Eating disorders as an emotional refuge

Why does a love-hate relationship with food develop? How can a whirlwind of painful emotions, difficult to name, lead to a disastrous relationship with food, with the body, and with oneself?

This is what happens to emotions in cases of anorexia and bulimia nervosa.

From a very early age, we learn to identify what brings us pleasure and what doesn't. We learn to regulate these emotional states thanks to the presence of our caregivers. Babies often feel uncomfortable and cry, while when they receive gratification, they smile and play. Over time, they become increasingly self-sufficient in meeting their physical and emotional needs, understanding what they can do to soothe unpleasant states and asking for help if necessary. Food plays a fundamental role in this entire process because it is the primary regulator of unpleasant states. From the beginning, it satisfies and calms us, soothes and nourishes us.

Unpleasant emotions, like any other psychological process, become increasingly complex as we grow. Fear, anger, anxiety, and sadness emerge. These emotions help us to construct and understand the world, as well as adapt to it effectively. Some emotions can act as alarm mechanisms, warning us of potential dangers or external threats. When these emotions are experienced as threatening, dangerous, terrible, overwhelming, or intolerable, we develop ways to flee from them , avoid them, and find refuge. This escape mechanism, which is unique to each person and could be an ally for survival, becomes an escape route from the very emotions that are part of us: it's as if we want to run away from ourselves.

In other words, if an emotion can be that which signals an external danger but is experienced as a danger in itself, this emotion loses its identifying function and efforts are directed towards ceasing to feel that emotion and not towards improving the context in which it takes place.

When we don't know how or are unable to cope with these unpleasant emotional states, the other strategies humans have for maintaining emotional balance cease to be effective. Instead of confronting an external danger, we seek strategies to cope with an internal negative emotional state. Instead of striving to put out the fire, our efforts are directed toward turning off the alarm.

A kind of battlefield is established between the person and their emotions in which one either fights or seeks an emotional trench .

In the case of eating disorders, food is repeatedly used as a refuge, a synonym for protection and well-being . Symbolically, it can be thought about constantly to avoid feeling or thinking about everything that is causing distress, while waiting for it all to pass, for tranquility and calm to return, and for the whirlwind of dark emotions to disappear.

The root of eating disorders

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Love-hate relationship with food

If food loses its self-soothing effect and becomes ineffective in calming these aversive emotional states, an ambivalent relationship with food can develop: it is constantly sought out while simultaneously being rejected and expelled. As in the ambivalence of an interpersonal relationship, the pattern of "I can't live with you, I can't live without you" would be repeated.

Food ceases to be just food and becomes a kind of love-hate relationship that occupies the center of one's thoughts.

How is it possible to leave this toxic relationship when we're talking about something we depend on for survival? The dependence in this case is taken to the extreme: "I need you to (sur)vive." The ambivalence becomes the paradox of hating something you need, and the target of that hatred can be directed outward or inward.

This tangle of emotions causes the problem to lose its rational dimension: it cannot be resolved by appealing solely to logic. To repair this relationship with food, it's necessary to step out of the trenches and connect with those emotions that were so frightening, perhaps to stop fighting and practice self-care, self-compassion, and self-respect. So that food can once again be simply food, an object that nourishes us and a means of connecting with ourselves and others.