Why Are Existential Questions a Focal Point of Eating Disorder Recovery

The last post explains some of the systemic and societal causes for the continued high number of people with eating disorders. This post will address how the larger issues in our culture affect the course of eating disorder recovery.

Although these illnesses are mental disorders which lead to obsessive thoughts about food and weight combined with disordered patterns of eating, the underlying causes of eating disorders are typically one of four things: social pressures for thinness, a reaction to trauma, a manifestation of medical illness or the search for meaning in life.

The last cause is almost always present even when one of the first three on the list exist as well.

Rarely does an illness represent the almost universal mental struggle of a culture. Existential angst is the lifeblood of modern anxiety and pervasive for people with eating disorders. Any successful eating disorder recovery thus encompasses a significant existential component. Therapy returns again and again to the meaning one finds in daily life, the root of what makes life valuable and the importance of connection, relationships and love.

Recovery without a period of time focused on the meaning of life and relationships rarely holds.

Treatment of mental illness has a typical protocol. The first step is an assessment of emotional and psychological symptoms followed by diagnosis. The second step is a plan for treatment with medications and specific types of therapy. The ongoing treatment afterwards centers on stabilization and resumption of daily life.

Treatment of eating disorders follows the first two steps and then often diverges. Since eating disorder thoughts are so connected with identity, recovery needs to lead to the creation of a new identity separate from the illness which involves more than just work, hobbies or even relationships. This step is existential, a dive into what makes life matter, how life can be valuable and how each of us feels comfortable enough to take on each and every day.

I can’t ever explain to people where recovery might take them. First, they won’t ever believe it early in recovery. Second, they are so far from identity at the start and only want relief and progress. Third, and most important, identity feels foreign early in treatment.

The process of getting better itself allows room for to grow into oneself and even begin to exist separate from the eating disorder. The beauty of transitioning from being so lost to an existential birth makes recovery seem miraculous.

The demands of learning about oneself in such a profound way lead to personal growth rarely present in modern life. Ironically, the pain of an eating disorder results in the growth of a person more able to engage with the world than most of us. Although i don’t wish this pain on anyone, the possibility of a full life afterwards is worth it.