What Causes Eating Disorders?

Eating disorders are complex obsessions and compulsions that involve the mind, body, emotions, and interpersonal, social and spiritual aspects of ones life. There is no one etiology or pathway of developing an eating disorder. No one person develops an eating disorder in the same manner. The age of the person, the duration of the eating disorder, the type and severity of the eating disorder have to be taken into account. There are, however, a number of common characteristics that are involved in developing an eating disorder.

Simple Weight Control

• Most clients describe the beginning of their eating disorder as simply trying to control weight, but at some point the weight control becomes a mental preoccupation
• Most clients do not have a clear memory when this change occurred

Psychological Factors

• The relationship between the pattern of eating and stress and anxiety relief are unmistakable
• When the eating disorder becomes a vehicle for reducing stress and anxiety, it becomes more than a weight control issue
• When the eating disorder is used to release anxiety, it begins to create fears related to food or types of foods
• Anxiety leads to the development of obsessive thought patterns related to calories and foods and their nutritional content
• Fear of gaining weight intensifies and the individual interprets their relationship to food as simply a weight control issue

Emotional Factors

• Many emotions become expressed through the eating disorder, especially uncomfortable emotions like anger, loneliness, feelings of inadequacy, fear, guilt and shame
• When the eating disorder is a vehicle for managing these emotions, it perpetuates and intensifies these same emotions

Family Factors

• A disproportional high number of client grew up in and chemically dependent or eating disordered family
• Patterns of interacting inhibited the fulfillment of emotional needs
• The individual places the blame for the lack of need fulfillment on self
• History of abuse, emotional, mental, physical or sexual is significantly high

Interpersonal and Social Factors

• Isolation and secrecy become a pattern of living
• The isolation and secrecy prevent the person from feeling apart of or included in interpersonal and social relationships
• Fear of intimacy and closeness develops
• Relationships remain superficial or one sided, and the individual never feels connected

Cultural Factors

• Cultural issues glorifying “thinness” and the “perfect body” have been written about extensively
• The Cultural issues are present, but are over emphasized as a cause

Physiological Factors

• The body develops a new homeostasis to the erratic eating pattern
• The body reacts adversely to attempts to normalize eating