Factors like shame, social anxiety, loneliness or isolation, feeling different or disconnected, low self-esteem and past traumas are intricately linked to the development of an eating disorder or disordered eating in many cases. 

The question is this: does disordered eating make you feel lonely, or can loneliness and disconnection lead to disordered eating? The short answer is both. Feelings of low self-worth or self-esteem, or feeling misunderstood and different have been shown to lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection, with this (and other “negative” feelings) being a significant trigger for many eating disorders or disordered eating patterns. This can lead to behaviours like overeating or undereating, which are used as “self soothing” mechanisms to suppress and avoid these difficult feelings. But equally, eating disorders can cause further feelings of being misunderstood, alone or disconnected from yourself and those around you.

As you can see, disordered eating can be brought on or worsened by feeling disconnected from the people you love and care about. Often, when you feel like you have the potential to form deep connections - for example with close friends, family, significant others - when your reality falls short of your expectations for these bonds, this can make you feel even more lonely and disconnected. And disordered eating habits thrive on loneliness and disconnection. After all, the more isolated you become, the more the disordered eating urges or patterns can wrap their claws tightly around you and keep you all to themselves, stuck in unhealthy habits. After all, if you have nothing else to lean into, your disordered eating patterns become a bigger and more consuming part of your life.

Let’s get into the ways in which feeling disconnected in your relationships can contribute to disordered eating behaviours, so you can prevent this experience in its tracks.

Disconnection can lead to the use of disordered eating as a coping strategy.

If you’re feeling isolated or misunderstood by the people closest to you, this can be quite distressing and lonely. Many of us struggle to sit in the discomfort of “challenging” emotions like these, so you may become more inclined to turn towards coping strategies or ways of self-soothing to avoid or numb these feelings when they arise. Disordered eating is a “self-soothing” strategy itself, meaning it can create the illusion that it’s making it easier for you to deal with these uncomfortable emotions and internal experiences, by turning more of your focus and emphasis towards your disordered eating habits instead.

You may use disordered eating to manage feelings of disconnection by:

• Avoiding social situations involving food. This gives you the perfect “excuse” to further isolate yourself or withdraw from your relationships, as it limits the kind of interactions and experiences you can have with others significantly. By isolating yourself and steering clear of these occasions, you can avoid vulnerability and the need to trust or be open with others. 

• Hiding the “unhealthy” behaviours you’re engaging in due to shame, guilt and anxiety. This means your low self-worth and self-esteem can escalate, and your relationships flat line. You can’t foster deep connections, because you aren’t comfortable with anyone truly seeing or knowing you.

• Convincing yourself you don’t have time or capacity to nurture the relationships in your life, because all your energy is taken up by thoughts (and habits) around food and eating.

• Withdrawing from a romantic partner or feeling like your body image is compromising your sex life (read more here).

• Always needing to be “busy” or doing something to suppress or avoid noticing any difficult emotions. This can involve excessive exercise, obsessing over food, or distracting yourself with disordered thoughts and behaviours.

• Trying to change your appearance by altering your eating and food choices to prevent rejection. Instead of dealing with your uncomfortable feelings of disconnection, these behaviours regulate and suppress your emotions and encourage you to focus on the disordered patterns instead.

  
  Research shows that people with eating disorders often find it much more challenging to sit with or regulate their emotions. So in many cases, these disordered patterns often emerge as a way to squash or silence any overwhelming or “negative” feelings - which only worsens the experience of being disconnected and isolated over time. It’s a vicious cycle.

The interesting part about using disordered eating or eating disorder behaviours to avoid feelings of disconnection and loneliness in your relationships is that, at their core, eating disorders are emotional disorders. They are essentially born from a need to cope with or avoid emotional pain or distress. So when you try to use logic to combat or fight against these disordered behaviours or patterns, it’s unlikely to be strong enough. In fact, if you get locked in a debate between your logical and emotional brain, your eating disorder beliefs may become more rigid and controlling, and your habits might start to feel even more essential to help you cope or self-soothe when experiencing difficult feelings. When you feel disconnected in your relationships, it can be hard to feel validated in your emotional experiences, meaning the disordered eating patterns can seem like the only way to numb out or avoid the distress this can cause.

The Consequences of Disconnection Causing Disordered Eating

1. Feeling like you struggle to connect with others.

Do you feel like you struggle to make friends, or connect with existing ones? Do you find yourself avoiding social situations or new people because you’re convinced you’re “not interesting” or “don’t have anything to talk about”? Do you believe most people just “don’t like you”?

These are common experiences of people who turn to disordered eating to numb their feelings of disconnection or loneliness in their relationships. People who experience disordered eating often prefer to suffer alone, or in silence. This is because you may find it difficult to trust the people who love them, you’re unwilling to be vulnerable and open about how you’re feeling (especially when it comes to talking about food or feeling lonely!), or you feel ashamed of the behaviours you’re engaging in and don’t feel able to discuss them. These patterns all result in social withdrawal, and further feelings of disconnection.

