PTSD and Eating Disorders: My Simultaneous Struggles
TW: PTSD symptoms, disordered eating: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa
Breaking Down Eating Disorders: Not Just Another Diet Fad
Eating disorders are often misrepresented. Society associates disordered eating with thin 16-year-olds who go on juice cleanses, skip meals, and order caesar salads and Diet Cokes or, rather, the infamous Yolanda Hadid “almond mom” trope. While these tropes can be signs of an eating disorder, eating disorders are much less surface-level than these depictions deceptively appear.
The correlation between the influx of content teenagers consume and disordered eating is undoubtable, but eating disorders are mental disorders that have deep, underlying causes. They are by no means merely an effort to conform to modern beauty standards, a choice, nor a simple diet. They are more complex than that.
Causes of eating disorders include poor body image, genetic components, and societal pressure, but in this post, I am looking to break down how the desire for control, trauma, and other mental disorders (PTSD) are contributing factors to disordered eating.
My Battle with Anorexia Nervosa
Like many girls my age, unfortunately, can relate, I have struggled with an eating disorder through my teenage years, approximately since I was 12 or 13. During the 2020 quarantine, like much of the world, I fell victim to the claws of YouTube HIIT workouts and MyFitnessPal. At this time, I was playing lacrosse competitively and felt the pressure to stay in-shape through the pandemic not to stunt my prospects at playing Division 1 lacrosse in the future – that’s how my ongoing struggle with anorexia nervosa began: extreme food regulation and exercise.
Unfortunately, following my experience of a traumatic event, my eating disorder, which was once manageable, began to control my life. I could no longer be as physically active as I was before, so I turned to even more extreme food regulation. While a large factor of the worsening of my relationship with food was the end of my lacrosse and field hockey career (thanks head trauma), the most prominent causes were my intense stress and desire for control.
The Desire for Control
Trauma causes emotional dysregulation due to changes in the nervous system. These symptoms include anxiety, depression, mood swings, intense anger, and suicidal thoughts. These feelings are not easy to regulate, and survivors may look to disordered eating to alleviate this stress. Disordered eating provides its victims with a faux-sense of control, and survivors who feel like their lives are out of their control due to trauma are extremely vulnerable to this.
After my traumatic event, I felt that my life went astray. It was in the hands of something greater than me, and if the universe wanted to inhibit my lacrosse dreams, emotional stability, and quality of life, there was nothing I could do about it. I lost my active lifestyle and my identity, but what I felt I could do was limit the number of calories I consumed each day, and my intense hunger consumed my mind above its previous confinement to hospital beds and matted blood. But this “solution” was temporary, and my body began to rot alongside my mind.
The Journey for Healing
While the comorbidity of PTSD and eating disorders is still being studied, in a recent study of anorexia patients, 14% of patients had PTSD diagnoses. These disorders can be combated through a multitude of ways. Survivors can first learn to accept their counterintuitive comfort in food dysregulation, then seek professional support. Therapies that work to improve both conditions include exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and more.
Additionally, survivors can seek comfort in journaling and writing, self-care practices, and finding a support system. For me, the most difficult part of my healing journey was accepting that being thinner and finding comfort in my hunger were not sustainable ways to distract myself from thoughts of my trauma. Hunger did not bring me control; it controlled me. In this past year, I have worked to slowly heal my relationship with food and myself holistically through self-care, therapy, and my writing. While I am still slowly improving my coping mechanisms for my trauma, I feel myself healing everyday.
Wrapping It Up
Not all PTSD survivors experience disordered eating, but the correlation between the two is vastly prevalent. But from my personal experience, I have learned to accept that strictly controlling my eating habits does not alleviate the pain of my trauma. Survivors should turn to more sustainable and healthy coping mechanisms.
In the words of one of my favorite writers, Sandra Cisneros, we must look to turn “grief to light.” In the perpetual darkness of trauma and the several detours it takes us along the way, we must search for an alternative path, a path of healing.
Resources
Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: 988
Veterans Crisis Line: 988 then press 1
SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Helpline: 1-800-662-4357
PTSD Foundation of America: 877-717-PTSD (7893)
National Alliance for Eating Disorders Helpline: 1(866)662-1235
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. 1-630-577-1330.
Sources
“PTSD and Eating Disorders: How One Can Influence the Other.” Withinhealth.com, withinhealth.com/learn/articles/ptsd-and-eating-disorders.
Vanzhula, Irina A., et al. “Illness Pathways between Eating Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms: Understanding Comorbidity with Network Analysis.” European Eating Disorders Review, vol. 27, no. 2, 7 Aug. 2018, pp. 147–160, https://doi.org/10.1002/erv.2634.