What Are Eating Disorders?

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Disordered eating can feel like a lifeline, offering temporary safety from stress or overwhelming emotions.

Recovery is a gradual journey of one small step at a time, building skills to navigate life.

Eating may feel terrifying due to fear of weight gain or sensory sensitivities requiring support to face it.

Compassionate encouragement helps those in recovery confront anxiety and take steps toward nourishment.

It can be helpful for those caring for friends or family members with restrictive eating and feeding disorders to understand the depth of distress these individuals experience when facing anxiety-provoking foods. As a long-time provider working with eating and feeding disorders, I want to share the kinds of responses people have to foods that are difficult for them to tolerate. My hope is to foster greater empathy and encourage support for the courage it takes to move toward healthier eating.

Long ago, Anita A. Johnston wrote a seminal book on the nature, course, and treatment of eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive eating. In 1996, she published Eating by the Light of the Moon, in which she uses rich metaphors to describe the journey of recovery. Among these are stories that capture the fear of “letting go” or the sense of protection an eating disorder can seem to provide.

You might ask how an eating or feeding disorder can be viewed as protective when it is an illness. In many cases, eating disorders function as coping strategies. For example, someone may seek control over food to feel competent or rely on disordered eating patterns to distract from or numb difficult emotions and stress.

Anita A. Johnston uses a powerful metaphor to illustrate the challenge of letting go of eating disorder patterns. She tells the story of a young girl who falls into a raging river and clings to a log to survive. Caught in dangerous, fast-moving water, the girl struggles to navigate the current, holding the log with one arm while paddling with the other. Eventually, she reaches a calm stretch where she can let go and swim safely to shore. Yet, in her fear and desperation, she cannot release the very thing that once helped keep her afloat.

Eating disorder thoughts and behaviors are like clinging to a log. Life can feel like being tossed and battered in a raging river. The eating disorder can feel like a refuge, offering temporary safety from the currents. Avoiding foods—whether out of fear of weight gain or to prevent a dreaded event, like choking—can create a sense of protection and give the illusion of control.

The girl in our story clings to the log because she doesn’t yet know how to reach the shore on her own. The river rages around her, and she feels both humiliated and paralyzed by fear. Her journey will not be sudden—it will come in tiny, courageous steps. First, she must face the terror of letting go, then discover how to navigate the waters without the log. Even as voices from the shore call out encouragement, the thought of leaving the log feels impossible.

She begins small: letting go of the log for a single moment, then a few more, learning to float, to paddle, to trust her new skills. Slowly, the river that once threatened to sweep her away becomes something she can move through, and she finds that life and safety exist beyond the log.

In recovery, people in my practice have described the fear of eating new or additional foods with vivid, sometimes terrifying images. Eating a cookie can feel like swallowing a disgusting bug. Eating can feel like letting go of a desperate grasp while dangling from a ledge over a rushing river. Certain foods seem to trigger nausea. Eating can feel like being asked to step onto the wing of a plane mid-flight. It has appeared in nightmares, imagined as injecting poison into the body.

What Are Eating Disorders?

Take our Disordered Eating Test

Find a therapist to heal from an eating disorder

The fear of eating can be so intense that tools and support are needed to face the flood of anxiety that often follows when letting go of challenging or replacing disordered thoughts and behaviors. Nourishing the body with a variety of well-balanced foods can feel like a monumental effort.

As many clinicians have observed, recovery is not as much about food as it is about the needs the eating disorder has been fulfilling. In desperate attempts to numb uncomfortable emotions, restricting or controlling food can provide a temporary sense of relief or control.

Everyone’s story is different. For one person, the disorder may serve to reclaim a sense of power and skill through body control. For another, it may be a way to hide from a body they feel is unwanted—whether it is expressing an unaccepted gender, feels too large, or seems to demand punishment for past trauma.

Nourishing the body lays the groundwork for tearing down the mental scaffolding that props up the eating disorder. Each bite of well-balanced food, each nutrient restored, is like placing a sturdy stone in a bridge toward safety. The courage it takes to rebuild—step by step, meal by meal—is immense, but with each act of nourishment, the foundation for freedom grows stronger.

Although avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) doesn’t involve fear of weight gain or the negative body image common in other eating disorders, it often shares an intense fear of eating, though for different reasons. This fear may arise from sensory sensitivities, such as the texture or smell of foods, from anxiety about a negative outcome like choking or vomiting, or from a general lack of interest in eating. Recovery from life-impairing ARFID often requires gradually increasing the variety and amount of food, an experience that can feel frightening. As with other eating disorders, progress comes one small step at a time, confronting the anxieties that accompany eating in a healthful way.

Friends and family can recognize and honor the courage it takes to walk the path of recovery. For many, this journey brings some of the most intense anxiety they have ever faced. Steady, compassionate support from loved ones can become a vital lifeline, helping the person navigate each difficult step along the way.

Johnston, A. A. (1996). Eating in the light of the moon: How women can let go of compulsive eating through metaphor and storytelling. Carol Publishing Group.

Willmott, E., Dickinson, R., Hall, C., Sadikovic, K., Wadhera, E., Micali, N., ... & Jewell, T. (2024). A scoping review of psychological interventions and outcomes for avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID). International Journal of Eating Disorders, 57(1), 27-61.

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