Over time, as the disordered eating behaviours progress and really wrap their arms tightly around you, you may tend to isolate yourself more and more. This can be due to the fact you want to avoid your loved ones noticing your patterns or becoming concerned, you don’t want to find yourself in any situations where you need to eat in public (so it becomes almost easier to avoid the people closest to you altogether), or you feel ashamed or stressed about your appearance.

2. Your disordered habits thrive and worsen.

People struggling with disordered eating often also experience very low self-worth, which often makes you feel like they don’t deserve deep, enriching relationships in your life. You may feel like you’re an imposition on the people you love, or a chore to be around. You might be convinced you have “no life”, or nothing interesting to say or share. These feelings can all encourage further self-isolation from those around you, worsening your low self-esteem and increasing your likelihood of turning to disordered patterns to numb or avoid these feelings.

If you’re worried about the people you love finding out about your struggles with disordered eating, and being angry or disappointed in your behaviours, this can also increase your chances of isolating yourself and becoming disconnected in your relationships. 

Disconnection, and its tendency to lead to self-isolation, means your disordered habits will most often thrive and worsen over time. Left to their own devices in the secrecy and privacy you’ve created for them, your disordered behaviours can go unchecked. It becomes easier to justify the unhealthy patterns you’re stuck in, because no one around you is modelling a healthier alternative, or holding you to account and checking in on you.

Over time, the disconnection you’re creating for yourself leaves you without a support system. This often means your wellbeing and self-esteem fall further, and it becomes harder and harder to cope with the challenges of daily life - so naturally, your disordered patterns become more and more “important” to you to allow you to cope.

3. You can’t form new or enriching relationships.

When you start to feel like you’ve lost the important relationships in your life, you may feel very lonely. Ideally, you’d want to focus on building new, deep relationships in your life, but feelings of low self-worth and isolation often mean that you feel incapable and undeserving of finding new people who love and accept you. Instead of putting in the time and effort it takes to form new connections, you’re likely to withdraw altogether and give up on yourself and your relationships.

4. You may avoid getting treatment or support for your disordered eating.

If you’re navigating disordered eating, you may not recognise your behaviours as being unhealthy or dangerous. You might have convinced yourself you’re working on “being healthier”, or you may just ignore the negative impacts of your habits. The more you feel disconnected from your relationships, the fewer people are around you to challenge your thoughts and patterns. This means you’re able to avoid seeking professional support for longer, and your disordered patterns can continue to worsen and thrive.

This is very dangerous as eating disorders have high mortality rates, and the longer they’re left unchecked, the longer it tends to take to fully recover from them. They pose enormous risks to both your physical and mental health. Disordered eating hugely increases your risk of developing a serious eating disorder, so it’s something you want to address as soon as possible.

Overcoming Disconnection to Foster Healthy Relationships and Recover from Disordered Eating

The good news is, you can overcome feeling disconnected in your relationships, allowing you to foster healthy connection and support systems. In turn, these connections can help you repair your relationships with food and your body, and support your recovery from disordered eating. Here’s how.

5. Seek professional support. 

First and foremost, reaching out to a professional experienced in disordered eating will help you feel understood, and prove that you’re not alone in your struggles. Many others have gone through the same experiences, and have managed to recover and rebuild positive, deep connections. Feeling validated and supported by a professional can help you become more willing to reach out to new and existing connections in your life. It can help you feel able to invest the time and energy required to foster and deepen new and existing relationships. A professional will also be able to help you navigate social anxiety or withdrawal, and feel more comfortable connecting and getting vulnerable with new and existing people in your life.

It’s really important to get the help of a professional when recovering from an eating disorder or disordered eating.

6. Give your loved ones the gift of vulnerability and openness.

It may feel like you’re burdening your loved ones when you open up to them about the struggles you’re navigating, but try to flip this mentality on its head. Consider this: what if you’re actually giving them a gift by being more open and honest? You’re giving your loved ones your trust, and the chance to properly know and understand you. And these things are the crucial ingredients to any lasting, genuine connection.

If you’re able to, ask your loved ones to support you in your recovery from disordered eating. Tell them how you’re feeling, what you need from them, what you want them to understand. Even by hearing you, your friends and family will feel more connected to you and you’ll feel far less alone. There’s no shame in what you’re going through - shame only thrives in silence, so speak up and give yourself the chance to be supported and cared for by your loved ones as you work on recovering.

7. Build positive relationships in many different forms.

Don’t limit yourself to investing only in romantic relationships. Put effort and time into nurturing your family relationships, platonic friendships, relationships with colleagues, romantic connections, and everything in between. Each connection serves a different purpose in your life, so give yourself the best chance at developing all the deep connections you need to thrive and feel supported, by broadening your definition of which relationships deserve your time and attention.

