Last week I wrote about eating disorders and money for the first time. One thing the comments on Facebook and the post confirmed is that many people suffering from eating disorders also experience strange feelings/thoughts/ behaviours around money.
In this post I’m going to highlight a few of the comments that were made. If you didn’t read the first post on Anorexia and money you should read that one first.
Top comments:
“My relationship with money fluctuates from being a tightwad (I have stolen toilet rolls and…) to binge spending. Sometimes my relationship with money runs parallel to my ed, many times it is the opposite …”
This comment is important as it tells of irregular spending behavior that might be the mirror of what the eating disorder is doing in terms of food behaviour, but more importantly the fluctuations do coincide with eating disorder behavoiurs.
“I can also so relate to this with feeling not worthy of spending,as I’m always stressed about keeping money or having a specific amount kept away that I can’t go below,and sometimes I splurge on things I don’t really want or need in order to make myself feel better for that brief period,then I regret buying it,and I’m sure this is due to my eating disorder as I was never like this before my ED started 19yrs ago.”
While I disagree with the feeling of worthiness part — more on that below — this is a illustration of pre-eating disorder behaviour being very different from during eating disorder behaviour.
“In times when have been heavily restricted am more likely to wander and spend money on crap in poundland and primark…almost compensate for what I haven’t given myself in one way. Does that make sense?!”
Super interesting. The spending behaviour here mirroring the food behaviour.
“My daughter will vacillate between wanting to spend every penny imaginable, and denying herself what she needs…”
There were lots of comments and observations like this from parents too.
“My thought process has always been on the restrictive side. Even as a child I recall feeling super high when I self sacrificed. The more restriction and pain I could tolerate the stronger I felt and restricting spending was part of it. Still struggle with this and like you, big purchases like house car etc were not an issue but a dam tee shirt would kill me…
At 26yo, I owned a house. Car, worked full time yet could not buy a tee shirt let alone a full meal.. Crazy brain of mine but now at 53yo I try to really question my motives for restricting. I still get a high off a good bargain and never impulsively spend, ever.. But I do buy food and necessities.. I live by the laws of scarcity not by laws of abundance and despite my full awareness of this, I still gravitate to the scarcity rules in my head..”
Now this theme of big purchases being easier than small ones has come up a few times in comments and emails. Like again in this one below:
“It is fascinating what you describe though about spending on large items…. I agree that spending out on a much bigger item (such as house) causes less stress than spending a few pounds on some much needed loo rolls!! Speaking of loo rolls – I recently needed to buy some more and it took a good couple of weeks of trawling supermarkets for the best price on the rolls I wanted before I bit the bullet and decided I had found the best deal – feeling proud of myself for having saved those pennies… The amount of mental and physical effort though in doing so was very likely not worth the pennies of savings!
Thank you for your article – I hope it helps others without this illness understand that for those of us with this disease the impact is much more far reaching than just food / exercise / weight and other areas of life need help and support to return to normality too!”
This reminded me of another aspect of my own spending behaviour. I too would spend hours and hours visiting multiple shops to compare prices if I really needed to buy something. Say if I needed to buy toilet rolls, I would see what the lowest price for the highest quantity I could get in Tescos was, then walk to Safeway, then Wilkos, then Lidl. I’d note and compare them all, the go back to the one where the rolls were the cheapest. Of course after a while I knew by heart which store would sell which item cheapest, so typically a shopping trip for me would see me visit mulitple stores. I’d go to Tesco for X, then Lidl for Y — and of course I also knew what time of day to hit them up for the discounted EOD grocery items.
Not only was this all very time consuming, but is was also expensive in terms of mental energy. Phew!
Those are other people’s opinions. Now for my own — because it’s my blog so that’s what you’ll get 😉
On the “worthiness” theme:
I had many people suggest they thought that they didn’t spend money because they didn’t feel “worthy.” While I completely understand why they would conclude this, I have to say I disagree. I know that sounds a bit like I am telling people that their opinion is wrong, and if it does I apologize as that is not my intention. I just want to suggest that maybe that opinion is one of popular belief, and a product of suggestion. Anyway, I’ll try and explain.
I think that using feelings of unworthiness to justify an inability to spend money is attractive for a couple of reasons:
- It rationalizes the behavior.
- It appeals to the martyr that seems to exist within most people who have Anorexia. That may be a sweeping generalisation, but if it is it comes from knowing my own self during ED, and having known many many sufferers since. Oh, and past — think of the starving saints.
