address, you can listen to Episode 15: Readiness for Recovery from Binge Eating, which explores how to get in touch with what circumstances or issues may be getting in your way—without making recovery unnecessarily complex or overwhelming.
I also hear your point about body shape and gender identity. For some, maintaining a certain physique is tied directly to wanting to feel like their body matches their identity, and that can create tremendous pressure to control weight and shape through food and exercise. That’s not just “wanting to look good”—that’s deeply connected with your inner world, and it can make the idea of eating more or letting go of certain controls feel threatening.
In that podcast conversation with Quinn Haisley, we talked some about this topic, so I do encourage you to go listen, if you haven’t already. What you’re bringing up here is an example of why I feel like stopping the binge eating itself can often be more straightforward than stopping dieting or restricting behaviors. And as you know, it’s impossible to stop bingeing for any sustained amount of time without stopping those dieting and restricting behaviors. What I’ve noticed over the years is that it’s common for people to have deeply held reasons for wanting to change their body or maintain a certain weight, and some of those reasons can date back as long as they can remember. For some, those reasons are much more complex and personal than they are for others—and that seems to be the case for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s insurmountable.
When this control over your body is creating or sustaining an eating disorder, it’s so important to really take a look at what this is costing you. It’s worth exploring ways that you can care for your body and affirm your identity at the same time, in ways that don’t push you into patterns that harm you physically or mentally. This is not a specialty of mine, so I recommend getting support from professionals who understand both eating disorders and gender identity. This way, you won’t be left navigating those complexities alone.
You deserve to exist in this world without feeling unsafe. You deserve to be seen and respected. I want you to consider that recovering from your eating disorder could be a way that you prove to yourself that you do deserve self-care, even in the midst of hardship, and that no one can take your self-worth away from you. You can become a person who is not drained by an eating disorder, and when you free up your energy that’s currently going toward the struggles with food, you also put yourself in a better position to heal from everything you’ve been through.
Question 4: How to be a supportive partner
H wrote that she wants support and some healthy accountability in recovery, but she’s not sure how to ask for it. Her husband is supportive and aware, but he feels helpless.
I want to answer this question a little differently than you might expect. In Part 4 of this series, I spoke directly to people with eating disorders about how they can share with others, ask for support, or when sharing maybe isn’t what they want to do. For this question, I’m going to talk directly to the partner—the person who wants to help but isn’t sure how. And H, you may even want to share this with him.
If you’re a partner or friend supporting someone who’s trying to recover, the first thing to remember is to simply treat them like the whole, wonderful person that they are. Try to see the eating issues as separate from their core being, and treat them like you did before you found out about this issue—assuming that you treated them with love and care and respect. Do the normal things that you’ve always done together—have fun, laugh, focus on your life with that person outside of food…and check in with them to see what they may need.
If the person you’re supporting doesn’t know exactly what they need yet, that’s okay. Just check in now and then—not as an interrogation but with genuine curiosity and care. Sometimes just knowing that someone is present and engaged without any pressure is enough, or it may help them open up to exploring what they may need specifically from you.
Basically, you want to take your cues from the person who is struggling, and if they don’t give you any cues, you can gently ask for them. Ask them how you can best help, don’t assume. If the person does not offer any ways for you to help, you can ask more specific questions, like: Would it help if I sit with you while you eat? or Would you like me to offer you any reminders? or Is there anything I should avoid saying? And honor any request that the person makes.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to show up and be curious and be understanding. When you have meals with that person, simply try to be there and be present—without commenting on their eating habits, unless they’ve already made a specific request. Don’t try to take control or tell them what to do, and don’t try to become the “food police.” That does not mean you always have to be silent when you notice something concerning, but it’s often best not to bring it up within the meal itself—but afterward, at some point when you’re in a calm setting where you can ask questions and offer support.
It’s important to mention that what I’m saying here is for adults who are supporting other adults, not an adult supporting a child or adolescent. The most effective treatment for anorexia in children is family-based treatment (FBT), where parents do need to step in to provide structured meals and ensure that eating happens. It used to be the case where we told parents not to be the “food police” or comment on their kids’ eating habits—even if their children were engaging in dangerous behaviors—but all of that has changed as more research has emerged. FBT includes family-directed feeding which is definitely not the same as being the “food police.” It’s a very specific method for refeeding a child, with very important guidelines about food amounts, how to talk about food, and how to approach meals, so please do not try to do this without proper therapeutic guidance.
Another way you can be supportive is to be a good role model yourself as far as food. This doesn’t mean you have to eat perfectly, but the biggest thing is just to avoid making negative comments about food or about your own body. Don’t criticize yourself for eating something, or criticize your own weight, or say you need to lose weight, or label foods as good or bad. Try to be neutral or even positive about food, make an effort to nourish yourself well, and do not go to any extremes with food.
In addition to nourishing yourself, try to take care of yourself through this process. Supporting someone in recovery can feel uncomfortable and difficult at times. It can also be hard feeling like you don’t know what to do in certain moments, and it’s okay to admit that and ask for help for yourself when necessary. You can find that through therapy or a support group. The healthier and more grounded you are, the better you’ll be able to show up for the person that you care about.
H, I hope this will be useful to you and your husband. Take what you think makes sense from it, add your own ideas, and implement what works for you and your relationship—knowing that that may evolve as you recover.
Question 5: When sharing about your eating disorder backfires
S wrote that she told her husband about her eating disorder several years ago and has since regretted it because he uses it against her in arguments. She also said that she struggles not to take her frustration with continued bingeing out on her husband.
This is incredibly difficult. I want to say upfront that the fact that sharing your struggle has led to this dynamic does not mean you did anything wrong by telling him. You were doing what you thought was right for you at the time. You were trying to support yourself, and you were trying to get the support of someone you thought would be supportive. It’s not a problem with you sharing, it’s a problem with his lack of effort to try to understand how to support you—and, more importantly, which I’ll get to in a moment—his lack of kindness toward you about it.
Let’s talk about the understanding first. Even if you have a very supportive and kind partner, it’s helpful to take a step back and recognize that there are going to be limitations in what we can expect another person to really, truly understand about our struggles. Unless someone has experienced an eating disorder themselves, they’ll never be able to fully grasp what it’s like—and that’s not their fault. That’s true of so many things in life. Our internal struggles are in some ways ours alone, and to expect someone else to be able to fully empathize in a way that’s helpful 100% of the time is usually setting yourself up to be continually disappointed.
