The Negative Thoughts of an Eating Disorder

One almost universal part of an eating disorder is the internal monologue both around food and negative thoughts about oneself. The intrusive thoughts about how to eat and how to look are relentless and exhausting. Even more insidious and destructive are the negative thoughts about oneself.

These thoughts typically are categorical negative statements about who the person is. They can vary from you’re fat to you’re ugly or stupid or useless or a terrible person. The list goes on, but these thoughts loudly reiterate that, in one way or another, they are a bad person.

Even if the person with an eating disorder tries to counter these thoughts, the repetitive, forceful nature of the thoughts often triumphs.

The origin of these thoughts often precedes the eating disorder itself whether based on prior traumatic experiences, lack of attention to personal and emotional growth or external negative reinforcement through one’s life events. The eating disorder behaviors both provide momentary relief from the negative thoughts and, afterward, reinforcement for the deep sense of shame of being a bad person.

Being trapped in an eating disorder for years solidifies a binary way of seeing oneself, either good or bad, but mostly bad. The eating disorder thoughts provide a simple, black and white framework to understand and assess one’s identity. Since these thoughts dominate the internal mind of someone with an eating disorder, there isn’t much mental space to learn a more nuanced way of understanding who they are.

Accordingly, eating disorder recovery involves a profound exploration of one’s understanding of identity. As the old negative thoughts are stripped away, people first often experience a void in their mind. Gradually, recovery can focus on how to better understand who they are as a person, what they think and feel and how they want to live.

It is imperative that the therapist have an open, nonjudgmental stance to help explore this growing identity and understand how to nurture a caring, curious way to learn about oneself.

At first, this part of recovery can be overwhelming if not frightening. Over time, the idea of learning about who you are begins to be exciting and revelatory that life can feel so different and new.