HOW EATING DISORDERS WORK

Eating Disorders serve as coping tools for more serious and painful underlying issues. An individual struggling with an eating disorder may use it to to cope with life in a variety of different ways.

Below are some ways that eating disorders "work":

• Emotional comfort or soothing
• Numbing of painful emotions
• Distraction from life stressors
• A cry for help.
• Release of anger
• Self-Punishment
• Purifying the body.
• Creating small or large body for safety.
• Avoidance of intimacy.