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Most people think that eating disorders are about food, weight or appearance, but that’s not the core issue. They are really about how a person experiences, manages, and survives intense internal feelings, or emotional regulation. Let’s dive a little deeper into what that means.
Emotional regulation does not mean that a person always stays calm and never feels or shows emotions. What it does mean is that a person can identify that they are feeling and manage it. It’s easy to let emotions take over and drive our actions but learning how to regulate them can lead to a healthier, more balanced response so that they don’t take control.
“Being able to regulate emotions is a skill, meaning that people often learn emotional regulation as they grow up. Some people may find it easier than others to regulate their emotions.”
(Guy-Evans, Olivia. “Emotional Regulation.” Simply Psychology. December 13, 2023. https://www.simplypsychology.org/emotional-regulation.html)
When someone has difficulty tolerating strong emotions, it can quickly become overwhelming because their nervous system starts to react. If the person does not have a way to process or cope with the emotions that they are feeling, the emotions can feel stronger than they really are.
As a result, these emotions can rapidly escalate and create a sense of urgency that makes the person think they have to escape from or get rid of the feelings they are experiencing. This can lead to impulsive actions, avoidance or just shutting down completely. Thoughts can become extreme, like thinking things will never get better or something bad is going to happen.
When a person feels overwhelmed by their emotions, a quick way to shift the attention away from those feelings is through food, exercise and body control. By controlling food intake and engaging in intense exercise, they are able to regain a sense of control, but the solution is short term.
Eating, not eating, and exercise all have physical effects on the body. Exercise helps relieve tension and release endorphins that elevate your mood. Changes in food intake can affect alertness and mood as well. So these physical effects can override the emotional stress the person is feeling, which makes them feel like it is working as a coping mechanism. But in reality, it is oftentimes an escape and the emotion is not being addressed, instead they are intensifying.
“Emotional dysregulation is closely connected to many eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), and binge eating disorder (BED), among others. It can serve as a primary condition, which contributes to the development of disordered eating behaviors, or develop along with the disorder, and eventually help drive the condition.” (“Eating Disorders and Emotions: How Emotion Regulation Impacts Eating Behaviors.” Eating Disorder Hope. April 24, 2025.https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/emotions-eating-disorders)
Focusing on body control is a way to manage feelings because it can pull attention away from painful thoughts or feelings and into something concrete and measurable. It’s not about the physical results. The goal is not to get attention and it’s not about vanity, it’s about achieving a feeling of mastery when emotions feel out of control.
Since behaviors associated with eating disorders often develop as ways to manage emotional overwhelm, therapy works on the systems underneath those behaviors.
Because the emotions are so intense and feel unmanageable, building emotional tolerance is important. This is done by learning to identify emotions and sit with them without immediately reacting. Work can be done to understand that emotions are temporary, and even though they are uncomfortable, they can be processed and managed.
A therapist can help you learn how to recognize early signs of emotional overload and teach calming strategies to settle the nervous system. The urge to control or avoid things tends to decrease when emotions don’t feel like emergencies. We talked more about nervous system regulation here in a previous blog post.
Therapy explores ways to self-soothe, express emotions and build support systems. Building these coping skills provides healthier options for relief so that the eating disorder behaviors are not the go to option anymore.
With an increased emotional capacity, the individual is able to rebuild trust in their ability to feel, cope, and respond without needing extreme control. Once they feel emotionally and physically safe, they do not need the disorder to survive and the behaviors can start to loosen their grip.
When it comes down to it, eating disorders are about trying to manage overwhelming emotions with the tools a person has available to them. Recovery can begin by developing safer, more positive ways to regulate emotions, eliminating the perceived need to control the body. If this is something you need help with, contact us, we are here to help.
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As a parent, you might notice a lot more irritability, defiance, or meltdowns with your tween, which can be really disruptive. In dealing with that disruption, and everything that triggers for everyone else in your house, it’s hard to remember that those mood swings and that attitude might actually be masking anxiety, depression, or emotional overload for your tween. Let’s break this down.
Between the ages of 9–14 there is a shift toward more independence and peer influence. This can lead to lots of emotions and fluctuating self-esteem since it’s part of forming a sense of identity. In addition to these emotions, kids this age are also experiencing puberty which involves physical changes.