I’m not saying you’re doing that, S, but I just wanted to set those expectations upfront for anyone who is sharing with their partner, friend, or loved one. What we’re looking for when we share is effort to meet us halfway; we’re looking for connection—for a listening ear. We’re not looking for someone to know exactly what it’s like to be us, and it can help to give others some grace for not fully understanding.
Like I addressed in the previous question, it’s important to communicate about what kind of support you need, and it’s possible that doing this will help you in the area of taking your frustration with the eating disorder out on him. I realize I may be tipping into giving him excuses here—and I’m not—and I’m going to address that next. But it’s possible that he sees you so frustrated with the eating disorder and he doesn’t know how to help. Maybe in some ways you’re expecting him to know how to help, but he simply doesn’t—and it all culminates in him using the eating disorder against you, which is absolutely unacceptable.
Giving someone grace for a lack of understanding does not mean excusing poor treatment—especially the kind you’ve described. There’s a difference between someone not knowing how to support you, and then, on the other hand, someone taking something vulnerable and private that you’ve shared and using it against you. I believe that crosses a line.
If you haven’t already, and if it feels safe to do so, I would suggest that you explain the harm and hurt he’s causing when he brings this up in arguments. By being clear with him about how it affects you, you create clarity for both of you. He knows where you stand, and you know that he’s aware. And if after that, he continues to do it, then you need to consider next steps. That could mean something like couples therapy to talk through these dynamics, address any mistreatment, and also help you work through your own frustration. If you’re both willing to foster mutual respect, this could be very effective.
If you can’t come to any solutions—but you do want to keep the relationship going—another option is to basically remove him as a source of support and put some boundaries around the topic of the eating disorder. Make it something you both agree to not talk about, and then you can turn to other sources of support that you find more helpful. I know that it’s not ideal to not have the support of your primary relationship, but as I talked about in the previous post, it is possible to make that work and to seek support in other people in your life—and within yourself.
You definitely deserve relationships where your openness is met with care and not used against you—even if you do have moments of frustration. That’s not you expecting perfection from him, and it’s not you avoiding working on improving your own reactions. It’s just about expecting basic respect and kindness about something that is deeply personal to you.
My last piece of advice—as I’ve said in so many of these questions—is to try not to hinge your recovery on how he responds to any of this or how any of this goes. Imagine how empowering it will feel to possibly have an argument with him and not binge—or to feel ashamed of something that he said and not hurt yourself with food. Again, it’s never about accepting mistreatment, but it’s about treating yourself well and not falling for those lower brain messages that tell you a binge will fix things—because it never will.
Question 6: Learning to speak up in toxic relationships
J shared that she’s in a relationship with a person she said is a narcissist, and she’s beginning to learn to speak up for herself after years of people-pleasing, hiding to eat, or restricting.
First, J, I want to commend you for working on this skill of standing up for yourself. It’s definitely not easy, but you absolutely deserve to have your voice and needs heard. I also want to acknowledge that building the skill of speaking up is even more challenging in a toxic or manipulative relationship. It can feel a bit daunting, and it can take up a lot of emotional energy, and the speaking up does not always go as planned.
If you’re dealing with someone who is truly narcissistic, know that many common relationship strategies or communication tips that encourage open communication and mutual respect simply do not work with people who have high levels of narcissistic traits. It can be easy to believe that all you need to do is calmly assert yourself or make the person understand your perspective, but it’s rarely that straightforward. I read something recently that captures this well. It said something like: the conundrum with boundaries in relationships is that the people you most need to set boundaries with are often the people with whom it’s nearly impossible to set boundaries with.
I’m not saying it will definitely be this way for you, because everyone is different, and you do want to try to assume the best in people and give people the opportunity to create mutual understanding. But the issue with narcissism is that—because of their lack of empathy—it can make the non-narcissistic person think that maybe they’re just not saying things right, or maybe they’re setting the boundary wrong, or maybe they just need to be kinder or more understanding. This can really take you down a rabbit hole of thinking that you’re the problem.
If any of this resonates with you, I recommend listening to Episode 144: Eating Disorders and Narcissistic Relationships with Dr. Ramani. Dr. Ramani is a renowned expert on narcissism, and I highly recommend her as a resource as you’re dealing with these struggles.
Now, getting back to the bingeing—if your binge urges have connections to relationship stress, know that you can break those connections. Your lower brain might offer binge eating as a “solution” to calming yourself during times of relationship stress, or those lower brain messages may even present the binge as a “reward” for standing up for yourself or as a “relief” after a difficult conversation.
Any and all of these relationship-related messages that encourage bingeing are neurological junk, and when you can dismiss them, you put yourself in a much better position to care for yourself and be the person you want to be in your relationship—or make the decisions you need to make regarding staying in the relationship or not.
Something I want to add here is that even not speaking up does not cause bingeing. Being a people pleaser does not cause bingeing. In my own therapy, I definitely learned the idea that I had to stand up for myself and get my needs met so that I wouldn’t “turn to bingeing” to try to fulfill those emotional needs. I could probably spend the rest of this post talking about why that didn’t work and why it wasn’t true for me personally—and for so many others that I’ve worked with.
Being accommodating to others—or even overly accommodating—does not inherently lead to bingeing. Just like you can take any tendency you have and connect it to bingeing, you can take any tendency you have and disconnect it from bingeing. Then you get the opportunity to work on whatever tendencies you want to improve—without having to worry about bingeing. You can fail at standing up for yourself, and you can still not binge.
Just as a personal example, I had a nearly three-year relationship relatively recently where some of my people-pleasing and not-standing-up-for-myself tendencies were alive and well. It’s not something I’m the most proud of, and I feel like I’ll be a work in progress in this area for the rest of my life, but not once did an urge to binge show up—because I stopped believing that being assertive or avoiding people-pleasing is a cure for bingeing.
Yes, learning to speak up is an extremely valuable goal, and I’m definitely working on it, but even if you haven’t mastered it yet, you can still stop the eating disorder. That’s where your freedom begins.
