5 psychological causes of eating disorders

An eating disorder is often an unconscious coping strategy for dealing with deeper psychological pain. An intense focus on food and body image can offer distraction and numbing from difficult feelings. It can bring a sense of control when life feels wildly chaotic and overwhelming. It can offer a glimmer of self-worth and achievement, when kilos are lost in weight, or macros are meticulously calculated. It can feel like something ‘good’ when other life areas are challenging.

No one sets out to fall into the restrictive prison of food and body obsession. A honeymoon period in the early days when food control felt honourable and right. Quickly, this unravels, and it is a slippery slope to food preoccupation and growing body dissatisfaction, as it’s impossible to maintain and sustain the eating disorder rules. Your world becomes rigid and disordered behaviours insidiously creep in and destructively infiltrate all life areas.

So, what causes an eating disorder? It is a truly complex question that is tricky to unravel. Certainly, some genetic factors might be at play. If you are neurodivergent, have type 1 diabetes, are coeliac or suffered from ARFID as a child (not limited to these conditions), you may be vulnerable to disordered eating patterns, as you’ve had to focus on food more than the average human in the population. 

Here are five of the common psychological contributing factors that I see in the therapy room:

1. Low self-worth

If you didn’t feel good enough and worthy from a young age, you are vulnerable to poor body image and dieting, as our toxic culture tells you that meeting idealised beauty standards, is a way to feel better. It can feel like the solution to acceptance and better self-esteem is directly correlated with your body shape and size.

Not feeling good enough can stem from your family of origin. It might also be impacted by school experiences, bullying or friendship issues. You may have lost a grandparent or significant person you deeply cared about in your early years. Many things contribute to how you feel about yourself deep down.

2. Diet talk at home

If you had family members who were always dieting or practising extreme wellness practices, then you could be highly sensitive to interpreting food through this lens and repeating these messages yourself.

If people in your family commented about weight and shape, with comparisons with siblings e.g. ‘The pretty one’, or ‘The tall, lanky one’, etc, you may have felt labelled or boxed in through the projections of the adults around you.

3. Experiencing a significant loss

If you lost a grandparent or favourite pet, this can be deeply traumatic for a child. You may not have had the support or skills to process this grief. You tried to push it down or protect those around you, from your intense feelings and you used food to cope.

4. Meeting the expectations of others

You may be prone to people-pleasing tendencies, as it only felt safe in your family or friendship group, to show up in a certain way. You may have twisted yourself to fit in, then abandoned and lost yourself in the process. Food and body focus became a safe identity and life raft to cling to in difficult circumstances. 

5. Avoidance of feelings

Maybe you experienced a devastating relationship breakdown, a painful loss or guilt over something you felt you had done wrong. The feelings may have felt overwhelming, and you may not have had the emotional support to help you. The food and body focus offered relief and distraction, holding you safe in troubled waters.

These causes are just a small glimpse into some of the psychological coping underneath an eating disorder. This is just a summary, and someone’s individual experience may be very different and multiple factors can be at play.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating, this might be the time to seek out further support through counselling.