Perfection as Safety through Restricting Food

1. Perfectionism and Food Restriction as Coping Mechanisms: Individuals with eating disorders often strive for perfection by restricting food intake to manage anxiety and fear, equating thinness with safety and control. This drive serves as a way to soothe and distract from emotional suffering.
 
2. The Illusory and Exhausting Nature of Perfection: The relentless pursuit of perfection is unachievable and exhausting, leading to constant anxiety about maintaining an unattainable standard. This obsession undermines self-worth and emotional stability, impacting relationships and overall life satisfaction.
 
3. Path to Genuine Recovery: True safety and health come from abandoning the fantasy of perfection and embracing imperfection. Building trust with a therapist and committing to recovery allows individuals to develop internal strength, ultimately leading to more fulfilling and authentic lives.

Perfection is often the goal in early eating disorder recovery work. Whether clients suffer from bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating, or binge eating, the desire for perfection often looms large. When anxious and frightened, they may attempt to control their body shape and size by restricting their food intake in their drive to be perfect.

This drive to restrict food is viewed as a way to soothe, numb, and distract from suffering. The idea of becoming smaller can be thrilling because, in their minds, being thin and tiny equates to a fantasy of ultimate safety.

While self-improvement and striving for excellence are natural, the relentless pursuit of perfection is exhausting and can blind individuals to opportunities for joy and satisfaction.

How Perfection Relates to Restricting and Eating Disorders

"Do I have an eating disorder if I only binge on healthy foods?

Desperate Hope

This question speaks of a desperate hope to find a way to be safe and healthy. You want to give yourself good nourishment. You want to take care of yourself. You want to live. Yet you know that a binge, even quality food, harms your body and your life.

Compulsion to Binge Eat

At the same time, you can't stop bingeing. Since you are helpless to stop, you try to make your binge and yourself as safe from negative consequences as possible.

An OMG panic attack experience gives you more information about what's happening to you than the numbness an eating disorder provides.

 "The Panic Attack Symptoms Nobody Talks About" by Rachel Gearinger is a short, well-written and candid article that may have powerful significance if you have or had an eating disorder. Eating disorders can create a psychological numbness that dulls your senses and, for a short time, relieves panic.

But you don't feel relief. You feel nothing. That dullness or numbness could be a form of depersonalization and/or derealization, a little-discussed aspect of panic.

Do you recognize the two main influences that propel you to the slippery slope and undermine your eating disorder recovery?

1. Anyone who supports your symptoms rather than your recovery. Be wary and alert when someone encourages you to starve or invites you to join them in a binge.
2. Eating disorders distort your thinking and your perceptions. Under the influence of that distortion, you can rationalize and justify eating disorder behaviors. That justification puts you well on the slippery slope to relapse.

The Fire Alarm Is Not the Fire

Fire Alarm Symptoms

Symptoms such as binge eating, anxiety issues and eating disorder behaviors are alarms. Stopping the anxiety or binge eating alarm without addressing what’s causing the alarm to sound off accomplishes little or nothing.

It also can be dangerous because the metaphoric fire continues to burn and may increase in ferocity. When a fire alarm goes off the problem is not the sound of the alarm. The problem is the fire. The deeper problem is the cause of the fire.

Mirror Mirror is running an excellent factual article describing weight loss surgery: Weight Loss Surgery and Eating Disorders. In my experience as an eating disorder recovery psychotherapist, I've seen tragic outcomes from weight loss surgery. Yes, I grant that it's possible, for a person without an eating disorder, to reap medical benefits from the surgery. Weight loss does occur and can be helpful in health management.

Romantic, colorful, joyous uplifting sight - balloons rising into a beautiful sky. This is pleasure, even elation, in the moment. But, living to keep an ephemeral bit of lovliness as a permanent state of being can be disastrous. Can you enjoy a moment and stay in the reality of cause and effect?

Reality

Balloons pop. Balloons deflate. Their pieces fall to the ground or lodge in trees and bushes. Colors fade. The physicality of the balloon is fragile. The balloon is designed for a short life span and then succumbs to the forces of nature and collapses.

Your body is not a balloon. It can be strong, and healthy and survive many harsh experiences. It can be lovely, and uplifting and provide you with joy - the joy and exuberance of health.

"What to Look For in an Eating Disorder Treatment Center" is an article in the New York Times. I wish it went a little beyond its content.