Danger and Safety for Women with Eating Disorders

Eating disorder behaviors, like bingeing or purging, or starving or compulsively eating are methods a woman uses to ease or ward off entirely, feelings of anxiety.

 If successful, the behaviors block the woman’s access to her feelings of fear. This may be a preferable state of being, but it can be dangerous.

 A woman can feel safe but not be safe.  A woman can be afraid and that fear can help her make herself more safe.

Reaching for immediate comfort to block fear comes in many forms. The result is that the woman can unconsciously accept a large degree of vulnerability and potential danger in her daily life.

 I’ll describe a few high-risk situations in this post and more in posts to come.

High Risk Home Environment

A woman lives alone in an apartment or a condo.  She is numb to a sense of anxiety that might come if she let her awareness awaken to the physicality of her home.

1. Her parking is not secure.  She may have to walk a block or more to each her front door.  She may park in an underground parking structure that is not well lit, not secure and leaves her exposed to predators.
2. The entrance to her building is not well lit, is shrouded with bushes, perhaps involves dark steps or a turn in a pathway that makes her invisible to others.
3. Her rooms are on the ground floor with unsecured windows facing a public walkway.

A woman who lives in any one of these circumstances may feel a low-grade sense of anxiety most of the time but not attribute her feelings to her vulnerable position at home.

She may criticize herself for feeling a bit anxious coming home and may feel shame when she runs to her front door.

Worse, and this is often the case, she is oblivious to the safety flaws in her environment and accepts as normal activities and events that may raise the level of potential danger.

If she were followed home (because of other unappreciated risk factors in her life) the person following her would have little difficulty in approaching her under these minimal secure conditions.

Certainly driving home alone after dark and then walking some distance to her front
door and/or walking through an area where a predator can lurk creates a dangerous vulnerability.

Safety Relates to Eating Disorder Recovery

Recovery from an eating disorder involves first creating a safe and secure container from which to do the psychological work necessary for healing.  Usually this is discussed in terms of the therapeutic alliance and the therapy itself.  And this is true.

But the early stages of psychotherapy and recovery from an eating disorder also involve creating a secure space or correcting a fragile space in the person’s external world.  She needs to be able to live reasonably safe from danger and more free to feel and progress on her healing path.

Also, in creating safety for herself, she can begin to learn that some of her fears are justified.  When she acknowledges realistic fears they can inform her about what positive and self-protective action she can take on her own behalf. 

This can be the beginning of developing confidence and trust in herself as she draws on her own power to genuinely care for herself.  This can be the beginning of solid recovery.

Well-lighted pathways, secure parking and other safe conditions are far more effective in keeping a person safe than any binge or purge or compulsive eating activity can ever be.

April 14, 2008 | Filed Under Coping Strategies

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