Eating disorder therapists have long recognized the correlation between female clients who were sexually or physically abused having problems with food. I suspect there might be a correlation for men and even one for emotional abuse as well. Science is only beginning to understand the magnitude of stressing our nervous systems early on. “Abused Girls May Binge on Food as Adults” by Salynn Boyles (MedPage Today, 5/30/13) talks about this correlation and draws from a study in the journal Obesity entitled, “Abuse victimization in children or adolescence and risk of food addiction in adult women” (Mason, SM, et al, 2013, DOI:10.1002/oby.20500). Its conclusion: “Women who experience both sexual and physical abuse during childhood had a more than twofold increased risk for food addiction in adulthood. The analysis of data on 57,321 women enrolled in Nurses Health Study II (NHSII) revealed that severe physical and sexual abuse were each associated with a...

Reading an article about vets finding a way out of post-war depression, anxiety, and PTSD, I got to thinking about disregulated eaters’ fanatic absorption in food and weight obsessions and how they would benefit from finding a greater purpose in order to be done with that obsession. You don’t want your tombstone to read, “Spent a lifetime struggling to eat ‘normally’ and lose weight,” do you? Believe me, I understand the pain of compulsive eating and being or feeling overweight. But it cannot remain the be all and end all of life as some of you have made it. Although I encourage you to read my books and blogs and join my Food and Feelings message board, I’d rather see you out there doing things you’re passionate about which gives you a sense of satisfaction, belonging, and a focus greater than yourselves. There’s something highly unhealthy and excessively self-absorbing about spending...

It’s not unusual for people with eating difficulties to have problems with self-care in other areas as well—drugs, alcohol, hurtful/damaging relationships, or simply treating yourself poorly. It’s common for folks in their teens, 20s and 30s to struggle with issues of self-worth and self-care due to rebellion against family or culture or from plain ignorance and poor role modeling. In fact, it’s often a rite of passage into adulthood; improved judgment comes with experience and maturity. What of those of you who continue to harm yourself into your 40s, 50s and beyond—drinking, drugging, eating, smoking and treating your bodies as if they were disposable? In these decades, you’re no longer struggling to form an identify. Yours is solidified, but your values and actions regarding self-care haven’t evolved from your early years. You may climb a career ladder as high as you can go, but you probably never feel deserving of your...

When you read books like mine and other authors trying to help you become a “normal” eater, do you wonder if everyone can become one or just some people? Ever think about whether you’re spinning your wheels with this intuitive eating stuff or how long you should try it before giving up? Based on posts I read on eating message boards and what clients and students say, my guess is that these are red hot questions for you. I’d like to tell you that I have definitive answers, but I don’t. Here’s what I do know. Biology plays a huge part—some 50-70%—in determining your weight. Genetic loading inclines you toward fat or thin. A traumatic childhood or stressful life may predispose you to food regulation problems or eating disorders. Depression and anxiety impact metabolism on a biochemical level and also may exacerbate appetite problems. Your eating habits begin in the womb...

During a telephone therapy session, a client expressed frustration about what to do about his binges. He knew he needed to do something to stop them, but was at a loss regarding exactly what was needed. My response took him back to what we often require in childhood to thwart unwanted and wanton impulses: to be contained and comforted. We really do need both; either one is not quite enough. The goal of containing an impulse is to not let it move from thought or intention into out-in-the-real-world behavior. When driving, I might want to do something nasty to the driver of a car that has just cut me off, but I refrain. I contain or hold back the impulse because I know it is not in my best interest to convert my wish into action for good reasons. We learn containment in childhood when adults do it for us—they yank...

Those of you who have suffered trauma in childhood may find yourself having problems regulating your food intake. Psychology used to lump together all trauma, but now distinguishes between what is called Big T trauma and Small t trauma. The former includes rape, sexual/physical abuse and continual/excessive emotional abuse, severe neglect, living through war, and major catastrophe striking at a young age. Being badly injured in childhood, losing your family, or having to abandon your home through abrupt dislocation are all examples of Big T trauma. They are the stories that make headlines. However, Small t trauma can affect you as strongly as (maybe more than) Big T trauma precisely because you probably underestimate its impact. Examples of Small t trauma include frequently living in fear, suffering low level but continual emotional abuse, growing up in a home in which there is drug and/or alcohol abuse or other kinds of destructive...

It came as no surprise to me to run across an article entitled “Constant family arguing can lead to childhood obesity” by Herb Scribner (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 4/24/15). I had that kind of experience and know that it had a huge effect on my eating, especially when the arguing happened at the dinner table. Although I never became obese, I had eating problems and weight concerns from my teens through my thirties. A study published in Preventive Medicine concludes that “The effects of too many family arguments can have a lasting impact on a person’s health” and “that constant family conflict can lead a child toward obesity.” Dr. Daphne Hernandez cites the main causes of stress in families as: “arguments, what happens after a family member gets divorced, remarried or incarcerated, financial stresses, and poor maternal health.” The study conclusion is shocking: “girls from families who had constant arguments—independent of the...

