Is It All About Control?
You’ve probably heard it said: “Eating disorders are a way to maintain control.”
The connection between control and eating disorders is a phenomenon people talk about all the time. It’s not untrue, but honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of it. Here’s why.
The biggest problem with the idea is that it’s so vague. What does “control” mean? Control of outside events? Control of how we feel? Control of other people and outcomes? What does control actually mean, and in what ways do eating disorders help maintain control?
To me, saying that all eating disorders are a way to maintain control just seems like a reductionist statement. 🤷🏻♀️
I think the most important thing to realize about control is that, even if you don’t have an eating disorder, a lot of behaviors are used to maintain some semblance of control. OCD, anxiety, and even people trying to control conversations are all examples. In this episode , we’ll explore what our behaviors are trying to control, and what control really means.
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External vs. Internal Control
There is a difference between trying to control what’s going on externally and what’s going on internally.
The reason I differentiate these two is because I think a lot of the time, we’re not feeling a need to control externally (the things going on in the world and with other people). Rather, we’re feeling the need to control our internal experience.
When something distressing happens externally, we all react differently. For instance, something difficult might happen that causes us to feel anxiety, and that anxiety might feel intolerable. That intolerable level of anxiety is actually what we want to control, or in more accurate terms, manage.
So the “control” here is all about managing our internal systems so that we feel okay, and we’re maintaining some form of homeostasis internally. We just want to feel calm… And the word that we use for that here is “control.”
Acceptance
But the idea that we can control our emotions – anger, disappointment, resentment – and the idea that we can control what’s going on externally – with other people, our health, the state of the world – is completely an illusion.
When we TRY to control these things, we’re fighting a losing battle. It will never happen. And quite frankly, we don’t want to control our emotions. We need to be able to feel them safely in order to navigate life.
So the goal we usually strive for is an acceptance of what we can’t control. The hardest part for us as humans is to accept that we can’t control the external events, AND that we can’t control the emotions we have.
Let’s focus on the second part for a minute.
We have two options:
We can try to stuff down our feelings. When we do that, the feelings will usually get bigger and start to feel problematic.
We can look at our emotions as information.
When we start to look at emotions as information, and use that information to know what to do next… that’s the acceptance.
To begin the process of acceptance, you might ask yourself questions like:
What are my emotions trying to tell me?
Why are they cropping up?
What can I learn from them?
What do I need to do next?
The other piece of acceptance is accepting the things outside of our control like what other people think of us, or anything that happens in the world. Of course, that’s easier said than done.. But it all circles back to how we react to external chaos.We need to trust ourselves to tolerate discomfort in all forms of emotions. If external chaos makes us feel something internally that we do not trust ourselves to tolerate, that is where the “needing to control” comes in.
So, we’re not exactly striving for control; we’re striving for calmness, organization.
How This Manifests in Eating Disorders
When things feel chaotic internally and we turn to (or away) from food to handle our emotions, that’s a response to our internal experience.
If someone’s going for a binge, for example, food is literally soothing to them. Someone might feel emotions that feel intolerable (hmmm, maybe guilt? Or anger?) and not know what to do with them… and turning to food is a way to cope with that. The control that we’re looking for here is a feeling of soothing (again, “control” isn’t my favorite word here, but it’s a way to conceptualize it).
Very often, we hear people say restriction is a means of control, because it’s the only thing they can say “yes” or “no” to and have complete agency over
This is a way to step into having agency over your body in a way you don’t have WITHOUT restricting… and that is a form of “control.” You get to choose to say yes or no to external stimuli (metaphorically with food) and to any and all emotions.
These are just a couple of examples of how the need to control our internal experience manifests in disordered eating. These examples don’t have to match perfectly to your experience; but they are things to consider as you begin to think creatively about how this concept is playing out in your life.
Tweetable Quotes
“The idea that we can control how we feel, which emotions emerge… and the idea that we can control what’s going on externally with other people, our health, the state of the world… is completely an illusion.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“Striving for internal calmness rather than internal chaos is the goal of working toward some semblance of ‘control.’” – Rachelle Heinemann
“Let’s try to lean into it. Let’s try to use our emotions as information and be okay with whatever reactions are happening internally.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“We’re not striving for control; we’re striving for calmness.” – Rachelle Heinemann
More From Rachelle
Hey there! I’m Rachelle, the host of the Understanding Disordered Eating Podcast. As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I work with clients to make sense of life’s messy emotional experiences.
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