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Emotional Anorexia

Updated: Jan 28

I am in recovery from emotional anorexia. Emotional anorexia may take a variety of forms. It has nothing to do with an eating disorder. If you have emotional anorexia, know that you are not alone. Emotional anorexia may be part of a behavioural addiction. There are many varieties of anorexic, but whichever kind we are, all of us in some important way have distanced ourselves from experiencing love.


Faced with getting our needs met, we are baffled because we can’t even name these needs. However, beneath the surface, anorexia consists of subconsciously not doing something: Not trusting; not committing; not surrendering. Here, unlike picking up a drink or taking a drug, anorexia’s symptoms are obscure. We observe that we are engaged in a policy of dread of others and a strategy to keep them at bay.


Emotional anorexia means to be unable to feel or deal with emotions, ranging from day to day 'normal' emotions, all the way to crisis or 'major' emotions.


Emotional anorexia

 

Emotional anorexia generally starts in childhood and carries on and gets worse as a person ages. It develops as a defence mechanism to help a child deal with rough, painful, and traumatic experiences. All children have different ways of dealing with difficult experiences growing up. Some children “shut down” their emotions. They finally decide at some point that it is easier to not feel than to continue to feel painful emotions. Sometimes this process happens slowly and more subconsciously, and some people actually remember the moment they decide to turn off feelings. For me, it was watching my mother’s two violent suicide attempts when I was seven years old.

 

Turning off and not feeling does work to not feel pain, but it is not without side effects. You may not have to feel pain or sadness when you are in difficult periods of your life, but you also miss out on feeling good emotions. We cannot just turn off “bad” feelings and leave the rest; our brains do not work that way. When turning off emotions to try not to feel all of the emotions are turned off. You miss out on happiness and joy even in the most significant of occasions. You feel dead and empty inside. Another side effect is not being able to be fully intimate or connected with your spouse. If you are not connected with yourself and the feelings that are inside of you, there is no way to be completely connected to another person. Your spouse will feel it! Not at first of course, but over the years it will become painful and difficult in your relationship.

 

 

Possible signs of emotional anorexia include

  • We may be in partnerships but find it difficult to be emotionally close

  • We may have many acquaintances but no-one we’re really close to

  • We may have close relations with only certain people, our children, say, but keep distance from anyone else

  • We may feel overwhelmed in social settings

  • We may feel incapacitated by shyness in relationships with others

  • We may have an overwhelming dread of making phone calls

  • We may function well in the workplace where intimacy is not usually valued, but find that we are distant with family or friends

  • When people attempt to give us love, we can’t seem to take it in.  We would rather remain in a state of emotional starvation rather than risk abandonment – our greatest fear. Emotional anorexia is often caused by abandonment trauma. As with almost all conditions, emotional anorexia can be seen on a spectrum.  Most of us have moments when we can’t take something in – praise, acknowledgement, empathy, admiration, affection. Underlying emotional anorexia is fear of abandonment, a universal, primal fear that can become powerful enough to cause your primitive emotional brain to erect involuntary, subconscious defences aimed at protecting you from emotional harm. For emotional anorexics, this means avoiding closeness. When someone comes along toward whom we feel that spark, it triggers one of two things or both to happen: We feel so vulnerable that we can’t tolerate the anxiety, so we split up; or we feel so engulfed that we can only push them away. Emotional anorexia can extend into our social world, walling us off from friends, family, and anyone else who tries to get close or express love. Hackles of fear go up. The very thing we need most creates the greatest fear and necessitates building the thickest walls to avoid the risk of abandonment. We encase our heart in concrete.

  • We try to avoid conflict by giving in to what the other person wants (again); we stop making demands (again); yet, we feel simmering resentfulness. Soon, all we feel is deep irritation that results in an explosion of volcanic anger. Typically, this is over some minor or even silly transgression by the other person, and usually occurs when you’re in a situation where you should be having fun (e.g., out to dinner or relaxing on the weekend). Then, we feel guilty; we feel like the “Bad guy” because we can’t “Just keep things fun and light” and “Always” have to “Ruin” a good time by bringing up the same old grievances. We are caught in an emotional “Catch-22.” If we speak up, we can’t control our emotions; and if we don’t, we find ourselves boiling on the inside. We have now become a “difficult person” who is “unpredictable” and “overreacts.”