Recently I attended a seminar on Domestic Violence and have been thinking about its connection to eating problems. I suspect that a number of you may be victims of domestic violence and use food to turn negative feelings against yourself rather than toward your abuser, causing you to feel even worse about yourself. Domestic violence includes chronic anger, blaming, arguing, name calling, threatening violence and other verbal abuse as well as battering and sexual coercion (even between spouses). It is found in every socioeconomic class, race, and age and its victims are characterized by low self-esteem, dependence on a partner for self-worth or believing a partner is dependent on them, and isolation due to few or no emotional or social supports. Victims may suffer from depression or substance abuse and typically deny, minimize, rationalize, and/or defend a partner’s abusive behavior, accept blame and responsibility for it, fear and walk on eggshells...

We can’t help, at times, getting stuck in “the past” and sometimes end up abusing food because of it—a new friend fails to invite you to a birthday bash and you feel slighted, a co-worker claims credit for a job you busted a gut doing and you lose it, or your child screams she hates you after a time out and you burst into tears. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again!) that the bulk of our hurt is rooted in the past. Let’s look at the examples above. First, the birthday bash. If your reaction was overwhelming hurt that you weren’t invited, you may have had too many experiences in childhood—in your family, school or neighborhood—in which you felt left out and excluded. Maybe you often felt as if you were on the outside looking in. So, naturally, when you’re not included now, you feel stung....

For both men and women, being sexually harassed or abused can take a toll on your psyche and trigger emotional eating as a way to relieve stress or to numb feelings. Your eating problems may be connected to violations caused by sexual harassment or abuse and eating is how you’ve been trying to cope with your feelings about it. “Harassment can include ‘sexual harassment’ or unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature…it can include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. For example, it is illegal to harass a woman by making offensive comments about women in general…Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such...

To re-cover means literally to go back over developmental ground that is lost to an eating disorder, especially if yours began in adolescence or young adulthood. In the normal course of maturing through your teens and early 20s, your work is to develop internal resources and practice effective interpersonal skills to be more independent, take risks, rebound from mistakes and failures, think for yourself, and make meaning of your life. Through dysfunctional eating, however, your emotional and social growth gets stunted as you substitute focusing on food for feeling and experiencing life. If you developed an eating problem in childhood, adolescence or early adulthood, you’ll need to go back and acquire the life skills you missed the first time around. Don’t feel badly—no one reaches adulthood fully formed emotionally or socially. Everyone has to go back and re-cover what they missed. The point is to identify the gaps and not hesitate...

Everyone has a story, even if they don’t realize they’re living it out. It’s our view of our history—the reasons we are as we are and why we cannot be who we want to be. A story may be that you’re the exceptional one in your family, the overachiever, the one who made it and must remain perfect so that others can enjoy your success. Or that you’re the black sheep, the one left behind when everyone else went on to fame and fortune. Or that you’re the rebel flaunting convention, the idealist tilting at windmills, the drummer marching to her own beat. When eating goes awry, we look to our stories to understand how we entered the dysfunctional food arena in the hopes of finding an exit. Sometimes the process helps us find out way out, but often, instead, we become invested in the telling of the tale as the...

When we are unhappy in a romantic relationship and lack a blueprint for what constitutes functionality, we may wish for improvement but not know how to achieve it and, in frustration, turn misguidedly to food. Most of us know what physical and sexual abuse are and are clear that we need to put a stop to them, but we’re less clear about what makes for or how to handle emotional abuse or neglect. Hence, it continues and we continue to rely on food for comfort, consolation, and distraction. Lots of folks, mostly women, who are victims of emotional abuse or neglect, lay low, hoping it will end on its own. Let’s call this Phase 1. They walk on eggshells and try to fly under their partner’s radar, all too well aware of how they feel when their partner flagrantly rejects, belittles, shames, ignores, yells or curses at them, but unsure of...

What makes recovery more or less likely? Is it true that folks with disregulated eating who’ve had a really rough childhood have more problems recovering than those with a less difficult childhood? My answer to this question is both yes and no. On the one hand, if you’ve suffered trauma, abuse or neglect in life, especially growing up, you are not starting your recovery from the same place as others who did not have such maltreatment. Trauma, abuse or neglect can change your brain chemistry by putting you in a state of chronic alert and messing with your cortisol and neurotransmitter responses. This can lead to chronic anxiety or depression, difficulty self-soothing and regulating affect, and interpersonal problems relating to trust, dependence, vulnerability, setting boundaries, abuse, and intimacy. There are numerous studies showing a correlation between early abuse and eating disorders. So if you’ve had a hard childhood, encountered later trauma,...