It’s a challenging process for them when their brains are developing the skills they need for emotional regulation. Learning things like how to understand their emotions and the consequences of their actions can be hard, and it’s also happening at a time while they are developing a sense of empathy and a moral compass.
Why Tweens Have Bigger Feelings
Tweens really do feel things more intensely. They can’t help it, it is a biological and psychological response to what is happening in their development.
The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that handles logic, impulse control, and long-term thinking. The limbic system is the part of the brain that drives emotion, motivation, and reward. The limbic system develops faster than the prefrontal cortex, and because it develops faster, tweens/teens feel big emotions before they’ve figured out how to manage them. They don’t even understand them yet and that’s scary and intense.
Puberty also plays a part because the body, and the brain, is flooded with hormones and that’s new, uncharted territory for kids. These hormones can trigger mood swings, increased sensitivity and intensify stress responses. Every feeling and situation can feel like it is magnified.
“A young person may also be sensitive about how they look and their new body changes. Privacy and personal space may become very important to them. They may alternate between feeling self-conscious about themselves one day, to feeling ‘bullet proof’ the next.” (‘Parenting children through puberty and adolescence.’ Better Health Channel. February 24, 2022. https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/Parenting-children-through-puberty)
Tweens are also trying to figure out who they are and how they fit in. Social acceptance becomes important and even slight failures can have a negative impact on self-esteem and feeling like they belong.
It’s hard for the body to tell the difference between fear and anger. When a person becomes anxious, the body will release adrenaline and cortisol because it is preparing for a threat. This can cause the heart to race, energy to increase and muscles to tense. This is also what happens when a person gets angry.
A tween will become anxious and the body will start to react with these symptoms, however, they may not realize it’s anxiety they are feeling. Or they don’t know how to express what they are feeling, so it may just come out as irritability or defiance.
“Acting out can be a symptom of anxiety in a child because some anxious children feel an overwhelming need to get out of a situation that’s making them anxious. Their behavior may look like anger or defiance, lashing out, throwing tantrums, seeming distracted, moving around a lot, or arguing with others.” (Miller, Caroline. “How Anxiety Leads to Problem Behavior.” Child Mind Institute. February 4, 2025. https://childmind.org/article/how-anxiety-leads-to-disruptive-behavior/)
The survival responses of fight, flight or freeze are activated during moments of anxiety and if your child responds with the “fight” response you may think they are angry. But really, beneath that outward angry response you are seeing, there may be fear or overwhelm.
The emotional stage that tweens are in is new and different for them. They still have child-like thinking and coping skills, but they are becoming a teen who feels very deeply. The emotional overload they are experiencing can trigger outbursts or shutdowns and it’s hard to know how to react as a parent.
Remaining calm and steady can be very helpful to your kid. This can help re-regulate their nervous system faster. Remember they are flooded with emotions and their brains don’t know how to handle it, so it’s best not to match their negative thinking or energy.
In these emotionally charged moments, they don’t understand what they are feeling or why they are feeling it, so it’s helpful to normalize and name their emotions. Help them learn emotional maturity like we discussed in a previous blog here. Naming and normalizing emotions can help them feel less intense.
Also, validating before teaching goes a long way. Teaching your child coping skills is important but first you want to make sure they feel understood and they know that their feelings and emotions are valid. When they are calm and open to it, introduce coping skills like deep breathing, journaling and exercise.
The emotional overwhelm that your tween is experiencing may be best addressed with therapy. Therapy provides a safe space for them to identify feelings and help them develop positive coping skills. Therapists can use guided exercises to help them manage stress and regulate their responses to overwhelming emotions. Also, it helps that the therapist isn’t a family member, they don’t have any alliance or agenda except your tweens emotional and mental health.
Adolescence is a time of identity exploration, and sometimes it’s hard to open up completely with a parent about their feelings or experiences. Therapy offers a non-judgmental space where they can build confidence and a stronger sense of self with a neutral adult. They can process difficult emotions and experiences and this can help build resilience.
A trained therapist can help them understand the connection between their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, to help break cycles of negative thinking.
Even though we have all been there when we were an adolescent, understanding emotional overloading in tweens can be hard as a parent. What they need most is calm connections and time for their body to reset. If you need help navigating this stage with your child, contact us, we can help.
