Eating disorder behaviors can go on for a long time in secret, and maybe that is the case with you: nobody

knows but you. Or maybe, despite your baggy clothes, your pals or parents are starting to comment on your skinniness and starting to watch what you eat. Are folks starting to figure out a secret you have been keeping?

It isn’t really about the food, is it? Food—or not eating the food—is just the arena you have discovered and chosen for dealing with some of your feelings, right? You could do it some other way, but this way is nearby, it works and you like it.

Maybe somewhere along the line you used to feel dull and heavy and joyless—that is to say depressed—and you got so you didn’t care if you ate or not. You just lost interest in eating. Nothing tasted good or delighted you. Then after a few days something surprising happened: your appetite just disappeared. You didn’t have to discipline yourself not to eat, or not want food. It wasn’t like a diet where you were constantly trying to resist your hunger pangs. There weren’t any hunger pangs there. It was easy not to eat. In fact it felt cool, even powerful. Your tummy was tight and flat and you were definitely in charge of food and eating. It was not in charge of you. You could go for days on cups of tea and a few crackers… And there is something exhilarating about that, eh? They are exciting, edgy, and leave you feeling that tingle of aliveness through your chest and body…a pleasing electrical current which feels much better than depression or despair or boredom or aloneness or unwantedness.

In a way, do you feel powerful—even a little superior?—because you don’t have to eat? Some girls have. (Some guys are anorexic, as well, but mostly this is an area that girls have discovered.) You may also notice other feelings arise as you continue to back away from eating…

Not all at once, and maybe you aren’t even aware of them all. Some girls like becoming thin because that is what they see in the models for Abercrombie or on TV. Some girls don’t like to see their own hips and breasts emerging, so an eating disorder keeps them looking less feminine. They are holding back their emerging sexual identity as a woman.

Ironically, a lot of the same can be accomplished by overeating—the complete opposite of anorexia. The anorexic regulates her feelings by not eating, whereas a binger alters her feeling states by stuffing herself and keeping herself occupied with the pursuing and gorging and tasting of food and the distracting feelings of fullness. Some girls binge then unbinge by causing themselves to vomit what they have just eaten.

All of these and other varieties of eating disorders are unhealthy ways a female (usually) tries to not feel what she is feeling. She is desperately trying to cope with some unconscious or barely conscious pain by intensely focusing on her eating—or not eating—behaviors.

If this is you, or one of your friends, or you and one of your friends, what can you do? In my experience girls who have eating disorders usually don’t want to stop. They don’t want to be found out, and they would prefer to continue. The person who has the eating disorder does not see it as a PROBLEM, in fact she sees it as the SOLUTION to her problem—it is helping distract her from her pain.

So what can any of us do about that?

We help her find a new compulsion. She is showing us that she needs help, and when we see what a desperate, risky means she is resorting to, we start to get a feel for how much pressure she is feeling. After all, if she thinks that eating disorder behaviors are the SOLUTION and making her life BETTER, what sort of problem must she be struggling with internally?

Realize that this habit will not go away quickly. As unhealthy as it is, she has learned to rely on it and has found a measure of COMFORT in it. So expect her to take a while to learn to trust some other means of moderating how she feels. In time we hope to get her to face and deal with her pain in a more healthy way—ideally by opening up honestly about it to a person who is in position to be of real help. There will almost surely be starts and stops and relapses along the way.

You will probably not be able to get her to stop by reasoning with her on what she is doing to herself. But of course you should try. Help for a young person with an eating disorder probably means doing a lot of small things repeatedly. She should do some healthy reading about her condition. And she should hear about the injury she can do to herself from her family doctor.

She may find expressing herself in journal to be more helpful than anything she reads or what anyone tells her. The temporary use of antidepressants may be indicated. As much as you fear for her, try to contain your own reactions. If you seem too worried or excitable she will start to tell you what you want to hear rather than what is real for her. This is going to take a while.