Question 7: Binge eating and self-hatred
J asked about deep self-hatred that can come from the bingeing itself—specifically, hating yourself for the damage done to your body.
This is another question about that relationship with the self, and to me this question is not about self-worth overall or hating yourself in every aspect. It’s about the binge eating creating consequences and pain that negatively affects your relationship with yourself, and I completely get that.
Binge eating can do terrible things to a person’s health, wellbeing, and quality of life, and that’s why I’m here to try to help people avoid that as much as possible. But when the bingeing is doing those terrible things, it makes sense that feelings of hate would arise in relation to that. I hated it too, and these feelings can run deeper the longer you’ve had the problem or the more health effects that add up over time.
It gets more complicated than just hating the pain and the consequences, because you also recognize that you are the one doing the action of bingeing, and you’re the one having to live with the consequences. So, then it’s easy to assume that it’s all your fault. It feels like you are the one hurting you, so it makes sense that you may start hating yourself for it. But like I always talk about, it’s not truly you—at least not the real you. The bingeing is a primitive drive; it’s a habit that’s become deeply rooted in the lower brain over time. It’s separate from your identity, and values, and what you want for your life.
The most important point I want to make is that you can absolutely hate the binge eating, you can hate this lower brain habit, you can hate what it’s done to you—without turning that hatred toward yourself as a person. You can instead start to have compassion for yourself—seeing you and the eating disorder as separate.
When you direct your negative feelings at the eating disorder, or even at the factors that led you to start these behaviors in the first place, you’re not avoiding responsibility. You’re simply placing the blame where it belongs and stepping into the role of someone who can stand outside of the problem and its origins—and start taking action to end it.
Most people get into binge eating in a very innocent way—through dieting, food restriction, overfocus on weight, or overeating from a very young age—and they simply don’t know how the brain and body are going to respond to those things. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know what was going to happen when, for example, you went on that first diet.
Have compassion for that past version of yourself who was doing the best they could with the information, circumstances, and influences they had at the time. When the “I hate myself” thoughts come up, try to shift them to “I hate this,” and then let those “I hate this” thoughts fuel your determination to recover. I want you to think about if someone that you care about was struggling with something difficult and then blaming and hating themselves for it. Think of what you may say to them. You’d probably encourage them to see their worth beyond the problem, and you would try to convince them that they deserve to take steps forward to overcome what they’ve been through.
Try to give yourself that same compassion and that same encouragement. Your worth does not vanish because you’ve been caught in this habit. You can hate the problem and still decide that you’re valuable enough to solve it.
Question 8: What’s blocking the real me?
A asked: What am I so afraid of? How do I dig deep to find out what’s blocking the real me?
All of the questions in this post are so important, and a lot of them are really getting at that core relationship with yourself. The previous question was about learning not to hate the real you (even if you hate the effects of the eating disorder), and this one is about strengthening the real you by trying to understand what might be getting in the way and overcoming that.
As far as what’s holding you back, consider that some of it simply might be the voice of your lower brain. You may be mistakenly viewing that voice as you, when in reality, it’s just a stream of automatic messages generated by the habit. In that case, when what’s holding you back is those faulty messages from the lower brain, you can let go of the idea that there’s something deep and meaningful that’s blocking the real you.
It’s just that the real you is getting caught up in those habitual messages and taking them seriously—but you can learn to separate from them. What can help is to write down the specific lower brain messages that you’ve been believing, and then you can either reframe those thoughts in a way that aligns with your goals, or you can dismiss them altogether.
On the other hand, you may feel like what’s blocking you goes beyond the harmful, habitual messages of your primal brain. If you truly believe something else is holding you back from dismissing urges or from eating adequately, I want you to take the advice I gave to X in the question earlier—and try to get very specific about what it is that’s preventing you from eating enough or not acting on the urges to binge.
I would recommend that you also listen to Episode 15: Readiness for Recovery from Binge Eating. It could be an attachment to dieting, it could be feeling like you don’t have any motivation to recover due to any issue like depression, for example. When you’re not able to connect with your motivation, and when you’re not able to see reasons for recovery because of overwhelming negative feelings overall, this is something to address before you can start to see a way out.
Of course, you don’t have to be perfectly healed, happy, or self-actualized in order to recover, but you do have to see reasons to stop the behavior. You need to know at some level that binge eating is not what you want, and that it’s hurting you. You need to recognize that you do have the ability to override the urges when they arise, even if that takes some practice. Also, very importantly, you need to be willing to eat enough food. If you’re not, you’ll continue to feel like something is blocking you—that something is not enough nourishment.
There can be a tendency to think you must first do deep healing work for yourself and for your relationships before you can end this habit. And what I’ve said in response to X’s question and this question is that, yes, in your unique situation, there may be things you need to do to feel more ready for recovery. But try to be strategic about this so that you can figure out what you need to do, get to work on doing it, and then move on to getting some space and freedom from bingeing—because no one deserves to stay stuck there, no matter how hard life gets.
The journey of self-discovery, relationship work, and overall healing can go on forever, and that’s not a bad thing—because if we’re trying to live life well, I don’t think that journey ever stops. But the nightmare of bingeing can end much sooner than you think!
Get direct support in recovery and relationship-related issues in 1:1 coaching and group coaching.
Healing Your Relationship with Food, Yourself, and Others (Part III)
This is part three of a blog series that addresses healing your relationship with food, yourself, and others (I’m recording this as a podcast series as well!). If you haven’t read Part 1 and Part 2 yet, you will want to explore those prior to diving into this post because they provide foundational insights about how disordered eating can affect personal connections.
Binge eating and food restriction tend to isolate you from others, from your own needs, and from your ability to care for yourself. In the first two posts, I helped you explore the many ways that issues with relationships could be intertwined with your eating disorder. I also addressed how important it is to separate your ability to improve relationships from your ability to avoid binge eating. You want to set yourself up to be binge-free no matter how well or how poorly relationships are going, because bingeing is never the solution to relationship issues.
Creating space for connection after recovery or recovery progress
Stopping binge eating—or even just making some progress in recovery, so that food starts to take up less of your time, energy, and mental capacity—starts to create space for more connection in your life. It creates more room to focus on addressing and healing relationship issues, whether that’s with yourself or others, and that will be the focus of this post.
