Eating Disorders and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Eating disorders are often uncovered through an individual’s food and eating behaviours, but they are rooted in mental health issues.
Patients who present with food issues are also often depressed as this can be another way in which feelings of loss, anger, sadness or frustration interfere with everyday life and then get externalised through ‘emotional overeating’.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy places importance on an individual’s understanding of his or her personality and emotions, and the way in which they influence the individual’s external relationships.
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy has been successful in treating eating disorders. When patients are able to uncover why they interact with food as they do, they are more able to work on the underlying thoughts and emotions that have manifested in an eating disorder.
Why is someone an emotional overeater?
Food, like tobacco and alcohol, can be addictive and the drug of choice. In particular, high fat and high sugar foods are addictive because they numb feelings and can become an emotional anaesthetic.
Why would I do this to myself?
Because at the time it feels as if it protects you from tension and worry and seems calming as it ‘works’ - at least in the short term. And that is why it is a difficult cycle to break.
For example: overeating tends to feel psychologically safer than confrontations with a loved one which might cause conflict, arguments, disharmony or withdrawal.
Speaking up and spitting it out!
If food has been your anaesthetic, change will mean having to bear some discomfort – the discomfort of saying what you are really feeling. We all want warm, loving, accepting, relationships, but real life is more complicated. Often the price tag on a smooth relationship is that one person (sometimes both) obliterates their opinions, values, thoughts and/or feelings.
Having a confidential, safe and supportive space in which to explore past and present feelings and the meaning of past and current relationships is what psychoanalytic psychotherapy offers.
