Eating disorders are often a desperate escape from deeper psychological problems. They often try to replace suppressed emotions and needs and thus create a positive feeling for a short time. This is comparable to a drug addiction – someone takes a drug, experiences a pleasant feeling, but this wears off with the effect of the drug, so the drug is taken again,, but over time the body gets used to the drug (habituation), which lead to a increased use of the drug in order to produce a similarly pleasant effect. Does that sound familiar to you? “Two more pounds, then I’ll stop”, “if I only ate xyz calories yesterday, I can eat even less today” – Then I invite your to discover the needs that are behind your eating disorder. Understand eating disorders can be important for your healing journey.
Health is notthe absens of psychological problems and illnesses, but rather that people can deal with and live with it as well as possible.
Eating disorders do not have that ONE cause. There are always several factors that play into the development and maintenance of eating disorders. Because not everyone who is exposed to a certain event (e.g. separation of parents) automatically develops an eating disorder. Finding out the causes is usually important, however, in order to enable lasting healing. Because “eating normal” is not enough.
"If you feel guilty about eating when you're hungry, it's like your lungs need oxygen. We were literally taught to be ashamed or to have our basic human needs met. Refuse to feel the shame. you can eat "
From a psychological perspective, needs are defined as a state of deprivation or an experience of deprivation that is associated with a desire to ease that deprivation. Needs are therefore wishes to compensate for an actual or subjectively perceived deficiency. A simple example is water: the need to drink something is triggered by a dry mouth. We want to drink so that our mouth no longer feels dry and our water balance is replenished. Needs are also often seen as what drives us to action – so they have a motivating character.
First of all, I would like to invite you to introduce needs as containers. Needs are met when the container is full. But their level can fluctuate over the course of the day or throughout life, whereupon we resort to more or less effective strategies to replenish these needs. So the first thing to do now is to take a look at how full your individual containers of need are and which need more attention.
The most well-known model of needs is probably Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He presented needs in a five-level hierarchical pyramid. The first four levels are deficit needs (physiological, security, social, and individual needs), while the top level (self-actualisation) of the needs pyramid is viewed as growth needs. The needs at the bottom of the hierarchy of needs must be met before higher-order needs can affect behaviour.
And? – how full are your container on each level? You don’t have to be quite as rigorous about the model as Maslow. You may find that your social needs are adequately met, but you yearn for greater health, security, and order.
Next time, instead of just following your eating disorder thoughts and believing what your eating disorder tells you, stop for a moment and ask yourself:
We can focus on defense, safety, or fear. On the other hand, there is the option of growth. Choose growth over fear twelve times a day means twelve times a day toward self-actualization
There are some symptoms and side effects that come with recovery that aren’t talked about enough – because they’re kind of uncomfortable. And one of those symptoms is water retention. Edema in recovery is the norm rather than the exception, and it doesn’t necessarily make weight gain any easier to
From anorexia to binge eating – a fear that accompanies many sufferers during the journey to recovery. What is the difference between extreme hunger and binge eating? Today we want to focus on exactly this topic. I hope this takes some of the fear out of developing binge eating, but
Extreme hunger can be found as very upsetting and disturbing in eating disorder recovery. But it actually is just a natural response to a period of famine. It means your body is healing – which is why I prefer to talk about a healing hunger. Learn, what it feels like, where it comes from and how to heal it.
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