Is Fighting an Eating Disorder like Fighting Cancer?

I have heard many people, patients and colleagues, ask why it is so easy for people to be compassionate when someone has cancer and so hard to do so when someone has an eating disorder. This comparison exposes one key hurdle in recovery.

Cancer is seen as an invasive illness, one that involves harmful cells that appear in someone’s body and puts their life at risk. We all potentially can be diagnosed with cancer and have to acknowledge this risk. There is no aspect of blame but simply the concept of fighting to live.

What makes it easy to have compassion is the apparently random nature of the illness and the universal fear of the diagnosis.

Ironically, we all can develop an eating disorder as well. If anyone is subjected to chronic starvation, they will develop disordered eating and that can lead to any type of eating disordered symptom. The incidence of eating disorders has skyrocketed due to socially acceptable starvation by sanctioned dieting. Although the collective incentive for dieting may be vanity, the reality is that individuals fall into these illnesses almost always by chance.

And once sick, people struggle enormously to fight a monstrous illness that takes over one’s mind and thoughts. Granted, it’s much harder to understand the nature of mental illness than the clear physical existence of cancer. When it comes down to the personal struggle, the fight for one’s life with what feels like an invading force, either a tumor or a strong internal voice, deserves as much compassion either way.

Clinicians, families and friends need to conceive of an eating disorder not only as an illness but of an invasive psychological process that co-opts normal brain function. Compassion makes much more sense in the context of not being to think clearly and act accordingly around a daily necessity like food. It makes the basics of each day extremely challenging. It really is a fight for one’s life.