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Family relationships can be some of the most meaningful and complicated connections we have. They shape us and support us, but sometimes they hurt us. When there is conflict or tension, it’s natural to consider cutting ties with your family, but that’s not always necessary.
So let’s talk about some factors that can play into whether or not it’s best for you to cut ties or have a hard conversation and move forward with them
When it comes to having a hard conversation you want to address challenges that you’re facing in the relationship, with a goal of improving it. So you aren’t just venting to get your feelings out, you’re looking to make progress and work through the problems.
“Shared ground rules will go a long way toward establishing a positive connection between you and your family members. Certain rules like no interrupting, no shouting and no personal attacks can help keep heated discussions from becoming, well, overheated.” (“Crucial Conversations: 10 Tips for Handling Difficult Conversations with Family.” University of Maryland Medical Systems. https://health.umms.org/2020/10/05/difficult-conversations-with-family/)
If your family member shows some willingness to listen and change, then hard conversations might be what it takes to repair the relationship and move forward in a better direction. That doesn’t mean it will happen instantly, there will be repeated conversations where you hold boundaries and confront things that aren’t working.
If you’ve never tried having a hard conversation in a way that is calm and direct, then you may want to give the hard conversation a chance. All relationships have some struggles and negative spots, learning to work through those things with your family members will give you the skills to do this with other important people in your life. Some ups and downs can be a good thing because it helps you learn and understand other people, and the hard conversations can deepen your relationship.
Sometimes miscommunications, unspoken expectations, or unresolved past conflicts can be the root of the problem(s) in the relationship. Facing that reality and having a hard conversation that clearly lays out your feelings and expectations, can turn it around. If you have never been honest about things that have hurt you in the past or expectations that you have, your family member may not realize there is a problem. If the behavior is hurtful but not abusive, talking through it can lead to healthier interactions.
But when the behavior is abusive, it goes to another level that can lead to making the difficult decision of cutting ties.
When you are cutting ties, you are making a decision to step away from the relationship, either temporarily or permanently, because what is happening in the relationship is harming your mental, emotional or physical health.
If you’ve tried to address problems with your family and they continue to behave the same way despite knowing how you feel, then cutting ties may be necessary. A sign that they’re not able to build a healthy, positive relationship is when they criticize boundaries, stonewall or avoid conversations about your relationship, or are not able to take responsibility.
If you have clearly expressed your needs and boundaries and they do not show a willingness to respect them and work on the relationship, then your efforts to repair the relationship will not be successful. Problems in a relationship take action and effort from both sides.
If there is abuse, manipulation, or repeated emotional harm you have to protect yourself and your well being.
“If your toxic family continues to disrespect you, to ignore your boundaries, and to gaslight you, you have every right to cut ties. You do, in fact, have the right to do this at any time, but many people wait until they realise the full impact of staying in these relationships.” (Jack, Claire. “5 Signs It’s Time to Cut Yourself Off From Your Toxic Family”. Psychology Today. August 18, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-with-autism-spectrum-disorder/202008/5-signs-its-time-to-cut-yourself-off-from-your)
Taking a step back can be temporary just to create some space can allow time for emotions to settle. During this time you can set firmer limits, and decide what your non-negotiables are for the relationship to resume and move forward. Sometimes time apart from one another can help bring things into focus and allow both of you to reset.
If the relationship is just too toxic or dangerous to your mental or physical health, then you may want to consider cutting ties indefinitely.
If this is what you choose to do, allow yourself time to grieve. You are experiencing a loss, even if the relationship was hard or painful. Remind yourself that it’s okay to protect your peace, and seek support from positive people in your life that you trust.
Focus on building positive communication skills and healthy relationships rather than just cutting off your family. The same thing that happens with your family will repeat with other people if you don’t do your own healing work on what happened with your family.
Your decision to have a hard conversation or cutting ties with family is personal and what is right for someone else may not be right for you. Protecting your well-being, your boundaries and your safety is what is most important.
You do not have to continue a relationship that is causing harm to your mental or physical health just because the person is a family member. Talking through your options and what is best for you with a therapist can be helpful. If you think family therapy may be helpful check out one of our past blogs here to learn more.
If you need help with how and when to have a hard conversation or cut ties with family, contact us, we can help.
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