Anxiety and binge eating are two intertwined phenomena that affect countless individuals worldwide. Anxiety, characterized by excessive worry, fear, and restlessness, can create a host of emotional and physical challenges. To deal with these challenges, one particularly prevalent coping mechanism is binge eating. Using food for comfort is a normal and valid coping skill. However, when food or eating become our only coping skill, or the way we eat is causing us significant distress, this may mean it’s time to seek help. The link between anxiety and binge eating is multifaceted, with anxiety often serving as a trigger for episodes of excessive food consumption. This intricate relationship has significant implications for individuals’ well-being, and recognizing them as interconnected issues is an important start.
What Is Binge Eating?
First thing’s first; let’s define binge eating. Binge eating disorder (BED) is defined as “…recurrent episodes of rapid, uncontrolled eating accompanied by a sense of loss of control and psychological distress.” Binge Eating is a common eating disorder, and episodes of bingeing often occur outside of feelings of hunger or fullness. More often, bingeing occurs in response to triggers, like stressful events or feelings.
Anxiety and Binge Eating
Anxiety disorders are common for people with binge eating disorder, occurring in 12-70% of cases of BED. Just as anxiety and binge eating are tied together, treatment for binge eating, and treatment for anxiety, are often also tied together.
The Anxious-Avoidance Cycle
In an anxiety cycle, the anxious person will first experience a trigger. This trigger sets off an anxiety response, which is distressing and uncomfortable. This discomfort often prompts someone to seek distractions, unrelated comforts, or ways to escape the anxiety. This is called avoidance. In the short term, avoidance will help reduce anxiety, distress, and discomfort, but because it does not help address the cause of the anxiety, the relief is temporary. Future triggers can cause an even larger anxiety response, and the cycle starts again.
Binge eating can be an avoidance behavior. The relief of dopamine released by the large amount of food consumed, and the distraction and dissociation involved in consuming a large amount of food, can provide a break, mentally, from anxiety. That temporary relief does not tackle the root cause of the anxiety, though, and so the anxiety cycle continues, and binge eating continues. That said, working to resolve the root cause of anxiety can also work to resolve the root cause of binge eating.
Binge Eating and Emotional Dysregulation
Binge eating isn’t merely a result of an anxiety cycle, however; it is driven by a series of things, including low self esteem and negative self-talk. Binge eating can also stem from emotional dysregulation. Emotional dysregulation is an issue where emotions are felt too strongly or too weakly in comparison to what might be the “expected” or “appropriate” response. When you’re dysregulated, emotional responses may be extreme and overwhelming, and they can be highly disruptive to your life.
Binge eating can follow any of these patterns, particularly when they play a part in escalating anxieties and driving us to avoidance. Binge eating can also lead to a sense of feeling “out of control,” or feelings of guilt and shame afterwards.
Is There Treatment For Binge Eating?
Anxiety isn’t unending, and both anxiety and binge eating are treatable, especially in tandem. Digging into the root of anxiety issues through therapy can help stem the cycle that leads to binge eating. Dialectical behavioral therapy is a goal-oriented therapy model, that has you take a look at both how things are, and how they can be, balancing acceptance and change in a way that brings you closer to your goals, and closer to wellbeing.
Treatment for Binge Eating, just like for any eating disorder, is nuanced and includes much more than just working on anxiety, but working on your anxiety can be an important piece of the puzzle. Mindfulness exercises and holistic treatment practices such as yoga, meditation, whole-body check-ins, breathing exercises, journaling, and nature walks, can help you self-regulate, both when anxious and at any time.
Healing in community
It’s worth building a community around you for support, to enjoy good times together, and to lean on each other in hard times. Sometimes it can be hard to find understanding from others not familiar with anxiety or binge eating, so finding and sharing resources that detail how your friends and loved ones can best help you, can go a long way toward building community around you. You can cultivate kindness toward yourself as a part of self care, encouraging positive self talk when you can, and halting cycles of negative self talk in their tracks.
Anxiety cycles and binge eating often go hand in hand, but if you’re experiencing binge eating as an avoidance behavior, help is available. Building a system of support for yourself, with community, therapy, positive self talk, and a more centered and calm approach to the world through mindfulness, can help you work your way out of anxiety cycling and binge eating, and into a life that you lead on your terms.
THIRA Health Can Help with Anxiety and Binge Eating
THIRA Health provides treatment for binge eating in Washington state. We use DBT to help people struggling with emotional dysregulation, which can include mood disorders like anxiety, and subsequent avoidance behaviors like binge eating. Contact THIRA Health today to see if we’d be a good fit for your needs. We want help you to live as fully as you can.
