Not much that makes me feel like slamming my head against the wall as much as when I hear that someone’s therapist has told them that their hunger is not actually because they are hungry, but because they are trying to fill a void in their life. “Psychological hunger.” Bollocks.
“Maybe you are hungry for … you know … something else”
“Have you considered that your hunger may be about you needing more human connection in your life.”
“Your hunger may actually be because you are trying to fill the void that your ex left.”
“This is about inner emptiness, not actual hunger for food.”
“I think it is actually your soul that is hungry.”
Give me strength. Here are the issues with this psycho-manipulative-gaslighting shit:
For starters, there is no grounding for any of the claims that physical or mental hunger can be felt as a referred psychological need. There is no proof that “psychological hunger” or “soul hunger” or whatever bullshit name you are calling it exists. It’s all theory. Yet, it is used so commonly among therapists and wanna-be therapists. Personally, as soon as I hear a therapist say something like this, I am not wowed by their brilliance. Quite the opposite. I am disappointed in their lack of originality. This “soul hunger” shit is so pop-psych that even the agony aunts in 90’s teen magazines got tired of hearing themselves say it.
Second. It is so very arrogant and pompous to project such capacity for deceit on the body. The body is simple and truthful. If it is hungry … it is hungry. The end. No need to analyse that. The body isn’t stupid or confused. It didn’t get signals for loneliness muddled up with signals for hunger. It didn’t lose the remote control and it is not trying to work the TV with the buttons on the fridge. It knows how to operate itself, so don’t suggest that the body is using hunger signals because it actually longs for a more fulfilling career path.
We don’t do this for any other biological need. If a person needs to go to the loo a lot, they are not told that maybe they are trying to get rid of “something else in their life.” They are not told that their weak bladder might be actually due to them being unhappy with their partner. They don’t get told that their desire to go to the toilet is actually about wanting to flush their significant other. They are just allowed to go to the loo. Why oh why is everything to do with food and eating so convoluted by therapists?
I’ll tell you why. It is for the same reason that sexual desires get so projected onto and complicated by therapists. It is because, like a desire for sex, a hunger for food is still taboo. Especially if you are female. Because, you know, women aren’t supposed to be horny and we are certainly not supposed to eat a lot. So, if we are horny or hungry we are told that is not because we need sex or need food. Nope, it’s got to be a bigger ‘problem.” It has to be something complicated. Something … anything … just whatever you do, don’t be a tart and don’t be greedy.
I bet you that if therapy sessions were studied it would be found that men complaining of hunger would be told to eat more. Yet, woman would be told to go out and see if they can fill that “void” with taking up a hobby, or volunteering for a good cause, or finding a man to be a housewife to. Because it is still not okay for a woman to want to eat a lot. Women are not supposed to have biological needs. Women are not supposed to want to eat a lot. Woman are supposed to be skinny.
And that’s really want pisses me off about therapists who sprout this sort of shit. They are contributing to gender biases, weight biases, weight stigma, misogyny and a whole host of social justice issues. They are normalising and reinforcing them and they can’t even see it — that’s how deep an implicit bias most of these social issues are. They are saying “No, don’t you dare just eat as much as you want, shut that hunger down and go look pretty somewhere.” And we allow them to get away with it. In fact, because they are in a position of authority, and because they sound clever when they say completely unscientific statements such as suggesting that a desire to eat cake could actually be a desire to have more friends, many people go along with it. Clients nod heads and concur that maybe that might be the problem after all. In fact, many clients feel relieved. Relieved that they have just been given permission to restrict by their therapist and they can continue to suppress their bodyweight and do so with the consent of a professional. Relieved, that they don’t have to face their hunger and don’t have to face their fear of weight gain.
The professional’s position should be to actually help people overcome the issues that stand between a person and their body— usually fatphobia and fear of weight gain. Because only once those have been dealt with can a person have a trusting and respectful relationship with their body. And by that, I mean the ability to feel hunger, and to respond to hunger by eating, and to feel no guilt or shame for doing so. And to trust that their body knows what it is doing. Telling someone that their hunger is actually not hunger at all doesn’t help them achieve this. Just the opposite. It furthers the message that hunger cannot be trusted. That cues from the body cannot be trusted. It increases levels of suspicion and mistrust and creates a bigger gap in a person’s relationship with their body.
Therapists are supposed to be helping people with their relationships with themselves. Their body is the one and only thing that a person has with them for every second of their life. If you want to help someone achieve long-term happiness, you have to help them trust their body, because their body will be with them longer than anyone else in their life. That is the longest-term relationship they will have, and the most important. Do not say anything that increases mistrust of the body.
So why do therapists so frequently do this? Why is it so normal for therapists, and other people, so suggest to a person that they cannot trust the hunger signals that their body creates?
