How My Eating Disorder Made Me Lonely

Jun 20, 2021

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Social isolation is commonly seen in eating disorders and it is one of the maintaining factors of the disorder. You may ask ‘But why? How are they related?’. I believe the answer lies in operant conditioning.

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Building on the classical conditioning by the very famous Ivan Pavlov ( as in Pavlov’s dog! ), B.F. Skinner proposed the concept of operant conditioning. He argued that our behaviors are shaped by the reward and punishment we receive as their consequence. He argued that behaviors that are positively reinforced will get stronger and more frequent , while with punishment they will get weaker and go extinct. Operant conditioning can be observed in many parts of our lives and it can also explain why people may slowly grow socially isolated and lonely because of their eating disorders.

https://memecrunch.com/meme/BZH78/social-anxiety

Let’s focus on how punishment ( food ) can cause a behavior ( socializing ) to get weaker in the context of eating disorders. Most of the social events are planned around food. We go out on dinner dates, grab ice cream or coffee with our friends. Even when the main focus of the event is not eating , most social events include food. We may go to the movies but this plan, for me, includes having popcorn and a large coke for sure. So either way, socializing implies being in contact with food somehow. When you are struggling with an eating disorder, does not matter which, in essence, you are struggling with food. And struggling by nature comprises negative emotions. Punishment may sound like a strong word to use for such a situation, but I am sure that anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder will agree with me on the choice of word. Let me tell you how my eating disorder slowly turned food from being a reward to being a punishment.

1) It made me believe that everyone is judging me for what I’m eating.

I felt like people were constantly watching me and that they formed their opinions about me based on my food choices. When I was eating, I felt like all eyes would be on me. Just like the concept in the movie Inception : (when the subconscious of the individual knew that you were ‘trespassing’ their dream) everyone would suddenly stop and stare at me.

https://inception.fandom.com/wiki/Projection

That is how I felt when I was choosing what to eat and also while eating. When I ordered pizza, while my friends were having something lighter, I believed that they were judging me and thinking ‘‘ That is why she is fat ’’. Being the only person who eats at the table, eating quickly, and finishing earlier than others ; all these situations were extremely stressful moments for me that I wanted to avoid. Because of my eating disorder, I was hyperaware of myself and my eating behaviors. If you ever find yourself feeling this way, ask yourself if you ever judge someone based on what they are eating or how quickly they are eating. In reality, everyone is usually too busy enjoying their own food and focusing on the conversation that was taking place.

2) The ‘perceived’ competition to lose weight was CONSTANT.

While eating, people often talk about how hungry they are, how their appettite is and what they ate until that time of the day. It may sound like a classic ‘ harmless ’ conversation. But for someone with an eating disorder, it is exceptionally triggering. Sometimes I would hear the magical words ‘‘ Uh, my appetite has been very low and I have lost a little bit of weight unintentionally ’’ then suddenly would get extremely upset and no longer want to eat. As a person who struggled with bulimia nervosa, it did not stop there: my loss of appetite would last only seconds or minutes max, then my binge mode would be activated. Why? Because in my mind, I would compare what I have eaten that day to what they have eaten. There is no actual competition here but it is just a perceived one.

Most of the time, I didn’t even need to be a part of this conversation to feel the competition. My brain would just come up with conspiracy theories. I felt like everyone was somehow working towards a smaller body without telling each other. Like there was a weight loss club that everyone was a member of, and the first rule of the club was not to talk about the club. I felt left behind, inferior and excluded. I believed that for every moment that I wasn’t on a diet, there was a moment where another girl was dieting extremely who was ‘‘ working towards their goals with determination while I was just thinking about food the whole time ’’. These thoughts surfaced as a result of me determining much of my worth with my weight.

3) Choosing where to eat became a special kind of torture.

A new way to torture humans was invented when they asked the first person with an eating disorder to choose a place to eat (!).

Whenever I was with someone and we were trying to decide where to eat, so many thoughts would rush through my mind that I would feel paralyzed. Weirdly, this wasn’t because they were all anxious thoughts but because they were all contradicting thoughts. I would desperately hope that the other person made the decision for us so that I would not have the option to choose. This way I thought I would be free of guilt if we ate at a spot where I considered unhealthy at the time. And because I was so mentally deprived of food, I knew that I would just order and binge on everything and anything that I liked. However, I would also feel guilty and call myself names just even for thinking of eating that way. So if the other person could make the decision and if it was a ‘healthy’ one, I would have to comply. Sounds like a good outcome right? Nope. That would still imply that I was a weak-willed person who needed someone else’s determination to diet. My eating disorder would arrange the whole scenario in a way that there was no outcome that I felt good about myself.

Funnily, I always saw myself as an indecisive person, but now that I have recovered, I can see how that is not true. I now just trust my cravings to guide me to the best option available.

4) Shopping was no longer fun.

Some of my social activities include going out shopping. I loved going around the shops, looking for new clothes. I don’t even have to buy them. It is just a fun activity girls do. But if I want to buy something, as a habit passed on by my mother, I have to try them on because they usually look completely different on me. Sadly, trying on clothes is a major trigger when you live with an eating disorder. You have to look at yourself in the mirror while putting on clothes that are probably made for unrealistically skinny people. I don’t even know how many times I had a mental breakdown in the changing rooms. Even on the rare days I felt good about my body, trying on clothes would ruin my day. My friends would leave the shop happily with their new clothes, wondering why I was no longer cheerful.

5) Whenever I no longer thought about my eating disorder, it made me feel guilty for it.

I will be honest with you, there are days where I still struggle with this. I go out with my friends, have fun, eat without being self-conscious and spend the whole day like that. I eat what I want, drink what I want, just like a normal person. On these bright days, the disordered thoughts do not even cross my mind. Then when it is time to go home, it all comes crashing down. An intense feeling of anxiety fills me up and I become aware of the things I ate. The happiness, the joy I feel from the fun day I had with my friends disappears in milliseconds. I literally feel guilty and ashamed for having so much fun that _ I forgot to watch my diet_. The negative association is the clearest in this situation. It shows how much my eating disorder wants me to feel alone, how it simply wants me to be miserable. And I will not go down without a fight.

So why do you get lonely when you have an eating disorder? It is simply because of the negative consequences that you experience when you socialize. After a while, you learn that socializing brings you these negative feelings and you of course do not want to feel that way, resulting in avoidance of social events. The troubling part is that it puts you in a vicious cycle. As you keep yourself away from an unpleasant situation, this avoidance becomes a reward on its own, positively reinforcing social isolation even more. However, this does not mean that these associations are permanent. It is possible to break this cycle. You can re-learn that social events are fun and weaken the negative association between socializing and pleasure. With recovery, it possible to associate social events with more positive emotions by slowly allowing yourself to socialize little by little. You can once again enjoy a day out with friends, be beautifully confident about eating whatever it is that you are craving at the moment. The only thing you need is that one ‘‘Yes’’, teeny tiny step towards socializing, and the rest will follow, I promise you.