5 signs you need eating disorder therapy
Several years ago, I found myself at a crossroads. I was a working actress on a Broadway national tour, living out what I thought was my dream at 19 years old. But I was scared, alone, and in the throws of a severe eating disorder. Even so, I found myself questioning whether or not I really needed the help of a therapist or a treatment team in order to recover. I even thought that perhaps I needed my eating disorder to become worse before I deserved to reach out for help. I thought to myself, “Well its not really that bad if I can still work,” or “I don’t look like those girls on TV who have eating disorders, so it must not be that bad.” The truth is, it was that bad.
Looking back on this crucial period in my life and in my work with clients struggling with the same thing, I’ve identified some common signs that indicate you may need the help of an eating disorder therapist.
5 Signs You Need Eating Disorder Therapy
You spend more than 50% of your day thinking about food.
When you’re in an eating disorder, thinking of food begins to absolutely consume your life. Maybe you’re thinking about the food you ate yesterday. You might be thinking about the food you’re planning to eat today. You could be spending time calculating and recalculating your calorie intake, your weight in correlation to your food intake, figuring out how “good” or “bad” you’ve been based on what foods you’ve been eating. Some find themselves watching baking or cooking shows, or even making food for others that they don’t eat themselves, just fantasizing about the food they want to eat but “aren’t allowed to.”
No matter what form this takes, if you’re thinking about food more than you’re comfortable with, you might need eating disorder therapy. Can you imagine what it would be like if the time you spent thinking about food, you spent thinking about something you’re passionate about? I often say, if all the people in the world with eating disorders channeled the intensity of brain power spent thinking about food on other larger issues — we could change the world.
Even if you don’t have particularly “harmful” or classic eating disorder behaviors, but the preoccupation you have with food and body is distressing to you — YOU DESERVE TREATMENT.
2. You feel out of control.
If you feel that your eating and food behaviors, or body focused preoccupation, has gotten out of your power to control, that is a good indication that you might need the guidance of an eating disorder therapist to help you out of this tough spot. For some of us with eating disorders, you may at times feel like your food and body are the only things in your life that give you a sense of power and control. But what happens if you try to stop these behaviors? Many of us can’t. The truth? You’re not in control at all. The eating disorder is in control of you.
Perhaps you’ve tried to stop in the past — “I’m not going to binge today,” or “Purging is not an option today,” or “I have to eat something today,” only to find that hours later you are powerless to the urges of the eating disorder. If you can’t stop on your own, this is not your fault and you are not doing anything wrong. Eating disorders run so deep that it can be nearly impossible to stop these behaviors on your own. If you feel out of control and are seeking some empowerment, eating disorder therapy is right for you.
3. You’re withdrawing from friends and family.
Eating disorders are notorious for isolating us from the people we love and who love us. Often, this is because the eating disorder becomes more important than anything else in our life. The eating disorder simultaneously becomes your best friend and your worst enemy — who needs friends and family when the eating disorder fulfills those needs?
Your friends and family are often the very resources that could be the most helpful for supporting your recovery, and sometimes that is why we pull away from them — the eating disorder does not want to be stopped! Maybe your friends have expressed concern about your eating, perhaps your family has even suggested that you need help. If you’re noticing yourself avoiding these people who could potentially really help you and offer you compassion, this is a good sign that your eating disorder is progressing to a dangerous place.
In eating disorder therapy, you will work on repairing these relationships and remembering why it is so important to have these supports in your life.
4. you’re more anxious, more depressed, or both.
Eating disorders don’t often exist in isolation from other mental health issues — usually they are accompanied by anxiety and depression. When one or both of these problems seem to be getting worse, that is a major sign that getting eating disorder therapy is important. When you’re struggling with an eating disorder it can feel incredibly dark, as if there is no escape and no hope. In this state of hopelessness, many struggle to enjoy activities that they previously loved, feel overwhelmed by day to day obligations, and might even have thoughts of hurting themselves. If this is you, I recommend seeking help as soon as possible, and of course, calling 911 if these thoughts feel life threatening.
Anxiety, stress, and excessive worry may begin in the form of food-centric thinking, and eventually generalize to several areas of life unrelated to food and body. If these worries feel unmanageable and difficult to control, you may find therapy very helpful. Anxiety can be both thought-based and felt in the body. This can be paralyzing and cause a great impediment to participating in day to day life. It is also an important sign that your mental health may be declining and seeking treatment for anxiety and disordered eating is vital.
5. You want your life back.
Bottom line, if you’re sick and tired of your life being monopolized by your eating disorder, you not only need eating disorder therapy but are totally ready for it. Motivation to recover is perhaps the most important sign that eating disorder therapy is right for you and will work for you. Feeling apathetic towards getting better is totally normal and might not happen before you begin treatment — but the desire to have a life beyond your eating disorder, even if you don’t know what that looks like, is more than enough to deserve help and seek therapy.
You are worthy of living a complete and fulfilling life. Hard truth: you can’t do that with an eating disorder in tow. When you’ve reached the point in which you no longer want the eating disorder to take more from you, no matter how long or how short you’ve struggled, eating disorder therapy is a great option for getting your life back — and you are deserving of that.
take the first step…
If you identify with even one of these signs, I encourage you to reach out for help. As an eating disorder and body image specialist, I work almost exclusively with clients who want to recover from their eating disorders and take their lives back. I believe that full recovery is possible, not just because I have seen it in my clients, but because I have experienced it myself.
Don’t wait for the day the your eating disorder is “bad enough” for therapy.