As I discussed in Part 1 of the series, if your relationship with food is still consuming you, it’s going to feel really hard to heal other relationships because you’re still in that survival mode. So it’s very important to get to a more stable place with food, and we have many resources to help you do that—including one-on-one coaching with me or Coach Julie, the Brain over Binge group, and my books or course.
With that in mind, this post is mostly directed toward people who are binge-free or on their way to becoming binge-free. But regardless of where you are in recovery, the ideas here could still be useful to you in a way that’s safe and feels doable right now.
Where do I even start in rebuilding relationships after binge eating?
I want to begin with a question that came up during my Q&A call with the Brain over Binge group a couple of months ago, because it serves as a helpful guidepost for everything else I’ll talk about here.
The question was basically this: “I’ve been bingeing and obsessed with food for so long that I don’t know where to start in learning how to have a friend or be a friend.”
You may be feeling this way too, and it’s also common to feel this way when it comes to your relationship with yourself—in that you aren’t sure how to be a friend to yourself. I’m going to use a lot of the advice I shared on that group call, and expand on it, to address this overarching question: How do you start learning the skills of being a friend to yourself and others? This also applies to being a partner, a family member, a coworker, or navigating any kind of relationship.
Begin with compassion and patience
Always start with compassion toward yourself and toward any friends or other relationships you may have lost or not nurtured along the way. The eating disorder took this away from you; it wasn’t your intention to neglect relationships or not to form them in the first place. Beating yourself up doesn’t help, so any amount of self-compassion you can offer is a great first step.
Next, develop a mindset of patience as you learn these new skills. If you’re more isolated right now, you likely won’t wake up tomorrow with a fulfilling social life and a great relationship with yourself. You may have been trapped in these eating issues from a very young age, and you therefore didn’t get a chance to develop these skills, so be kind and gentle with yourself. Think of it like picking up a musical instrument or a sport—you wouldn’t expect yourself to be perfect right away. You’d start with the basics and gradually build toward more advanced skills.
Notice the good in your life, within yourself, and in your relationships
Once you have self-compassion and patience, you can begin taking steps to heal your relationships and build a healthy connection with yourself. Depending on where you are now, here are some ideas about how to start this healing process. You can take what resonates with you and what you feel ready for, and use it as inspiration to think of your own ideas as well.
A good place to start is to begin noticing the good in your life and within yourself—whatever that may be. This suggestion doesn’t involve creating anything new—but just noticing what’s already there. Yes, binge eating may have taken a lot away from you, but there is still good in your life. As you go through your day, try to notice small joys and pleasures—whether that involves others or just yourself. Notice moments when you feel a positive emotion, when you think a positive thought about yourself or your abilities, when you sense a good smell, a food that tastes great, a comfortable outfit, a beautiful sight in nature, a peaceful place in your home, a piece of art or music, someone who smiles at you, a funny joke, a good conversation.
Urges to binge have a way of telling us that “nothing is good or exciting, so you might as well go back to bingeing,” so please be aware of that thought—and dismiss it. You wouldn’t tell someone else to binge eat as a solution to boredom or a lack of pleasure. You’d encourage them to seek out, cultivate, and savor what’s good, and to never return to something that’s always harmful and painful.
This leads me to the absolute best way you can be a friend to yourself now and through the rest of your life—and that is to give yourself the gift of not binge eating. Even if other things feel a little flat right now—which is common as your dopamine and pleasure pathways are regulating—making binge eating not an option keeps you moving toward real solutions to whatever you need to heal within yourself or with others.
Part of looking for the good in your life is recognizing the connections you do have. Most binge eaters or former binge eaters aren’t completely isolated; you may have family, friends, partners, coworkers, or acquaintances. Even if it’s just one person, notice their qualities that you enjoy and notice how you feel around them. Also notice the qualities you exhibit around others that make you feel good about yourself—for example when you make someone laugh, give to people you care about, share a mutual interest, or even express an opinion or set a boundary.
This practice is something Coach Julie and I discussed in Episode 105 of the podcast—“Taking in the Good.” It’s based on the work of Dr. Rick Hanson, and it’s a researched strategy for growing your capacity to experience happiness and override the brain’s negativity bias.
Exploring what you want to bring into your life after binge eating
The next step after noticing what is already in your life is exploring what you may want to bring into your life in terms of relationships or ways to improve yourself. What connections with others do you want to nurture? Are there people already in your life that you want to make an effort to communicate with more or spend more time with? Are there people you’ve lost touch with that you want to reconnect with?
What ways do you want to improve how you care for yourself? Do you need to release some of the pressure and perfectionism you put on yourself? Do you need to add a self-care ritual, even if it’s just a few minutes in your day? Do you want to spend more time in nature or add a meditation practice? Do you need some positive daily affirmations to remind yourself that you are worthy and you deserve self-care and care from others?
Are there completely new relationships you want to think about bringing into your life? If so, what are some small steps you can take toward that goal? Do you want friends with similar interests? You can usually find local groups that connect over shared hobbies, or maybe there are classes you could take. You can start really small here—brainstorm about places where people with the qualities you are looking for in a friend might be… is it church? the gym? museums? concerts? farmers markets? coffee shops?
Challenge yourself to go to places where you feel good, and chances are if you feel good in those places, others you may have a chance to connect with will likely be there too. Even if you don’t talk to anyone right away, you can still build that healthy relationship with yourself by putting yourself in places that inspire you and give you a sense of joy or purpose.
Know that this is not easy for anyone, with or without an eating disorder history—especially as you get older and there aren’t as many natural opportunities to make new friends like there were in school—so give yourself some grace if you don’t find new connections right away. You can start with very simple actions like a smile or wave and gain more confidence over time.
It’s all about exploring, experimenting, and adapting depending on what works and what doesn’t work for you—and of course always being patient and compassionate with yourself along the way.
Rebuilding, repairing, and setting boundaries
The next step—and these aren’t really steps but suggestions—is repairing, rebuilding, or setting boundaries in relationships affected by the eating disorder or intertwined with the eating disorder.
