The Relationship Between Perfectionism and Eating Disorders
Did you know that multiple studies have shown that individuals with high tendencies of perfectionism carry a significant risk of struggling with an eating disorder? While this doesn’t mean that all perfectionists do or will have eating disorders, it’s important to know that it’s a risk factor. Knowledge helps us prevent and protect, so today we’ll share some connections between perfectionism and eating disorders.
Low Self-Esteem and Self-Criticism
Young women and teen girls who battle low self-esteem tend to participate in high levels of self-criticism. Without tools in place to challenge self-criticism and find healthier, more positive self-messaging, it becomes easy to latch on to harmful coping strategies like perfectionism. This can lead to restrictive dieting, which thrives on perfectionism, to try and make a change to reduce the feelings of inadequacy and the noise of self-criticism. The danger here is that without the tools to address and improve self-esteem and criticism directly, disordered eating behaviors may become reinforced if they lead to outcomes that result in compliments, attention, and perceived external favor based on changes to their lifestyle or appearance.
The best way to combat this? Invest in tools and strategies that help boost self-esteem and challenge yourself not to engage in self-criticism. It gets less realistic to hold yourself to harmful standards when you experience more love and acceptance for yourself. Getting professional help, whether in group therapy or a professional setting, can help you learn how to redirect negative thoughts and train yourself to seek out things you can love and celebrate about yourself. Perfectionism and eating disorders both struggle to thrive when self-love and compassion are present.
Personal and Societal Standards
The influence of societal standards has a profound effect on eating disorders in teen girls. If you add extremely high personal standards into the mix, it can be a recipe for trouble when the ambition isn’t focused on the right things. In the age of social media, where editing apps and filters run rampant, we now battle a new set of societal standards that don’t even reflect reality. Suddenly, young women and teen girls are chasing a look that isn’t possible without digital modification, yet expecting their natural bodies to meet the standard. Can you see how this is a recipe for failure? It keeps perfectionists in a cycle of always striving for something that’s not attainable and fuels a shame cycle that asks us to repeatedly abandon ourselves in exchange for the hope of one day “making it” to an ideal form that doesn’t even exist in reality. The never-ending chase for perfection highly correlates with behaviors like restriction, over-exercising, and bingeing as young women try time and again to make unsustainable behaviors sustainable in order to meet a goal whose goalposts society is always moving.
All-or-Nothing Thinking
Another red flag of perfectionism that contributes to eating disorders and disordered eating in teen girls and young women is all-or-nothing thinking. An example of this might be rather than the effort to figure out how to have a balanced and appropriate amount of sugar in one’s diet, it may feel easier or morally superior to simply remove sugars entirely. While some nutrition professionals might argue that avoiding added sugars can be helpful, especially for those with particular health needs, the fact is that it’s nearly impossible and highly unsustainable to avoid sugar forever. Cutting out natural sugars, like those in fruit, robs your body of essential minerals, vitamins, fiber, and fuel for energy to do the activities that you love. All-or-nothing thinking is a slippery slope to rigid food rules that can reduce quality of life and severely harm health over time.
Desire for Control
When life gets difficult, most of us look for what we can control. For lots of young women and teen girls, food and exercise are a first choice. This is exacerbated by societal messaging that encourages people dealing with stress and emotional pain to sort of isolate and work on themselves, then emerge as a whole new person. The reality is that most healing can’t be done in isolation, and that mindset fuels a predisposition to disordered eating behaviors. While it’s not inherently wrong to use difficult times as opportunities to better care for yourself, it’s important to be very clear on what care is and what harm is disguised as care. Moving your body more by going for walks in the sun is extremely beneficial to your heart, your brain, and your mood. However, forcing yourself to go to the gym and run to atone for the latte you had this morning, even when you’re exhausted, can be harmful. Food doesn’t need to be earned, and you deserve rest, not punishment.
Challenge Perfectionism to Heal
It’s important to know that while women are particularly prone to perfectionism due to societal expectations and pressures, perfectionism is not a prison we have to consent to living in for life. Perfectionism can be treated, quieted, and released. Receiving help from a therapist, like Emily at Blossom Into A Better You in St. Pete, can be instrumental in building tools to identify perfectionism within ourselves and put a stop to it. Therapy is also helpful in identifying inflexible thinking that can lead to food rules, releasing attachment to societal standards, and improving self-esteem. In many ways, these behaviors all fuel one another, and when you toss in something like our relationship with food, which we literally need to survive, it can become overwhelming quickly. Seeking support is an incredible act of self-care that you should be proud of.
Ready to take the next step? Contact us today to find out more about therapy for perfectionist behaviors or struggles with disordered eating.
