Eating Disorders are not a choice.
People don’t choose eating disorders. Nobody wakes up one day and says “I’d like to have anorexia,” or if they do, they’re seriously misinformed. Eating disorders are not choices, but serious biologically influenced illnesses.
Eating disorders are well-intended. The reason someone develops the disorder and keeps it are very different things. An individual may consciously choose to purge or over-exercise the first time or two they do it, but before long, it becomes an unconscious addition. The eating disorder takes on a life of its own. The development of a full-blown eating disorder seems to be the perfect storm of biological and environmental factors.
Eating disorders are complex multi-faceted illnesses that require intensive treatment. Thankfully, the behaviors seen in these illnesses are learned behaviors, and therefore can be unlearned. Everyone has the capacity for recovery. The work in recovery is to uncover the meaning and the purpose behind the symptoms. Buried deep within the psyche, we can often find the reasons for the maladaptive functions of the eating disorder, perhaps serving as substitutes for missing things that should have (but weren’t) supplied during childhood. In this way, eating disorder symptoms are a window to look inside a struggling soul.