If there are relationships you neglected, know that repair doesn’t always have to mean sharing a lot right away. It could be as simple as a text that says, “hey, I’ve missed you,” or possibly making time to meet someone for coffee—without overexplaining yourself or only explaining what you feel comfortable sharing. Start with the people who feel very safe and easy for you to reconnect with and who serve as positive influences.
You don’t have to reconnect with everyone or right away—especially if certain people introduce some toxic elements to your life as far as focusing on appearance, weight, or dieting. I also realize that some relationships with toxic elements may not be ones you can fully avoid, and maybe you can’t avoid them much at all. For various reasons, you may not be able to get out of living situations or relationships right away, and this is why it’s so important to know that you can avoid binge eating no matter what.
Don’t put pressure on yourself to make big moves or change things significantly right away. You can give yourself some time to process and adapt to your binge-free life and work on learning what you truly want and need, because you may have been out of touch with that for quite a while during the time you were distracted with the eating disorder.
Not changing anything right away also has some benefits (unless of course there is something abusive going on—and in that case it’s your absolute priority to get yourself to safety, which I addressed in Part 2 of this series), because when you keep things pretty much the same but you don’t binge anymore, it really shows you that it was never your life or your relationships causing the binges.
This was something that was a powerful lesson for me when I recovered 20 years ago. After I stopped acting on my urges, I had this mindset of “wow, this is amazing—I can have all of these problems and still not binge. I can be depressed and anxious and still not binge. I can be lonely, sad, confused, have poor self-esteem, relationship conflicts, etc.—and still not binge!”
It was truly wonderful, and I believe that mindset of almost wanting to experience negative feelings—so I could prove to myself I didn’t need to binge—was highly protective in preventing me from ever returning to the habit, and allowing me to completely disassociate my binge eating from emotions, relationships, and other problems in my life.
Understanding what was lost to my eating disorder in terms of relationships
It’s not that I didn’t face any of my feelings or problems or try to find ways to deal with them during that time of recovery. It’s just that I really didn’t change very much in my life, and I didn’t hinge stopping binge eating on how well I dealt with issues in relationships or within myself. But looking back, even though that mindset was protective as far as not bingeing, I think it held me back a bit in terms of my own personal growth. I was so excited to be done with the eating disorder that I think it made me minimize or gloss over some of the ways that being in that dark place of bingeing and overexercising for so long had affected me—and it may have kept me from really looking at what the eating disorder took from me, and what skills I didn’t develop in my life because my eating disorder consumed me for many of my teenage and young adult years.
There was a reality that needed to be faced: that I had wasted a lot of time, and I had made some bad decisions based on how badly I felt about myself because of the eating disorder. I lost people who were important to me because my binge eating took me away from love and connection. I felt like my friends I had before the eating disorder went on without me in many ways—not intentionally, but because I was just no longer very available, and I no longer responded much and no longer tried to make plans or actively reached out.
I woke up from the nightmare of binge eating—of course very excited to be done with the binge eating—but also realizing that I had become isolated in some ways, and also possibly made the wrong connections in other ways.
A personal example of the long-term effects of eating-disorder-related isolation
Shortly before I was writing this Part 3 blog post, I got a call from one of my old childhood friends—the only friend from my high school that I keep in touch with in any capacity today. She said this in a much more tactful way than I’m going to say it, but she called to let me know that our old friend group from high school had planned a big girls’ trip, and it had been in the works for a long time, and all the plans were made, and the rooms were booked—but she remembered me last minute and wanted to reach out to apologize for not including me and to invite me.
I thought it was amazingly sweet that even one friend from high school remembered me—even at the tail end of this planning, but I also thought it was a good example of the residual effects of the eating disorder even today. It was so telling in terms of the mistakes I made along the way in not doing enough to reestablish connections.
I didn’t go on the trip because it would have been too challenging to leave my kids so last minute, but it made me reflect a bit on ways I need to be a better friend even today. It’s not only eating disorders that take us away from connections—I’ve had a hard time with finding time for connection since having kids and putting so much time into my work, and I’m sure there are things in your own life that distract from relationships.
The lessons you learn from reestablishing or sustaining connections through or after an eating disorder can be valuable through the rest of your life—to maintain relationships even through difficult times.
An invitation to begin healing relationships—when you’re ready
There is no pressure to get right back out there and start being social all of the time, but I do want to encourage you to put some conscious effort into connection after recovery—whenever you feel ready, and in a way that feels safe for you. I know how easy it is to let the days, weeks, months, and even years go by and let responsibilities take over and to let friendships slip away or never form.
This isn’t to push you or make you fear that if you don’t do this now, you’re going to wake up at 43 years old and be forgotten for a girls’ trip. You’re allowed to protect your energy and peace if that’s what feels right to you now—and maybe that’s what felt right for me then too. This is an individual journey, and you get to decide what your next steps are.
When eating disorder recovery brings relationship clarity
Another related shift that can happen after recovery is realizing that you’re no longer the same version of yourself who chose for certain people to be in your life—and I feel like this comes up most often in terms of romantic relationships.
When you’re in the thick of binge eating or food/weight obsession, you may not be in touch with who you really are and what you truly want and need in romantic relationships. You may have chosen a partner during a time when your self-worth was really low and your shame was really high, and that’s rarely a good time to make clear and aligned choices about who is truly right for you or how you deserve to be treated.
After recovery and adapting to being binge-free, you may look around and feel like something no longer fits. Maybe you feel like your partner doesn’t support your growth, or the relationship was built around you not being well or not being the best version of yourself, or maybe it now just feels like you’ve outgrown it based on the changes you’ve made.
There are so many ways this could play out, but know that you’re not alone. When people make major changes in their lives—like stopping a terrible habit or addiction—it’s like waking up to reality after a long time of being clouded. You may come to painful realizations, but it’s important to be honest with yourself about who you are now and how the people around you fit with that new version of yourself.
It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong in the past—you made the best decisions you could from the place you were in, and you don’t need to spend time in regret—but you are now seeing things more clearly or from a different perspective, and you can go forward from there.
If you find yourself in this situation, know that you don’t have to make any sudden decisions. You can start by getting curious, and asking yourself how you feel around this person now? Can you be your authentic self in this relationship as a recovered person, or do you see the possibility that you could be your authentic self in the future—if you both work on it? Does this relationship help or hinder the life you’re building after recovery, or do you see the possibility that this relationship could be a fit in your recovered life—again if you both work on it?
