Stress and Eating Disorders
Eating disorders exist for a reason. At one point in time, they helped someone adapt or survive but eventually, it gets to the point where the eating disorder is running the show, and it’s no longer functional. Part of what can help me as a therapist understand the origins of an eating disorder is what we call someone’s “window of tolerance,” which is basically a fancy way of explaining when someone is able to deal with life’s stressors effectively, when they can’t, and what that looks like.
When someone is within their window of tolerance, they’re happy, present, and connected in their everyday lives. When they encounter something stressful, that happiness may temporarily disappear but they are able to manage their stress and emotions effectively so that they return to a place of contentment. When someone leaves their window of tolerance consistently, we start to see a range of mental health issues, as the nervous system kicks into high gear.
Hyperarousal: This is when the sympathetic nervous system - the fight or flight system - ramps up. People in this state feel anxious, panicky, angry, hyper vigilant, irritable, and distracted. Physiologically, their heart races, they feel restless, have difficulty concentrating, overall feeling “amped up.” If you were running from a bear, you would want the sympathetic nervous system to kick in - it would tell you that you’re in danger and need to flee or fight the bear in order to stay safe. For some people, their past experiences lead to an overactive fight-or-flight response, which means situations that are not actually dangerous are triggering this response. From an eating disorder perspective, restriction may help them feel more in control of their body or might even align with the lack of hunger they feel due to the sympathetic nervous system cutting off those cues. If you’re running from a bear, you don’t need to figure out lunch, right? You need to prioritize safety.
Hypoarousal: This is when the parasympathetic nervous system - rest and digest - kicks in. Its purpose is to regulate the body after the sympathetic nervous system does its job. If you were running from a bear, you’d want your parasympathetic nervous system to activate to slow your heart rate and restart digestion. When this kicks in due to a trauma response, people feel dissociative, depressed, lethargic and may experience a low heart rate and sluggishness. From an eating disorder perspective, something like a binge/purge cycle may feel like a way to “wake up” the system and feel more connected to their bodies.
I’ve seen eating disorder behaviors be utilized in both states - it’s not necessarily as black-and-white as hyperarousal = restriction, hypoarousal = binge/purge. In both situations, however, food and exercise feels like a way to get back to “normal,” back in that window of tolerance. There may be occasions where this actually works, but more often than not, it leaves a whole lot of guilt and shame in its wake, making it far less effective and creating even more problems. If you’re feeling like food and exercise is helping you regulate your body, talk to a trauma-informed therapist (like me!) to learn more about why this is happening and what you can do instead. I personally use EMDR to help reprocess improperly stored memories that are fueling the fight-flight-freeze response, but you can also utilize parts work (or IFS), somatic experiencing (SE), or Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) to make that change happen!
Reach out and schedule a consult call today if you think you could benefit from this kind of work!
