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.
What Is Emotional Regulation
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.
How Eating Behaviors Become Coping Strategies
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.
How Therapy Addresses the Root Issue
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.
