What is anxiety? Often anxiety and eating disorders co-exist. According to research, treating an anxiety disorder early may stop an eating disorder from developing.
In 2004, Dr. Walter Kaye, et al, published a study, Comorbidity of Anxiety Disorders with Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa. They concluded that anxiety and eating disorders have a high correlation, finding that people with anorexia symptoms and bulimia nervosa were more likely to have an anxiety disorder than the general population. Because they concluded that typically these anxiety disorders were evident in childhood before an eating disorder developed, they concluded that anxiety disorders could contribute to the cause of eating disorders.
What is Anxiety?
It is normal to become anxious at times. Everyone does. When it becomes a problem is when it interferes with your life. Anxiety usually begins with a worry of some kind. Underlying this worry is a fear of being out of control ... or to say it differently, of not being able to control something. So when you're worrying whether you'll get a good grade or get a job, you're really concerned about the fact that you have no control over whether you'll get that grade or get the job.
With anxiety and eating disorders, the eating disordered person tends to be overly anxious or obsessive about things in general, and food in particular. According to the study, 41% of participants who experienced an anxiety disorder suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. An eating disorder may help to control anxious feelings, especially when you think about it in terms of being a way to deny feelings and emotions.
Anxiety Disorder Symptoms
Anxiety can be described in the following ways. You could feel:
uneasiness
worry
intense worry
tension
apprehension - anticipation that something bad is going to happen
generalized fear
fear of places or going places
fear of being around people
terror
a sense of impending doom
hypervigilance (being excessively attentive to something or someone to the point of distraction, irritability and/or insomnia)
Anxiety and Eating Disorders - The Real Story
What is anxiety for me? Well for me it was obsessive compulsive personality disorder. That's what the docs called it. My obsessive compulsive behaviors were odd ... not like checking or counting and stuff. It was rituals I did with things like my soap. I couldn't share soap with anyone. It had to go back in the soap dish a certain way. I couldn't use the side that had an indentation in it like a dove bar with the word dove imprinted in it. If that wore off, I'd freak out.
My socks had to be a certain way in my drawer. Everything did now that I think about it. They were all lined up just so. And if someone messed it up I couldn't take it. One time in treatment, my roommates went into my drawers and messed everything up. They left one sock on the floor. I cried for hours.
My eating disorder was the same way. I had to have my food a certain way, eat it a certain way. I would obsess about calories and fat and carbs and sugar. I would get on the scale like a hundred times a day. Basically, I channeled the OCD into the eating disorder.
My obsessive compulsive disorder treatment was the norm - progressive exposure I think they called it. I had to flip the soap over in the shower. I had to leave a sock on the floor for a whole day. Eventually it got easier. I wouldn't say I don't still have obsessive things I do. I think everyone has rituals and things they like a certain way at least minor things. I just wouldn't exactly call it obsessive compulsive personality disorder anymore.
When I think about what is anxiety for me now, I know it's just normal. When it gets bad, I just check myself and tell myself I'm not going back there anymore. I find ways to calm myself down and then I forget about it. Anxiety is okay. Obsessive anxiety isn't.
It is normal to become anxious at times. Everyone does. When it becomes a problem is when it interferes with your life. Anxiety usually begins with a worry of some kind. Underlying this worry is a fear of being out of control ... or to say it differently, of not being able to control something. So when you're worrying whether you'll get a good grade or get a job, you're really concerned about the fact that you have no control over whether you'll get that grade or get the job.
