
Eating disorders and thought patterns
Many of the people we talked with described being taken over by constant negative thoughts, particularly about themselves. Some people referred to this as the “eating disorder voice”; a “supercritical”, “relentless” and “intrusive” voice. They said that voice makes them feel low and ’not good enough’, pushing them to restrict (severely limit eating), binge (eat excessively) or purge (rid the body of food).
- Age at interview:
- 17
- Sex:
- Male
- Age at diagnosis:
- 14
- Background:
- Rob is 17 and a student at a music college. He is single and lives at home. White British.
- Age at interview:
- 18
- Sex:
- Female
- Background:
- Maria is 18 and a Sixth Form student. She lives at home with her parents. White British.
If bad things happened in life, people often felt it was their fault. They were first to blame themselves if anything went wrong at home. Such feelings could delay the initial contact with their GP as they didn’t want to feel like “a burden”.
Young people often described themselves as “worriers”. Their minds were filled up by “worst case scenarios”, worry about failure or what other people thought of them or even “the world ending tomorrow”. Some even worried about other people being worried about them. Fiona-Grace said her challenge was to learn to live in the moment, rather than worry about the future and “endless what ifs”.
People talked about different ways they coped with negative thoughts. These included getting the thoughts out into journals or blogs, having positive walls and compliments books and doing things that made them feel good about themselves. Distractions and mindfulness or relaxation techniques worked too. (For more see Coping with an eating disorder and self-help.)
Control
Young people we spoke with often described an eating disorder as a form of control they could have over their own lives. People could feel out of control because of things happening around them such as:
Often the eating disorder was described as the only thing they could “control”. Some called it “my thing” that they “didn’t want to let others in on”. An eating disorder was something that was just for them and not for others to decide. Sometimes people felt that it was an “escape” and helped them cope.
A lot of people had experienced more than one type of eating disorder (often anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa) and said that one of the differences between them was the amount of control they felt they had.
- Age at interview:
- 23
- Sex:
- Female
- Background:
- Zoe is a 23-year-old PhD student. She is single and lives in a shared house. White British.
People we talked with commonly described themselves as having “perfectionist” tendencies, being “driven” and “hard-working”. Desire to “do things right” and to achieve the highest possible goals could extend into many areas in life such as school or exercise. At the same time people often struggled with low self-esteem and could lack self-confidence even when they were in recovery.
- Age at interview:
- 24
- Sex:
- Female
- Age at diagnosis:
- 15
- Background:
- Rachel is 24 and an ad check monitor. She is single and lives at home with parents. White British.
Throughout their illness, people developed complicated emotional relationships with food, bingeing, eating and not eating. As part of the negative mindset, people could feel that they didn’t deserve enjoyment or pleasure. The eating disorder could become a form of self-harm. People with anorexia nervosa sometimes described restricting their food intake as a way of punishing themselves. Elizabeth used to think that “pleasure meant failure” and that by restricting her food intake she was also restricting the fun she didn’t feel she deserved. Rob felt “he had no right to have fun” in life, either through food or in other areas of life. Georgia even said that she felt she didn’t “deserve to eat”.
- Age at interview:
- 20
- Sex:
- Female
- Age at diagnosis:
- 12
- Background:
- Elizabeth is 20 and a second year language student at University. She is single and lives in halls of residence. White British.
Restricting food is like restricting pleasure and it’s like a compensation for any kind of fun. So the kind of example I use is this sort of holiday periods where I feel I can’t control what I’m eating and I feel like having the freedom to wander off around Europe and like see loads of different countries and visit loads of different places that had to be compensated for by not eating. And to kind of punish myself for that, for that freedom. And that experience. I had to like I had to kind of dampen the pleasure of, the enjoyment of that by making it really hard and making it, making myself feel like I was gonna faint the entire time because I was too weak, and yeah just, yeah being self-disciplined and I kind of feel, believe quite strongly that people don’t really deserve to have like, I felt that people just didn’t deserve to have any pleasure in their life. Like why? Why would you? Like why should you? You have to earn stuff and if you haven’t done anything to earn eating nice food, then why should you?
- Age at interview:
- 21
- Sex:
- Male
- Age at diagnosis:
- 20
- Background:
- James is 21 and lives at home with his parents, attending an eating disorders unit a few times a week. Mixed Race British.
“My reaction to that unhappiness of feeling really dissimilar to all of these people around me was to kind of hold back and eat bean salad and go to the gym loads. And so I got into a very punishing cycle of working really hard, obsessively and exercising obsessively. And feeling like I didn’t have the right to have any fun.” -Elizabeth
- Age at interview:
- 19
- Sex:
- Female
- Age at diagnosis:
- 17
- Background:
- Jasmin is a dance student. She is single and lives in shared accommodation with her course mates. White British.
- Age at interview:
- 21
- Sex:
- Female
- Background:
- Emily is 21 and a University student. She is single and lives in halls of residence. White British.
Last reviewed July 2015.