![]() ![]() They’ve been through so much already that they’d rather avoid any more hurt. Emotional Eatingįor some, weight is a consequence of emotional eating. As a teenager, she binged and made herself throw up before going out with her boyfriend because she felt dirty, anxious, and guilty about her sexual feelings. Another patient had been abused by her alcoholic father starting at age 7. She was scared to tell her mother that her uncle was sexually molesting her. Her mother accused her of eating too many raviolis at the school cafeteria. This, in turn, may bring back painful memories that are difficult to cope with.Ī patient described how she gained 30 pounds at the age of 8. ![]() Indeed, some large men and women, who are survivors of sexual abuse, are afraid to lose weight because it will render them feeling smaller and childlike. Other survivors obsessively diet, starve, or purge to make their bodies ‘perfect.’ A perfect body is their attempt to feel more powerful, invulnerable, and in control, so as not to re-experience the powerlessness they felt as children. In this way, they try to de-sexualize themselves. Many survivors of sexual abuse often work to become very fat or very thin in an attempt to render themselves unattractive. It is their confusion and uncertainty about their inner perceptions that leads them to focus on the food. People who have been sexually abused may turn to food to relieve a wide range of different states of tension that have nothing to do with hunger. Sexual abuse violates the boundaries of the self so dramatically that inner sensations of hunger, fatigue, or sexuality become difficult to identify. Sexual abuse can have many different effects on the eating habits and body image of survivors. What is the connection between sexual abuse and developing an eating disorder? The answer is guilt, shame, anesthesia, self-punishment, soothing, comfort, protection and rage. On sexual abuse and eating, Mary Anne Cohen, CSW, the director of The New York Center for Eating Disorders, writes:
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