Your support system, made up of all these different forms of relationships, gives you the strength to deal with the ups and downs of recovery. The more sources of love and support you have, the better you’re able to withstand the inevitable challenges of disordered eating and recovery. And when you do recover, this gives you the opportunity to form even deeper, more meaningful and open connections in your future.

8. Find your people.

Consider joining support groups, or seeking out like-minded people who may be navigating the same struggles as you are, or have previously recovered from disordered eating themselves. These people can help you overcome the feelings of being different, misunderstood, and alone. They can allow you to realise you’re not the only one struggling with disordered eating, and you can speak up and ask for help as you work to heal.

9. Engage in hobbies unrelated to food.

Begin to broaden your interests and hobbies beyond food. Explore and get curious about other aspects of yourself - who are you beyond your disordered eating habits? Invest in aspects of your personality that you may have forgotten about, or stopped nurturing long ago. If you’re struggling to think of anything, revisit your childhood self. What did you like to do? Who were you? How did the people around you describe you? How can you tap into aspects of young You today?

As you dive into other aspects of yourself, you may naturally form relationships with other like-minded people along the way, helping you feel understood and connected.

If you want to support a loved one navigating disordered eating…

Remember, eating disorders and disordered eating often occur alongside other mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression. The isolating nature of these conditions can drive your loved one to feel alone, and therefore further withdraw from their connections and relationships. If you’re noticing this pattern in someone you care about, you can still support them while respecting their boundaries and current experience. Try these tips:

• Validate your loved ones’ emotional experiences and struggles, without trying to rationalise or provide a logical alternative to their behaviour. As we discussed earlier, eating disorders are emotional disorders, so by presenting a logical debate against someone’s eating disorder mind, you can make them feel like you don’t understand or support them. Instead, validate their emotional distress - without agreeing with their disordered habits - and let them know you see them and want to support them however they need and want you to.

• Similarly, don’t try and “solve” their problems. Instead, just listen to them. Give them a safe space to share their innermost thoughts and feelings without judgement. Don’t offer advice or solutions, just hear them out and let them know you care.

• Don’t assume you know what support they need. Ask them how they want you to show up and help, and respect whatever boundaries they put in place. Some people will want more support than others, so really listen to what they’re asking from you. Sometimes, a simple text expressing your love for them is all they need, while others might prefer more practical help, such as helping to find a professional to support them through their recovery.

• Make sure you’re looking after yourself. While it’s wonderful you want to help your loved one, ensure you have your own support system in place too. You can’t continue to support someone else if you’re also feeling drained, overwhelmed and alone. Ask others around you for help when you need it, and always be sure to check in with yourself and how you’re feeling.

• Remember that recovery is a roller coaster. It can feel like one step forward, and two steps back, so be sure to avoid criticising your loved one if they voice that they’re struggling or seem to be slipping back into negative patterns. Instead, reinforce their strength for recognising this, and acknowledge their commitment to their recovery efforts. Encourage them to be curious and consider what they can learn from their setbacks, and support them in getting back on track and re-prioritising their recovery efforts. Remind them what they’re working towards, with gentleness and compassion.

• Most of all, remember that if you’re supporting someone who feels alone or disconnected in their relationships, the best thing you can do is to show up consistently for that person, and make them feel secure in the knowledge that they are loved, heard and seen. This is so powerful for someone recovering from disordered eating. Often, it doesn’t take much to make them feel supported and understood. But it does require persistent effort, respect, and listening to them when they tell you what they actually need from you.

Why connection is so essential for recovery

It’s important to note that connection is a key contributor to recovery from disordered eating. While every person’s recovery journey is unique, attempting to recover alone without a support system reinforces the isolation and loneliness of these illnesses, and can make healing far more difficult. Remember you deserve the love and support of your community and loved ones - you don’t have to do this alone. Even if it feels uncomfortable initially, asking for and accepting help - both professional and personal/social - is often needed to break the disordered cycle and habits you may feel stuck in.

Most people who have recovered from an eating disorder say that creating healthy relationships with loved ones was essential to the recovery process. Connection offers unconditional love, support, trust and hope, all of which help to establish healthier coping strategies to replace disordered patterns, and can provide the strength required to fight back against the disordered behaviours. This connection can look many different ways, but at its core it leaves you feeling understood, cared for, and accepted.

Eating disorders flourish when you isolate yourself and withdraw from the people who love you. They don’t survive easily when you’re surrounded by people who care and support you, including your personal relationships and your community of professional support. It can be scary to release disordered patterns, especially if they’ve become your primary coping strategy to numb feelings of disconnection. But remember, you always have the opportunity to form new relationships and invest in existing ones. Replacing your disordered habits with healthier coping strategies and positive relationships allows you to meet your emotional needs in a more positive way, so you can leave the damaging patterns behind and truly thrive.