"I'm Fat, and You Don't Love Me" : How early attachment insecurity may cause eating disorders

Posted on June 16, 2016

Recent studies seem to indicate that those with early attachment issues or separation anxiety may be more at risk for eating disordered behavior. According to Roman research published in the "British Journal of Clinical Psychology," women who had current eating disorders reported higher rates of separation anxiety during childhood. This study also confirmed the results of earlier research that linked anorexia and bulimia to insecure attachment. Additional studies have confirmed these links.

So, eating disordered behaviors are higher in those with early attachment problems and early separation anxiety issues.This could be because those with attachment problems tend to have higher levels of mental health issues overall, which could affect later body image and the eating disordered behaviors. That insecurity may also make people more sensitive to public shame and marketability factors, leading them to respond more strongly to slights to their reproductive "value" (attractiveness). In other words, if I am highly sensitive to how attractive (or marketable) everyone else is, I might eat less if I think it will make me more attractive to potential partners, particularly if I already believe myself to be "less than" due to insecurity.

It is possible that the anxiety process triggers scary thought cycles (discussed here) and the type of thought is coincidental. Many women also learn to be dissatisfied with their bodies growing up, due to mothers who had a less than ideal self-image or because of early name-calling, which would certainly prime them for scary thoughts in this arena. It is also likely that societal misrepresentations of female beauty and shaming may make the obsessive thoughts about being fat or ugly more likely to occur in women, leading to the higher rates of these particular disorders among them.

Obviously, it's more than obsessive thoughts, since most people who have scary thought patterns don't act on them. But with underlying issues in stress regulation, individuals may have more severe responses when they find themselves unable to deal with their emotions.

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Category(s):Attachment Issues, Eating Disorders

Source material from Megsanity