Please Stop Saying Eating Disorders are about Control

The word control is used so often as a shorthand to describe the fundamental basis for eating disorders. The most obvious implication of this word is that an eating disorder imposes control on an unpredictable and confusing world. However, using this word blithely ignores some central truths about eating disorders and also tacitly condones them as reasonable and useful. Thus, the idea of control is frankly dangerous for those in recovery.

First, the idea that we can control our lives or our worlds is inherently absurd. Life is unpredictable and complicated. The daily events of our days may appear to be connected with our choices, but so much of what we experience is a reaction to the world around us, almost all of which happens irrespective of how we live. Certainly the pandemic makes this reality very clear.

Second, eating disorders don’t lead to increased control of our daily lives. This sentence reveals a deep misunderstanding of the nature of an eating disorder. When an eating disorder is unchecked, it dominates a person’s life. Frequently, people describe feeling dragged from one experience to another by the power of the eating disorder without any sense of agency at all. In fact, eating disorders drain our identity and will, all for the sake of food and weight. Any ability we have to influence our lives disappears when an eating disorder is powerful in a person’s life.

Third, the word control is used to replace the desire for for certainty. If a person listens exclusively to the eating disorder thoughts, life is predictable. The days are painful and monotonous but not a surprise. The eating disorder dominates each day, dictates all decisions that need to be made and creates a plan for how to live each day that is both very constrained and very familiar each day. Life is unchanged and limited, and also very predictable. This is not control but psychological torture.

The last reason the word control is problematic is that it conveys a sense of mastery about daily life. Control implies a sense of accomplishment around the eating disorder when life with this illness actually feels like misery and failure.

Vocabulary choice to describe mental illness is very important. Choosing a word with different connotations dangerously glorifies an illness that ruins peoples lives. Control makes an eating disorder seem helpful in a complex world. In fact, an eating disorder takes away all agency and only causes unhappiness. Let’s not use the glorification of how we manage food as a way to only cause more illness.