“There’re people starving in China!”
“ My mother’s answer to everything- black eyes, bad grades, fights with friends, broken engagements- is always the same: ‘Don’t worry about it honey.  Have a cookie.’ ”
Marci, Age 22, Manager

Some of  us find ourselves in an intimate relationship that allows us to be comforted without being vulnerable, to take without giving, and to feel intimate without taking the risk of being abandoned.  This relationship is with food.

What is the connection between growing up in a home brimming with excessive love, attention, protection, and high parental expectations, and the initial development of an obsession with food, weight, and dieting?  It’s widely accepted that abnormal patterns of food consumption are expressions of underlying problems.  Once physical causes have been ruled out, it’s a sign that our psychological needs aren’t being met.  Food is being used to meet our emotional needs and to accomplish what we can’t accomplish in healthier, more direct ways.

Food can seem like an elixir

Food can seem like an elixir to children who were loved too much, whose childhood experience resulted in a host of inner conflicts they have yet to solve.  Such children can use food in an attempt to accomplish the following:

• To avoid feelings
• To avoid conflict
• To relieve anxiety caused by the high expectations of parents
• To wrest control away from controlling parents, when active resistance is too threatening
• To get into the family spotlight
• To nurture oneself
• To fend off intimacy
• To punish oneself in response to guilt
• To quiet restless dissatisfaction
• To rebel against looking good
• To avoid maturity

But, why do we turn to food?

Why not alcohol or drugs or some other obsession equally “useful” for this purpose?  There’s a very good reason for this.  Food, and to a certain extent obsessions with food, are socially acceptable.  Our entire culture appears obsessed with dieting and weight at times.

Children who are overparented and schooled in “looking good” are keen observers of what’s acceptable to others.  They find a lot of company in other people equally obsessed with their bodies, their diets, and theirweight, and feel safety in numbers.

Unfortunately, a predisposition to using food to fulfill emotional needs can lead to the development of full-blown eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa.

Bulimia, Anorexia and Compulsive Overeating

Bulimia

Bulimia is an eating disorder characterized by rapid consumption of large amounts of food or "binges." During a binge, the person often has fears of not being able to stop eating voluntarily. Self-critical thoughts and depression generally follow. Because this type of compulsive eating results in weight gains, the person suffering from the disorder sometimes attempts to prevent gaining weight by vomiting afterward or by abusing laxatives and diuretics.

Anorexia

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by self-starvation. It is estimated that between 90 and 95 percent of anorexics are females. People suffering from this disorder control their weight through rigidly limiting caloric intake and sometimes through excessive exercise. Symptoms of the disorder sometimes overlap with the symptoms of bulimia, as the victim may also attempt to prevent weight gain through self-induced vomiting or the abuse of laxatives and diuretics. Terrified of being obese, anorexics see themselves fat no matter how much they weigh.

Compulsive overeating

Compulsive overeating while not technically classified by medical experts as an eating disorder, nonetheless plagues many children who were loved too much. The compulsive overeater is obsessed with thoughts of food, dieting and weight. Eating may be continuous, and food is so rapidly consumed - almost inhaled - that the result is often obesity. Life is a roller coaster of overeating, vowing to diet, feeling anxious, moody, and deprived, and "blowing the diet." The cycle is repeated, making the compulsive overeater feel guilty and hopelessly out of control.

Eating disorders are family illnesses

Our family is the setting in which we become a separate self. When a family member develops an eating disorder, it’s a cue that something is wrong within the family, not just the individual, although the person that develops the disorder may be the only one showing the stress outwardly.

In families characterized by obsessive love, closeness, and protection, this is especially hard to see. It’s important to parents who love too much that the family presents a united, harmonious appearance to the rest of the world. Conflict, distance between the family members, and other problems are jammed under the layers of denial. On the surface, everything looks fine, except for the fact that the child has developed an obsession with food that is controlling his or her life.

Not everyone who uses food to fill unmet needs becomes "addicted" or develops bulimia or anorexia. However if we need comfort, love, or respite from anxiety, and we repeatedly turn to food for relief, we set the stage for an unhealthy dependence that can be turned into a full scale eating disorder. Food works. It will comfort us - but only for a sort time. But until we can find healthier ways of meeting our needs, we will be hard put to give it up and recover.

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