- It takes the focus away from “you need to eat” and puts it onto “you need to love yourself.” While it may be true that many people need to love themselves more, that is not going to help any person recover from an eating disorder — only eating will do that.
Here’s my reasoning:
Rationalizing behavior is something that we feel compelled to do, but it is not required when you understand that mental illness doesn’t need to be rationalized. People tried to tell me that I was not eating because I felt low body confidence, low self esteem, or that I didn’t like myself and was punishing myself. None of those things were true. I was not eating because I had a mental illness that fucked up the part of my brain that reacted to food. Period. No other reason.
In the same vein, people would tell me I was not spending money on myself because I didn’t value myself. That was an attractive proposal I have to admit. It appeals to the starving saint martyr in me, and it also appeals to my ego as that person is basically saying that I am worth something. Nice.
As it is however, I know it’s not really true. I value myself highly and always have done. My own feelings of self-worth were nothing to do with my inability to spend money in the same way they were nothing to do with my inability to eat. My inability to spend money cannot and should not be rationalized because mental illness doesn’t need to be rationalized.
The reason I could not eat? Anorexia
The reason I could not spend money? Anorexia
That is all the “reason” that is needed. Mental illness doesn’t need to be justified.
I get a bee in my bonnet when people try and rationalize behaviours that are due to a mental illness because this happened so many times for me with my ED and is rather freudian. I had doctors telling me I was “doing” this to myself because I wanted to be thin like a supermodel (I wasn’t), or because my parents made me feel worthless (they didn’t). Telling me I couldn’t spend money because I didn’t think I was “worthy” feels like the same thing.
I feel that trying to rationalize ED behaviors is dangerous. It means that rather than treating the ED with food, the psychoanalytical talk-therapy approach is taken. As mentioned in this podcast with Dr Sarah Ravin, a person suffering from an eating disorder will often prefer to explore a psychoanalytical solution because frankly their ED knows it won’t work and it will keep them from making a recovery.
In short, I think that the “worthiness” theme is popular with sufferers because their ED’s like the deflection. (And I don’t expect that to be a popular opinion amoung sufferers either.)
Pre and post behaviour support the notion my inability to spend was an ED thing.
Like said in the original post, I liked spending money before Anorexia, and I like spending it now I am recovered. In the same way I don’t overeat or undereat now, I don’t overspend or underspend.
It seems that other people have experienced the same thing. Even if it was reversed, the notion that their spending behaviour changed as a result of their eating disorder is true for many.
Binge spending
The comments I got regarding this were fascinating!
So many people noted that in times when they could not eat they were likely to binge spend on crap that they didn’t even need. How telling is that that the eating disorder is having some sort of affect on the area of the brain in charge of resources?
I want to explore this further as I didn’t experience it myself at all.
Your thoughts?
I’m still exploring this. I’m incredibly interested in your perspective and intend on continuing to gather other people’s experiences in the next few weeks. Please do write to me with your thoughts.
“People tried to tell me that I was not eating because I felt low body confidence, low self esteem, or that I didn’t like myself and was punishing myself. None of those things were true. I was not eating because I had a mental illness that fucked up the part of my brain that reacted to food. Period. No other reason.”
Thank you for this – Halleluljah – finally somebody who speaks the truth!!
Having been in treatment in the past where the wide stance was that if you had an eating disorder you must have low self esteem, low confidence and no assertiveness skills would leave me so frustrated!! Forced to go to ‘therapy’ groups to learn assertiveness skills and build self esteem when I know I have no issues with these things. I am quite capable of asserting myself when I need to and I have confidence in my professional and personal skills and abilities. These are not things that ’caused’ or ‘maintain’ this illness within me.
Likewise not being able to spend money either on myself or other people is not due to not feeling worthy -it feels more like another one of those warped ‘rules’ that play in the brain when starved – not spending money, not eating too many calories, or fat grams, walking so far a day or whatever else it is. As you say it is because I have anorexia which is a mental illness; so please ‘specialists’ stop trying to psycho-babble me and justify my behaviours – it’s because those of us with an ED are ill – people with cancer are not told that they have cancer because they have no self worth – can you imagine the response if they were?!?!?
Thanks again Tabitha – another thought provoking blog!
You nailed it with the cancer comparison. I often compare ED treatment and attitude to that of other illnesses just for that reason.
And kudos to you for being a sufferer who sees through the psycho-babble. Because many don’t!