We may assume that only clear cut sexual abuse in childhood can cause problems with sexuality and intimacy in adulthood. Although there’s a strong correlation (not a cause and effect) between childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders, this is not the whole story. Abuse, neglect, or any kind of mistreatment—overt or covert—all fall on a continuum and can shape your attitude and influence your behavior as an adult. Obviously, sexual abuse would have a strong impact on your view of your body, but what of other behaviors which may not fall strictly into the “abuse” category? What if your parents couldn’t keep their hands off each other in front of you—not just a quick kiss, hugs, or hand-holding, but touching each other inappropriately? What if a parent regularly got drunk and made sexual advances towards neighbors or relatives with you watching? What if you saw your parent making strangers uncomfortable by...

It’s heartening to see my perceptions from 30 years of working with troubled eaters validated once in a while. This is the case with a recent article in Psychotherapy Networker entitled “As the Twig Is Bent: Understanding the health implications of early life trauma” by Mary Sykes Wylie. The article discusses the correlation between early trauma and health issues, including some related to obesity. The following conclusions come from research done by Vincent Felitti, founder of Kaiser Permanente’s Department of Preventive Medicine. “In a study of 286 obese people in the program…Felitti discovered that half had been sexually abused as children—more than 50% higher than the normal rate reported by women and 300% higher than the rate reported by men. In fact, for these people, overeating and obesity weren’t the central problems, but attempted solutions.” This research was followed by a joint study between Kaiser Permanent and the Centers for Disease...

As we learn more about the workings of the brain, it’s evident that childhood trauma often plays a crucial role in the development of lifelong emotional—and emotional management—problems. They manifest themselves not only through eating, mood, and anxiety disorders, but in addictions and unhealthy relationships. The greater your understanding of how trauma affects your sense of self, the better your chance of making changes in adulthood to overcome early dysfunctional influences. In Children of Trauma: Rediscovering Your Discarded Self, author Jane Middleton-Moz makes a powerful point: “Children live out what they see reflected in their parents’ eyes. If what is reflected is the disdain and unacceptability of the developing self, that self will be discarded in order to meet the image in the reflective mirror of the world.” This means that if your parents regularly mistreated you, you may have come to believe that there was something intrinsically wrong with you...

When people come to me for therapy, it’s most often about eating and weight problems (although I treat the gamut of mental health and relational issues). Clients generally recognize that their poor relationship with food is rooted in childhood dysfunction, but may not know what to do with that information. In fact, understanding the dysfunctional events in one’s history and connecting to the emotions they evoke are two different animals. Clients frequently become stuck because they have difficulty facing the past or doing whatever is needed to heal from it. Don’t let that be you. If specific people—Mom, Dad, a sibling, boss, neighbor—or certain types of people—authority figures, competitors, manipulators, victims—continue to trigger your abuse of food, it’s time to turn back the clock and discover why you’re locked into such intense reactions. That means exploring your early emotional relationship with parents and other family members. Does anyone in the present...

It’s not uncommon for people who have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse at the hands of their parents or other primary caretakers, to allow themselves to be abused in adult relationships. Although the idea appears to be paradoxical—wouldn’t abuse survivors go out of their way to be around people who are not abusive?—that is not how things often work out. Understanding why you’re drawn to or surround yourself with abusive people will help you unhook from them and from abusing yourself with food. When parents who are supposed to be loving are abusive or, alternately, are abusive and loving, a paradigm of “love wedded to abuse” is established. In a child’s mind, the two go hand in hand: love equals abuse or, at the least, is accompanied by it. This association occurs whether the abuse is constant or intermittent. The experience cuts deeply into a child’s psyche and forms the...

Over the years, I’ve treated many individuals (mostly women) in emotionally abusive relationships, a major cause of food abuse, and have identified three stages of abusee response. Emotional abuse is everything from constantly or intermittently being humiliated, threatened, yelled or cursed at, ignored, shamed, put down or invalidated. Specific behaviors include the abuser making fun of you, eye-rolling when you speak, walking away when you’re talking, telling you that what you think or feel is stupid or untrue, belittling you, or trying to control you through words, tone, or body language. In Stage One, abused individuals are hopeful, wishful and walk on eggshells. They try to please the abuser and truly believe that if they don’t upset him or her, all will be well, misunderstanding that the problem of abuse resides in the other person, not themselves. They fear standing up to the abuser, so they remain passive, ignoring bad behavior...