From Survival to Healing: Moving Beyond Eating Disorders as Coping Skills 

by Cheyanne Brunner, MA, LPC, NCC

You may have read that title and thought, “wait, what do you mean an eating disorder is a coping skill?” Bear with me as we break this down.

What Are Eating Disorders?

Eating disorders are patterns of behavior around food and eating that negatively impact physical, emotional, and mental health. They involve disordered eating habits such as skipping meals, reducing portion sizes, overexercising, eating more than what feels comfortable, and more. When these behaviors become severe or impair functioning, they can develop into an eating disorder.

What are Coping Skills?

Coping skills are strategies people use for when an emotion or thought feels distressing or uncomfortable. They can be categorized as adaptive or maladaptive and exist along a continuum. 

• Adaptive coping skills provide temporary relief and promote problem solving, resilience, and
• Maladaptive coping skills provide temporary relief but ultimately make things worse by increasing stress, isolation, and self-doubt. Examples include avoidance and burying emotions.

Alright, So An Eating Disorder is Only a Maladaptive Coping Skill?

Well, not quite. Eating disorders often develop for complex reasons like trauma, shame, cultural pressures, or a need to regain control. In many ways, an eating disorder is adaptive at first because it protects from these overwhelming emotions and experiences. 

Over time though, the eating disorder creates more harm as it intensifies shame, reduces feelings of control, and deepens distress. In this way, it becomes maladaptive and keeps people stuck in its cycle. Part of breaking the cycle involves learning to use adaptive coping skills that serve the same function but without the damage. 

What Can Be Done?

If you see yourself in this post, here are a few ideas you can explore to determine what works best for your wants, needs, and values:

1. Practice Self-Kindness and Self-Compassion - Recovery can feel hard and overwhelming sometimes. Remind yourself:
   1. Your eating disorder once helped you when you had no other tools. 
   2. Unraveling an eating disorder and building new ways of living takes time. 
   3. There will be days when you lean on the eating disorder, but this does not mean recovery is impossible. 
   4. Even acknowledging the disordered eating behaviors is a powerful step and takes immense strength. 

2. Experiment with Adaptive Coping Skills - You can try adding adaptive coping skills in place of or alongside eating disorder behaviors. The point of this is to add adaptive coping skills to your toolkit so they feel more readily available and routine.
   1. In place of can look like distracting yourself with a hobby or calling a friend until the urge to do an eating disorder behavior passes.
   2. Alongside can look like practicing 5 minutes of mindfulness after doing the eating disorder behavior. 

3. Reach Out for Professional Support - Unbound Recovery specializes in eating disorder-informed care and services. We can help you process life experiences, navigate food rules and mealtimes, build adaptive skills, and so much more. 

You do not need to recover on your own.