Eating disorders are about so much more than what someone eats or how they feel about their appearance. For some people, food and body image become intertwined with deeper feelings of shame, rejection, vulnerability, or loss of control.
Alongside restoring adequate nourishment and developing more consistent eating patterns, recovery may involve working through experiences that have made it difficult to feel safe, worthy, or comfortable with yourself or in your body. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy may support this work by helping you process difficult experiences that contribute to disordered eating behaviors.
Eating disorders develop for many reasons, including biological, psychological, and social factors. There is not always one experience or “reason” that explains how an eating disorder began. However, painful experiences can shape how you relate to yourself and what you turn to when life feels overwhelming. Restriction may offer a temporary sense of control. Binge eating may provide comfort or distance from difficult emotions. Although these behaviors can be harmful, they may also offer temporary relief from emotional distress. Without a more positive self self-concept or alternative tools to take their place, stopping these behaviors can be exceptionally difficult.
How Negative Beliefs Can Become Tied to Food & Body
EMDR is based on the understanding that past experiences can continue to affect how we feel and behave in the present. For example, a child who is bullied by their peers may come to believe that they deserved the mistreatment because there is something wrong with them. They might begin to think, “I’m just not good enough.” That same child might later have a painful experience where a parent criticizes their body, again leaving them with the impression “I’m just not good enough”. As this person grows older, rejection, poor treatment in relationships, or setbacks in life may feel like further evidence that they are inadequate, even though that belief is objectively untrue.
The belief “I’m just not good enough” could then become tied to food and appearance. Imagine this individual leaves a social interaction feeling left out. They may search for an explanation: “What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I fit in?” If their body has been criticized in the past, they may have learned to see their appearance as a reason that others reject them. Their attention might turn toward everything they dislike about their body, with the thought, “If I looked different, people would want me around, and I would finally be good enough.” In that moment, changing their body can feel like something they can control; a way to protect themselves from future rejection and the pain and despair that comes with the belief, “I’m just not good enough”
Other negative beliefs that may resonate include “I’m unlovable,” “My needs don’t matter,” “I have to be perfect to be accepted,” or “I’m not in control.” For some people, these beliefs can influence how they use food rules, purging or restriction behaviors, or efforts to change their body to feel safer, more accepted, or more in control.
How Can EMDR Help
In EMDR therapy, you and your therapist can map out the memories that have reinforced the negative belief underlying your relationship with food, eating, or your body. After preparation, your therapist will guide you in reprocessing selected memories, using bilateral stimulation such as side-to-side eye movements or alternating taps. As the distress associated with these memories changes, new perspectives may emerge and adaptive learning can take place. This work is different from trying to convince yourself to think positively. Through EMDR, something you already understood logically may finally begin to feel true emotionally. “I’m just not good enough” may gradually give way to “I should have been treated better. I am worthy of care.”
As painful memories become less distressing and beliefs like “I’m not good enough” feel less true, the need to manage those feelings through disordered eating behaviors, or changing your body, may begin to ease. This can help loosen the emotional foundations that previously kept disordered eating in place. Alongside other eating disorder care, it may become easier to respond to yourself with compassion rather than criticism.
Read more about how EMDR works here.
EMDR is most appropriately used as part of comprehensive eating-disorder care, alongside nutritional support, medical monitoring, and other treatment as needed. Adequate nourishment, medical stability, and preparation are important considerations in deciding when to begin memory reprocessing. Within that support, EMDR may offer a way to work through experiences that still affect you today so that you can build a relationship with yourself that allows for greater care, trust, and compassion.
Let’s Get Started Together
I offer EMDR therapy for adults across New York, including those looking to work through painful experiences and beliefs that affect their relationship with food, their body, and themselves.
To schedule a free, 15-minute consultation, email caroline@carolineroarty.com or fill out my contact form below. We’ll use this time to talk about what’s bringing you to therapy and whether EMDR is a good fit for your needs.