Growth after binge eating recovery isn’t always comfortable—but it’s worth it
You don’t need all of the answers right away, but it’s okay to admit to yourself that things have shifted. Give yourself permission to begin to explore what that means for your future. If the relationship can grow and adapt with you, then that’s a beautiful thing. But if it can’t, that doesn’t mean recovery broke something—it means recovery made you into a healthier version of you who can now learn to have the clarity and strength to choose what’s truly right for you now.
Try to see this as an opportunity and not as a crisis. When food is no longer the main struggle, you get the chance to explore all of this, and even if some of it is painful, I want you to see it (as much as possible) as a way that you are growing in a positive direction. Try not to see it as something that is daunting or that you have to do perfectly—because there are no perfect decisions when it comes to relationships.
You can learn to care for others, build and repair connections, while also protecting and caring for yourself. You’re not broken if this feels awkward or slow. You can take all of the time you need, and keep asking yourself what you want your life to look like and who you want beside you on this path.
Go to Part IV of this blog series
Support is available if you want to talk about this
If you want guidance as you explore any of these issues in your own life, Coach Julie and I are here to help you. As I’ve mentioned in the previous relationship posts, I am now a certified relationship coach as well, to better help people in this area. When you book your coaching session—if you do want to talk about relationship issues—just mention it in the brief intake questionnaire. You can book either a 20-minute laser session or a full 45-minute session with me or Coach Julie at brainoverbinge.com/one-on-one-coaching.
The Brain over Binge group is also a great place to get support in this area, because everyone there understands what you are dealing with and faces similar struggles in their own lives.
Healing Your Relationship with Food, Yourself, and Others (Part II)
This is part two of a blog series that addresses healing your relationship with food, yourself, and others (I’m recording this as a podcast series as well!). If you’re having issues in relationships while also struggling with an eating disorder or even after recovery, know that you’re not alone. In Part I of this blog series, I talked about some of the ways that eating disorders can affect our capacity to engage in relationships with others and can also prevent us from developing a healthier relationship with ourselves. I talked about this using the framework of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, explaining that when your basic physiological and safety needs are not being met—which is often the case when an eating disorder is present—you can’t fully pursue other needs for connection, and your relationship with yourself suffers as well.
In this blog post, I’m going to address 3 main areas. First, I want to help you discover some of the unique ways that your eating disorder has affected your own relationships, and this applies even after recovery. Second, I want to help you learn to separate the relationship issues (as much as possible) from your ability to recover, so that you can overcome your struggle with food regardless of what is going on in your relationships. Last, I want to talk about how recovery gives you the brain space, the energy, and the time to start building skills and healing relationships—or reevaluating relationships and possibly adjusting or walking away from ones that are no longer healthy for you. The last topic is something I’ll address in much more detail in Part III of this series. But, before I get started with any of this, we need to discuss something very important in terms of your safety…
Address your safety before addressing any connections between your eating disorder and relationships
If you’re currently in any sort of abusive or traumatic situation in your relationships, it’s not the time to explore the issues I’m talking about in this blog post. Regardless of what factors may be at play, there’s never a reason for abuse, and it serves no purpose right now to try to determine the factors that may have led up to you being in that situation. Never blame your eating disorder for any abuse you’re experiencing, either physical or emotional. There’s simply never a reason for that, and the priority in any abusive situation is getting yourself to safety as quickly as possible, with professional help if necessary. Find a community, find support, and don’t spend time trying to analyze the dynamics involved or think that recovery will somehow magically make it better, and never blame yourself or your eating disorder.
Even if your safety isn’t currently at risk, relationships can be a fraught space for anyone with a history of abuse or trauma in relationships. If that’s the case for you, I recommend proceeding with awareness as you read this, and know that you may want some additional support as you explore this topic, depending on your situation or where you are in your healing. I believe we’re all capable of building up resilience and learning to overcome relationship challenges in our lives, even really difficult ones, but I want to make sure you prioritize your safety and get more help when necessary because I do not specialize in abuse or trauma, and this episode will not address those issues.
Also know that eating disorders themselves can be traumatic experiences. They’re harmful and dangerous to the body and having an eating disorder is, in many ways, like being in an abusive relationship—the eating disorder continues to hurt you over and over. In this situation where you feel that the eating disorder is severely compromising your physical health, remember that safety is your number one priority. The priority is not analyzing your relationships or how the eating disorder has affected them. Like I mentioned in Part I of this blog post, healing the relationship with food usually needs to come first (or at least it needs to be strongly prioritized alongside of any other issues), and if health is in danger, addressing the food issues has to be the absolute priority.
Before you can have the brain space to look at your relationship with yourself and with others, you need to stabilize your eating habits and stop any extreme and dangerous behaviors like restricting, bingeing, and purging. We offer a lot of support in that area, through my books, the online course, one-on-one coaching, or group coaching; or you can use whatever resources are available to you and that you find helpful. This discussion on relationships is mainly for those who are not in immediate danger from the eating disorder. It’s for those of you who have made some progress in recovery and who feel ready to look at some other issues, or for those who are fully recovered and want to become the best version of yourself—and that can include exploring some of the ways the eating disorder interfered with your life, and learning how you can move forward from here.
Explore the ways your eating disorder has affected your relationships
To get started in thinking about the ways the eating disorder affected you and your relationships, I’m going to pose several questions to guide you. You can journal about the questions or just reflect on them and allow ideas to flow. Avoid judging yourself for anything that comes up—simply try to observe your thoughts with an open mind and see where it leads.
I’ve developed these questions based on my own experience and the experience of others that I’ve talked to over the years, especially in coaching. If you have any of these issues, please know that you’re not broken and please have as much compassion for yourself as possible because you’ve simply been doing the best that you can.
What were your friendships and your family relationships like when you first started dieting or when you first started fixating on food or bingeing?
Once dieting or bingeing started, what effect did that have on your friendships? What effect did it have on your family relationships, and if applicable, what effect did it have on your romantic relationships?
Did you start isolating yourself to spend more time calculating calories or planning meals? Did you spend less time out in the world socializing and connecting with others?
Did your initial eating disorder behaviors get you compliments from others, setting you up to think that your appearance and your ability to be fit or thin determined your worth in relationships?
