Eating disorders usually begin at a formative stage of life, typically between childhood and early adulthood. Since these illnesses are all consuming—physically, psychologically and emotionally—many stages of personal development and growth halt or slow considerably when someone is sick.
The physical limitations can result in slowed growth, delayed puberty and organ system dysfunction. Despite the severity of the symptoms, the large majority of physical effects reverse quickly with adequate nutrition. Moreover, the physical concerns rarely cause people to lose hope.
The emotional and psychological results of an eating disorder cause more psychic pain for people and lead to enduring hopelessness. It’s easier for people with eating disorders to lead a semblance of a typical life into their early twenties. They can go to school, socialize appropriately and develop friendships around shared activities. The eating disorder numbs emotions and limits the depth of connection with others, but the lack of emotional development is largely hidden—both to the person with the eating disorder and others—earlier in life.
In early adult life, the social and emotional deficits become more evident. The eating disorder consumes the majority of one’s thoughts and leaves little room to explore emotional experiences and deepen relationships. Socializing typically involves eating, and these events are fraught with fear, not with an opportunity to connect with others. Relationships are not possible unless the eating disorder plays a large role in the bond. Those connections can never be that powerful.
Suddenly, people with eating disorders feel very different from others, left behind. And the road to restarting psychological development necessitates getting better from an eating disorder which has been intimately woven into daily life from a young age. People experience this situation like a trap: getting better means facing the struggle around food and body, and life events can’t happen unless one gets better.
The road forward looks impossible. It’s easy to become hopeless.
The therapist has a critical job early in therapy to explain how psychological and emotional development can restart at any age and can catch up very fast. Much as physical limitations from the eating disorder heal, so do psychological limitations. As the eating disorder symptoms recede, a person in recovery can take on personal challenges and move forward. A new task at age 17 is much easier even a few years older because the brain has finished critical developmental stages. So the social and emotional changes can happen very quickly.
Hopelessness in this case is borne out of the false idea that one can never catch up in life. Having missed critical years, the future is hopeless. This myth could not be more false. Tackling eating disorder symptoms opens the door to personal growth and the ability to forge ahead and create the life one wants.
The next post will address how therapy itself can disempower the hopelessness borne out of diet culture and the idealization of thinness.
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