Facebook Linkedin-in

Terms of Service

By using this website or contacting Arizona Connection Counseling PLLC, you agree to the following terms.

Use of Website

This website is intended to provide general information about our services. It is not a substitute for professional mental health care or medical advice.

Communications & Messaging

By submitting your information through our website, you agree that we may contact you via phone, email, or text message regarding appointments, inquiries, or follow-up communication.
Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply. You may reply STOP at any time to opt out of text messages.

Privacy

Your information is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We do not sell or share your personal information, including phone numbers, for marketing purposes.

Automated & AI-Assisted Messaging

Some communications may be sent using automated systems or AI-assisted tools. These are used only for general communication purposes.

Limitation of Liability

Arizona Connection Counseling PLLC is not liable for any damages arising from use of this website or communications.

Contact

If you have questions about these terms, please contact us through our website.

Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
  • Comfort, soothing, nurturance
  • Numbing, sedation, distraction
  • Attention, a cry for help
  • Discharge of tension, anger, rebellion
  • Predictability, structure, identity
  • Self-punishment or punishment of "the body"
  • Self-cleansing or self-purification
  • Protection or safety (through creation of a small or large body)
  • Avoidance of intimacy
  • Proof for self-blame instead of blaming others (for exampl, abusers)
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201703/eating-disorders-it-s-not-all-about-food