Did you think your ability to make friends or to date was determined by your body’s shape or size?
If you felt you weren’t the right weight, did you avoid interactions?
Did shame about your body affect any romantic or sexual relationships?
Did being distracted with bingeing, secretive eating, or dieting take you away from connecting with family or friends?
When you were with people, did you feel like you weren’t really present because you felt like all you could think about was food, or your weight, or what everyone else was eating, or other people’s weight, or what you should or shouldn’t be eating, or what you wanted to eat when you left the gathering?
Did the physical effects of bingeing make you avoid friends, miss work, cancel plans, avoid romantic partners, or avoid trying to form new connections?
Did your eating issues influence relationship decisions like who to date, or the decision to continue or end a relationship, or the decision to get married or even have children?
Did purging behaviors or overexercising make you too exhausted to socialize and connect with others?
Did you hide from people because you had gained weight and didn’t believe you would be accepted?
Did you share your eating disorder struggles with people who did not react well and made you feel even worse about yourself?
Did you start struggling with food as a young child and did food start to feel like your only friend at some point?
Did you give up on even trying to form bonds with others because you felt so connected to food?
Did eating feel safer in some ways than putting yourself out there and risk getting hurt?
Did you feel like you were disappointing others along the way because of your struggle with food? How did that affect your relationship with those people?
As far as your relationship with yourself…
Did you lack confidence to go after your own goals because of your eating disorder?
Are there ways in which you stopped taking care of yourself because you didn’t think you were worthy of self-care?
Were there things that you’ve wanted to do just for yourself, but you’ve let your weight or your body shape stop you?
These questions so far are primarily directed at helping you see where the eating disorder is negatively impacting your ability to put energy and time into relationships, including the relationship with yourself. But there’s another connection to think about and that’s the possibility that relationship issues contributed to why you started dieting in the first place and why it got out of control. Ask yourself these questions…
Did anyone in your life make you feel like you needed to diet or look a certain way to be loved and accepted?
Did someone put you on a diet when you were a child so that you didn’t even have a choice in the matter? What effect did this have on you and your relationship with that person and your relationship with yourself?
Did someone in your life give you the message that you had to be perfect, including with your eating and exercise?
Did you feel like you would lose love or affection from someone or from many people if you were not perfect?
(The impact others have on your feelings about your body and your desire to diet is something I talked about with Dr. Ramani in Episode 144: Eating Disorders and Narcissistic Relationships).
There’s also the issue of developing a connection between bingeing and relationship stress over time so that the relationship stress starts to automatically lead to urges to binge. In this case, you end up with the experience of bingeing getting worse when relationship problems get worse. This connection can go in another direction as well in that a good relationship might have a positive effect on your recovery. I’ve had more than a few people tell me about time periods when they were in new, exciting relationships or living with someone for the first time and that temporarily quieted their urges to binge—or even if their urges did not decrease, they simply did not follow them because that person was always around, which led to quitting the habit for a period of time.
This is not to say that good relationships are a cure for bingeing, but different factors can affect our patterns, and everyone has different patterns. To explore these unique connections in your own life, ask yourself…
Have relationships ever had a positive effect as far as my eating disorder? How did that play out? (It doesn’t have to be a new, exciting romantic relationship, it can be any relationship).
Do you tend to have less urges to binge when you’re connected with good friends or people you care about?
Do you have less urges to diet or focus on weight when you’re with people who have healthy attitudes about food?
These questions are certainly not exhaustive of every possible connection of eating issues and relationships, but I hope they give you a place to start as far as exploring this area.
You can avoid binge eating regardless of relationship dynamics
The next topic I want to address is separating the relationship issues (as much as possible) from your ability to stop bingeing, stop harmful restrictive behaviors, and develop a healthy relationship with food. Relationship challenges will be present throughout your life, and you want to put yourself in a position to be binge free regardless of what is going on in those relationships. To do this, it’s vital to recognize any thought you have that uses a relationship struggle as a reason to binge. As examples, I’m going to give you a few of my own former lower brain thoughts that encouraged bingeing in response to relationship-related issues.
For a year during my bingeing, I lived with my sister and another room mate and they both had boyfriends at the time. It felt like they were always out with their boyfriends, or their boyfriends were hanging out at our apartment, and I was always alone, and my thoughts told me that “I was lonely, unwanted, unlovable, and needed the bingeing for comfort.”
Another example was a time that my father came to visit me in college during some of my worst bingeing days. He hadn’t seen me in a while and when he did, he said, “you don’t even look like yourself anymore” (because of all the weight I’d gained). In my thoughts, looking like myself meant when I was a successful distance runner and athlete—the time when he seemingly was the most proud of me. His comment made me feel like I’d never be able to get back to that version of myself or be able to make him proud of me again. My thoughts said “it was hopeless, all was lost, and I should just give up and keep bingeing.”
Another lower brain thought would occur when I would try to be social (which is not my strong suit). I would go out with friends and while out, I’d feel super insecure and awkward, mostly because I’m simply an introvert. I always had (and often still have) a feeling of not quite fitting in when I am with groups of people. When I was a binge eater, the longer I stayed around people, the more I found myself thinking about food and what I would eat when I got home. My brain would justify it by saying that “I would never fit in, and bingeing was therefore more pleasurable and more fun than being out with friends, and I deserved some enjoyment just for myself.” It’s important to point out here that to stop bingeing, I didn’t need to learn how to be more social and less awkward. I’m still an introvert, and I would still prefer to eat a good meal than go out with a big group of people, but bingeing is the last thing that I would want to do. I say this to make sure you know that nothing is wrong with you if you sometimes think food is more appealing than people—because it certainly can be in certain situations, but it’s about taking bingeing completely out of this equation. Bingeing is never a form of pleasure, always leads to pain, and is never a solution to social anxiety.