 

As emotional anorexics, we awaken to the fact that we are not experiencing the giving and receiving of love that is so precious, even essential, to human life.


Intimate, romantic relationships often encompass a wide range of needs and expectations by both parties, and thus, can be enormously difficult for emotional anorexics. Forming and maintaining loving, intimate relationships requires open communication, respect, giving of oneself, and tolerance. Successful relationships also include each partner helping the other achieve their needs, wants, and desires for themselves and as a couple. While women and men want to be loving and considerate helpmates to their significant others, one party may not feel that they are sufficiently recognised for their efforts because they receive little acknowledgment. This may cause them to believe that they haven’t done enough, and so they do even more. Such thoughts and behaviours can come at the cost of self-deprivation of one’s own needs. If this continues, there may be a slow build-up of resentment and anger.


The cost of submerging your needs

It’s important to recognise that to be loving and giving is healthy; but, to love and give at the cost of one’s psychological invisibility is clearly unhealthy. Anyone who submerges their needs to be valued, loved, appreciated, and complimented, and who suppresses their sense of being to the wants and desires of their partners, is going to risk 'psychological starvation': We call this emotional anorexia.


When you hit that that 'dark zone,' your psychological 'nutrition' is poor. Much of what you are consuming is what we label 'high fat' negative emotions; such as anger, worry, anxiety, bitterness, and pessimism. Emotional anorexia means that you are living in emotional starvation mode. Just as irritability and anger happen when your blood glucose levels go down, when you don’t have enough 'psychological sugar,' your emotional 'blood levels' also go down. You don’t have the good nutrients of joy, happiness, and excitement to keep you going.


Recovering from emotional anorexia: What to do?

  • Begin by stepping back and taking an assessment of your psychological nutrition. How many high-fat negative emotions are you consuming in a day? How many positive low-fat emotions?

  • Don’t swallow the high-fat emotions -when it hits your “tongue,” spit it out. Begin to understand your emotional triggers.

  • Change the ratio of high-fat to low-fat emotions, so that you consume far greater low-fat emotions in your psychological diet.

  • You are not alone. There are many who respond as you do and who feel as you do, or who once felt that way. We have begun to do the work of recovery and change in emotional anorexia 12 step groups. We have found, no matter how different or alone we feel, that reaching out to others – to give help and to ask for it – helps us to recover from our emotional anorexia.

  • Don’t give up; remain hopeful. Making even a small change in overcoming avoidance can get us over the hump and into a fulfilling, trusting connection. Yes, abandonment fear is primal, but it doesn’t have to rule our lives.  We have tools to identify and heal our underlying abandonment wounds. As we gain awareness into our defence mechanisms, we learn to dismantle the ones in our way.  We realise that we can risk getting close to someone and if it doesn’t work out, we can risk trying again. In the meantime, we will be okay.


The process of change rests on you

You may ask, why do we not focus on having the other party change their behaviour and be more helpful? Because the desire to change oneself must be self-motivated. No one can 'make' another person change. No amount of nagging, yelling, threatening, or simmering will change your partner if they don’t want to change. It doesn’t even matter if you are absolutely 'right.' Therefore, if you are experiencing emotional anorexia, regardless of whether you brought this on yourself or others influenced you to 'go down that emotional starvation road,' the process of change rests on you.


The end result of recovery from emotional anorexia

A warning: if you don’t begin the process, just as emotional malnutrition destroys the physical body, emotional anorexia will destroy all of your relationships, and more importantly, poison your spirit.


The pay-off: if you make the effort to consume more low-fat positive emotions, slowly the light will begin to shine again in your life. Ironically, the very things you wanted - to be complimented, loved, and have your partner do good things for you - will start to happen.


To turn emotions back on after years of being turned off can be scary. Many feel like once they open that dam, it will be hard to stop. Although this may be true, the results are well worth it. Being connected and feeling emotions may open you up to feel pain, but it also allows you to feel joy and be connected in relationships. Well worth the work!


Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.


George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Are you ready to change your mind?


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



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Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person. 


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