Hi, I am about 8 months into bulimia/anorexia recovery. Firstly, I pat myself on the back what a journey it has been! Secondly, money. When I was in the midst of my eating disorder I would spend my entire pay on food… I’m not talking about doing a large grocery shop once a week. I’m talking about spending hundreds of dollars every single day on food. Whilst still being a tight ass on personal hygiene products. Toilet paper… Yes I can relate. You name it. It bothered me that I spent so much money daily on food… Just to throw it up… But I didn’t care… I also drank way too much alcohol to cope… But that is another story… The urge to binge and purge was greater… It brought with it extreme highs and extreme lows…. I could talk on the topic for hours! The things it made me do… The person I wasn’t … The decisions and the implications its had on my entire life.
Happy to say I know save for holidays, spend money on myself (hair nails clothes…. Wow really nice clothes!) And my family and friends.
My eating disorder was a lonely, sad, bitch ex-bestfriend, cruel, manipulative and cold.. I hope to never see her again because Me and Myself in eating disorder recovery is the best version of myself I’ve ever seen 🙂
So interesting. I find it really hard to spend money on food, especially ‘useless’ food, that is, food that has no nutritional benefit in anorexia’s eyes like crisps or biscuits. I also really struggle to buy myself nice things, like clothes or toiletries – always looking for the cheap option. I tell myself its because I don’t have much money, which is true, but I also know that it is my ED. I have often bought clothes then felt so guilty I’ve returned them. I get very annoyed at myself if I let a food stuff ‘go off’ and I have to throw it away but then when I do that anorexia rejoices and whispers “throw more food away” to me.
However I spend a lot of money on other people. Buying them presents and particularly buying them food and cooking for them, but denying myself the food. I guess it is a form of deflection and my way of making up for being a ‘burden’ – definite martyr syndrome!
Think its really interesting what you said about not rationalising these behaviours and instead just calling it mental illness. I always rationalise/analyse to try and understand why I’m behaving a certain way but maybe just sticking the ED label on it would be better!
OMG! I didn’t know this was a thing. I mean I thought my hoarding had nothing to do with my ED but in this article you’ve described me to the T. Like on a “you-read-my-mind” level.
Comparing prices and buying different things at different stores. Gee, the dimension of the ED… I’ve never thought it was related!
I can relate to binge spending though. “Controlled” binge spending if there is such thing. Reality is money is an issue for me. A real one. Today with the pandemic, without a job and wanting to recover and eat everything and now literally having no money to do so and many debts.
I was longing for an icecream for a month. I bought it and now I’m $100 pesos short for rent.
Hello ! I apologize for being maybe a bit late.
I wanted to know if you considered spending-issues and anorexia to be a possible consequence of social/economical status ?
I eat one meal a day, every day, or less. I do that because a part of me (that’s in charge) is fully convinced that we can’t pay for more than one. We can, in fact, pay for more than one meal a day, but I have forever been restricting myself – in terms of clothes, hobbies, transports, out-of-school activities, because of they economic factor.
However, this used to be justified. Not so long ago, we could not afford new clothes, so we bought third-hand or fourth-hand clothes in batches. they were weird, badly cut, and way too adult-y. i remember that the kids called me a whore because i wore cleavages, because the clothes were too large and cut for adults.
Anyway, I used to have all these restrictions, that were justified. I used to have a reason to deprive myself of plenty of things. Today it’s not true anymore, I don’t need to do this. But it stayed. I can’t buy more than two pairs of pants a year, and I only do that if my previous pants are irremediably torn. I can’t eat much, and I don’t do activities that cost money.
If it’s for others, I systematically give, I pay for everyone, I give money to people on the streets when they need it. But for myself I can’t imagine that, because “we can’t afford it”.
I’ve looked for articles about that on the Internet, and it seems that no one talks about it. It’s like, post-food-deprivation anorexia. The only people who I’ve ever heard or read talking about this behaviour were starvation survivors and people coming from very poor backgrounds. My father has the same behaviour as the one you describe, he eats a few crackers with cheese everyday and that’s it, when he shops, he goes to three or four different stores looking for bargains to make and know where the prices are the lowest for each item. He collects what the families of dead people are donating after the funerals, and he sells it back at low prices on parallel markets. He isn’t generous with others, but he’s generous to us.
Is he anorexic ? Am I anorexic ?
Can I be anorexic if I give away all my money ?
Can he be anorexic if he’s an old man ?