Some other justifications I had for bingeing in terms of my relationships were encouraged by therapy. As I’ve talked about frequently, therapy taught me to try to find deeper meaning in my binges and to discover what I was trying to use food to “cope with”—and a lot of these things became the reasons my lower brain used to get me to binge. Some of the relationship-related justifications were: because my parents didn’t give my feelings enough validation and support as a child, so I needed to binge to stuff down those feelings; because I feared intimacy and sex due to the messages I received growing up, and therefore I binged to protect myself; because I always felt like I needed to be the “good child,” and I therefore got caught up in a lot of people-pleasing even at a young age, so I needed to binge for relief from this pressure; because romantic relationships made me anxious, so I needed to binge to soothe myself. This list could go on and on, but my brain—which was hooked on bingeing—was all too quick to give me reasons why I should binge, and because relationships are a big part of life, my binge-encouraging thoughts could easily center on relationship struggles. However, thinking that I binged because of relationship issues just served to encourage more binge eating.
There is a difference between noticing some patterns and connections you have between binge eating and relationships, and then on the other hand, using relationship issues as reasons to binge. Like I mentioned earlier, you may indeed get more urges when relationship stress is high, and it’s good to notice and acknowledge that so you can be prepared to dismiss urges during those times. What’s not helpful is to believe that you’re powerless not to binge in the face of relationship stress. Yes, it may take more effort and support to avoid a binge during those times, but relationship stress doesn’t make binge eating inevitable. It may make an urge to binge inevitable because of the habit, but you always get to choose what to do when you have an urge.
When you know the urges are the only direct cause, you have the freedom to have a wide variety of experiences in relationships without ever fearing bingeing. That never means you have to accept poor treatment or that you should do nothing about relationship conflict. It’s always helpful to try to make relationship improvements or even make decisions to leave unhealthy relationships, but your ability to avoid binge eating cannot hinge on that. In relationships, you’re only in control of half of the equation—you can’t always predict what the other person will do, and that’s why it’s so empowering to know that no matter what, you can avoid a binge. Some of the relationship problems I blamed my bingeing on in the past still come up today, but have completely disconnected binge eating from those issues.
Many of the relationship issues I’ve faced since recovery have been much more serious and difficult than what I dealt with during my binge eating years, and not once did binge eating feel like an option. To help you make this separation in your own life, I want to circle back to talking about the questions I asked you earlier in this post about the connections between your relationships and bingeing. As you think about these questions, it can be a great opportunity to notice and become aware of your lower brain’s messages. Your lower brain’s tendency will be to point to a connection or a pattern and say, “yep, that’s why you binge,” “bingeing makes total sense,” or “because of this issue, you should just keep bingeing.” Because this is never the purpose of the questions, anytime you notice these type of thoughts, start to label them as faulty brain messages or as neurological junk from the lower brain.
The questions are also never to suggest that you have to fix the relationship issues before you can stop bingeing, but that’s what the lower brain will often suggest. You may have thoughts like, “well, I’m stuck in this particular relationship situation or with this particular parent, so I can’t possibly stop binge eating until I figure out how to solve that relationship issue.” You can learn to dismiss those thoughts and realize that again, there’s a big difference between acknowledging that there are some connections between bingeing and relationships, and on the other hand, justifying bingeing with relationship problems.
Acknowledging connections allows you to learn and grow from what’s happened in the past, and justifying keeps you stuck in a harmful, habitual cycle. As you explore any connections that you have between bingeing and relationships, you can counteract any of your lower brain’s messages with a mantra like “relationship issues are never a reason to binge,” or “bingeing is never a solution to relationships issues.”
Another great way to be on to your brain when it comes to this topic is to notice that it will even suggest a binge to cope with a relationship issue that is directly caused from binge eating. When you’re aware of this, it’s easy to see the faulty logic of the lower brain. For example, if you isolate yourself because of the bingeing, your lower brain will encourage you to binge because of the isolation. Once you start to see that these issues don’t need to ever cause binge eating, it opens you up to start finding real solutions, which is the third and final topic of this post.
Freedom from binge eating gives you the capacity to focus on the relationship with yourself and with others
When you take bingeing (and other harmful eating behaviors like restriction and purging) out of the equation, you give yourself the brain space, energy and time to start learning new relationship skills—especially some that you feel like maybe you never truly developed because the eating disorder got in the way during your formative years. It opens you up to reevaluating relationships and possibly even walking away from ones that are no longer healthy for you. It opens you up to learning coping and communication skills for difficult relationships that you can’t or don’t want to leave. When you disconnect binge eating from this endeavor of improving relationships, it gives you so much freedom because you don’t have to worry about doing all of this “right” to avoid a binge. You can get curious about the ways you want to show up in relationships, or the type of people you want to connect with, or the ways you want to improve your relationship with yourself; and you can know that no matter what happens, you can continue dismissing urges to binge and you can continue eating adequately.
Doing this gave me freedom that I never thought possible. It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost 20 years since I recovered and through these 20 years, I’ve never believed that my continued freedom depended on fixing anything within myself or within my relationships. I believe this has made such a huge difference.
However, as I’ll talk about more in Part III (coming soon) of this series, there were things to improve and there were things to heal within myself and within my relationships—some of those things related to the past eating disorder, and some of those things unrelated. I’m thankful that I’ve had a chance to work on other goals within myself and with others, even though I have not always done that perfectly. If you’re anything like I was, you’ve probably been in “fixing mode” in relation to your eating disorder for a very long time, and I want you to start to get excited about turning attention toward some other things in your life and addressing those things—even if some of those things are very difficult. It’s refreshing to start to look at your life as a binge-free person, and see what you want to make of it, and think about who you want to be on this journey with, and how you want to relate to the people around you, and how you want to take care of yourself along the way.
Go to Part III of this blog series
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The topic of relationships comes up so much in coaching that in order to help people more effectively, I recently got certified as a relationship coach (in addition to my certification in health coaching from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition). So, if you are having issues in relationships as you recover from binge eating, it’s definitely something I understand and something I can help guide you through in one-on-one coaching.
Additionally, I have a lot of personal experience in this area ranging from the issues related to the eating disorder, and then later through a challenging marriage, parenting, divorce, co-parenting, dating, difficult relationships, breakups, and healthy relationships as well. Just like I frequently remind you that I do not eat perfectly, I also do not do relationships perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, but I have overcome some challenges in this area, and I have a capacity to listen without judgment and to help you work through your own unique issues. This goes for Brain over Binge Coach Julie as well, who is certified in life coaching and can help you with so many other issues that may come up in your life or in your relationships.
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