Connection Is Our First Form Of Nourishment
Many people with eating disorders experience a deep yearning for connection. This stems from not receiving the warmth and safety of healthy attachment. Connection is not just a want—it's a fundamental need, especially for those struggling with disordered eating.
Why Connection Matters for Eating Disorders
When thinking about eating disorders, it's essential to look beyond food. Our primary source of nourishment is relationships—how we connect with others shapes our experience of nourishment in all forms, including food. Humans, as social beings, need connection to survive and thrive.
The way we relate to ourselves and the world around us is heavily influenced by our early relationships with caregivers, societal norms, and cultural structures. These relationships not only shape our emotional well-being but also impact our relationship with food, another crucial form of nourishment.
How Relationships Influence Our Connection with Food
Food provides the physical energy and life force our bodies need. Just like connection, eating is an intimate act—taking something from the outside and bringing it inside us. Our relationship with food often mirrors the way we connect with others.
For those with eating disorders, this relationship can be distorted. How we were taught to relate to food is often tied to the attachment patterns we developed in early life. If we didn’t receive the care we needed from caregivers or society, it can affect our nervous system and lead us to believe the world is unsafe and nourishment is scarce.
The Role of the Nervous System in Eating Disorders
Over the course of our first seven years, the development of the ventral portion of our autonomic nervous system forms. This is established via the act of co-regulation, which is the quality of connection that primary caregivers offer their children.
By “borrowing” our caregiver’s nervous system, our inner source of regulation, how we deal with stress, and how we relate to our emotions is developed. The primary wiring of the autonomic nervous system shapes and molds how we connect with the world and others, and how we connect with ourselves.
As children, when we don’t receive the emotional nourishment we need, it dysregulates our nervous system. We may develop beliefs such as, "My needs don't matter," or "I can't trust others to meet my needs." In response, we find ways to survive, even if they are unhealthy.
This is where disordered eating comes in. The behaviors associated with eating disorders are often the body’s way of communicating unmet needs. They are attempts to find the connection, safety, and regulation that were missing in our early attachments.
Healing Through Connection: A Path to Recovery
Recovery from an eating disorder involves adding the support and resources that were missing in the attachment system. By creating safety in the body, we can begin to heal the parts of ourselves that are holding on to past traumas. This helps the body grow its capacity to hold the fullness of our emotions and experiences.
Connection is hardwired into us, and it's through safe, nurturing relationships that we develop a sense of self and learn how to relate to the world. Healing from disordered eating involves reconnecting with our bodies and learning to trust again.
The Impact of Early Trauma on Eating Disorders
For many people with eating disorders, early developmental trauma plays a significant role. Misattuned co-regulation from caregivers during childhood can lead to feelings of shame, confusion, and disconnection from the body.
When our caregivers fail to reflect our emotions accurately or meet our needs, we start to doubt our own experiences. This can lead to looking outside of ourselves for validation and disconnecting from our true feelings, bodies, and intuition.
Eating disorder behaviours are simply the body telling us what is missing in the attachment system, and the behaviours are in some way an attempt to meet those needs and wants in the ways that the body knows how.
Understanding Eating Disorders as Survival Mechanisms
Disordered eating behaviors are not dysfunctional strategies but are strategies of survival. They are ways to avoid the pain and fear associated with intimacy and connection. Many people with eating disorders have been hurt in relationships, and these behaviors act as protective mechanisms to prevent further harm.
However, these survival strategies prevent us from fully connecting with ourselves, others, and life. Recovery is about bringing compassion to the body and relearning how to connect in safe, nourishing ways.
Reflecting on Our Relationship with Food and Connection
Eating disorders mirror one’s ability to connect with oneself and with others.
Take a moment to reflect on your relationship with food and connection:
How connected do you feel to your hunger and fullness cues?
How attuned are you to your needs, desires, and emotions?
How do you digest your emotions?
Do you feel any shame around wanting?
How comfortable are you with intimacy and allowing others in?
Complete the sentence: When I feel connected, I am…
Complete the sentence: When I feel connected to the world around me, I notice in my body…
Complete the sentence: When I feel safe, I connect to…
These questions can help bring awareness to the patterns that shape your relationship with food and connection.
As we restore capacity, trust, and safety with our bodies and with others, the eating disorder strategies soften.
Connection becomes available within and with the outside world, and with that a source of regulation, empowerment and nourishment.
Creating Safety in the Body for Healing
To heal from an eating disorder, it's crucial to create safety in the body. When the body feels safe, the protective layers begin to soften, and we can open up to connection. Safety allows us to experience the present moment, which is where healing happens.
By connecting to the present moment and the sensations in the body, we can start to heal the underlying wounds.
In order to access a sense of connection with our bodies, in relationship, and in the world at large, it requires enough safety.
Opening to connect is vulnerable. This is why safety is key to support this process of softening and opening up.
Reflect on a time when you have felt a sense of safety. Who was with you, where were you and what were you doing? How did you feel? How did you relate to food and eating and your body? How present was the eating disorder voice?
When the body recognises safety in the external environment and feels that internally, there is an embodied alignment between the outside and the inside experience that registers “I can put the guard down”.
When we feel safe, there is an opportunity for the protective layers to slowly dethaw, including the defensive walls of the eating disorder - and we can let in the nourishment of connection.
The ruminative, looping mind that is associated with a nervous system that is in fear and dysregulation quietens, making space for the body innate intelligence towards healing to guide.
An eating disorder cannot exist when we reside in the present moment.
The eating disorder feels most protected when we are focused cognitively on the past or future (e.g. thinking about a meal from the past or what we will eat in the future) rather than the present - which is where the body lives.
To connect to the present moment means we have to connect with the body, which includes all of the feelings and sensations that it holds.
Connecting to the body is the gateway to recovery. And opening to this connection needs to be done slowly so that trust and safety can be firmly established.
The Role of Connection in Thriving Beyond Eating Disorders
True recovery is about learning to receive (rather than restrict) nourishment in all forms—through food, relationships, creativity, and love.
We are allowed, deserving and worthy of these forms of nourishment.
Part of eating disorder recovery is learning how to deepen our embodied presence, to safely grow the capacity to let more of life in whilst staying regulated and connected to the body and the environment around us.
We need connection to not just survive, but to thrive. Attuning to our bodies with self-compassion and forming healthy, supportive relationships helps us build the safety and trust we need so that the eating disorder can let go of us.