Because of fatphobia. Because we live in a society that is terrified of weight gain. But I want you to understand that when a therapist tells you to restrict, that is more about their own fear of weight gain and their own fatphobia than it is about you. It is because they haven’t done the work to overcome that themselves yet, and it is showing up in your therapy session.
Great post Tabs!
What about bulimia caused by trauma ? Like some shit that people told you make you wanna do bulimia crisis without energy deficit
My jaw dropped. There are therapists who attempt to help underweight women by telling them not to eat when hungry? Just when you think the lows can’t get lower!
Here here! Many (MANY) years ago, I saw a ‘therapist/psychologist’ where I grew up. One of the first things she said to me was ‘if there was a yoghurt sitting on the table, what would you say to it?” and I (almost literally) laughed in her face! (The answer to which was “nothing, I don’t talk to my food”) – some 20+ years later and I am lucky to have an amazing therapist who wouldn’t think to go there (and she’s not even ED specialist!) – but you’re so right, there is so much stigma associated with hunger and it’s so easy to turn it around psychologically so it’s about you rather than genuine, physical hunger – thus perpetuating the shame associated with hunger when you’re dealing with an ED anyway!
The yoghurt question is so stupid that it’s hilarious! Really made me laugh😂
I’m sorry you was so poorly treated though, it happens way to often.
Good to hear that you have a better therapist now.
I’ve went to therapy one year and when I’ve started my recovery (after 3 years of anorexia and more than 15 of disordered eating) she told me that maybe going all in wasn’t the best idea, that I was doing such a great thing for eating so healthy (no sugar, dairy, gluten) and after my period came back she said that maybe now’s the time to start exercising again and don’t eat so much. I’ve stopped going to therapy and till this day (six months after quitting her words are with me every single day: I was doing such a great thing eating so healthy and look at me now:(
This might be a good group for you! I bet your therapist has an ED herself. It’s not you, it’s her. https://www.facebook.com/groups/405546927065186
Trying to find some words that are remotely close to explain how much I needed to realise this. Once again you seem to see what the ED treatment world needs to bloody recognise. So far (Uk) treatment has been less than helpful and I know in myself I just need to get on and eat more!! Thank you.
Actualy during my digestion issues in ED my psychiatrist told me that my diarrhoea (every day I went for poo at least 5 times) means my body needed to get rid of those feeling I have inside. What a BS. I just felt so much anxiety that my gut was hyperactive…
This is such a vital topic to discuss and you make some very pertinent and helpful points.
I must say I do love it when you get your feathers rustled a bit – always makes for a good post! 😜 Hope you feel better now it’s out of your system. I’m sure we have benefited from reading it!
Oh my God yes. And that your ED is an ’emotional response’ to your parents’ divorce, being bullied at school, your sister’s cancer diagnosis – fill in as appropriate. MAN that made me SO angry as a mother in family therapy. I wanted to scream SHE NEEDS HELP TOWARDS BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE, not to sit here listening to how there must have been some wrinkle in the past that if only we could iron out (?? how ??) all will be well and the ‘need’ (really??) for these behaviours will fall away and so they will too. Exactly – as if you would EVER have that conversation on an oncology ward. But if your brain’s gone wrong rather than your pancreas it’s an excuse to spout all kinds of spurious nonsense at you, and those who care for you. Keep up the good work here Tabitha. God love you for doing it.
but what about the type of “hunger” that isn’t physical hunger but more of a desire to binge? like when you’re upset you just want to wolf down an entire bar of chocolate. that’s not your body telling you it needs that chocolate, right? it’s just using food to cope with sadness or anger. i can’t reconcile that feeling with telling myself to listen to my body, even though i’m trying to.
I’m totally with you but I would like to ask: what causes obesity then?
I know that some people’s set point may be overweight, but there are also people who stay way above it, having many health problems. What explains that?
Just hear me out here: Likening desire for food and sex to demonstrate your point, does the opposite hold true? If a person has insiatiable need for sex, do we chalk it up to the body’s innate wisdom? What if a person is desirous of sex in the absence of a biological drive? And what about the binge eaters I was in treatment with who gorged on food u til they were numb? Is that “the body’s wisdom”? Are you saying that all hunger must be trusted? When I worked for pizza hut as a kid, I delivered 2x a day to a woman who was bed ridden, at least 600lbs. What’s your take on what was happening there?
As a male who has had plenty of eating disorder treatment I can assure you that I have heard plenty of the above plaititudes. I have also been encouraged to eat more, obviously, but any episodes of binge eating haven’t been so insociantly passed over beacuse I am a man who needs food. I don’t necessarily mind considering them as quite basic urges to eat, but I think a consideration of those urges as grounded in more than base biology probably helps better in getting at what is going on without having to slip into any ‘villing a void’ platitudes.