What Not to Do to Help Someone with an Eating Disorder: 6 Things To Avoid When Supporting Someone with an Eating Disorder
When you’re in a supportive role in the life of someone who is battling an eating disorder, you may initially feel overwhelmed by the tension between wanting to help and not knowing how. It's natural to want to offer encouragement, but sometimes even words and actions can sometimes do more harm than good. Being compassionate, sensitive, and informed are important in supporting a friend or family member with an eating disorder. This guide will highlight common mistakes to avoid and offer some healthier and helpful ways to show up for the person you care about.
6 Things to Avoid to Help Someone with an Eating Disorder (and what to do instead!)
Avoid Comments about Appearance
This is an important one to remember. It is best to avoid any and all comments about someone else’s appearance, even if your comments are meant to be encouraging or complimentary. Even if weight restoration is part of your friend or family member’s treatment plan, commenting that someone “looks healthier” or “looks better” can still be harmful. It’s also important to remember that commenting on other people’s bodies or appearance in the presence of someone with an eating disorder can be distressing.
Examples:
“You’re looking so much healthier now!”
“You’ve lost weight—you look great!”
“Have you seen pictures of [insert celebrity’s name]? They look terrible.”
“What size pants do you wear now? Did you have to buy new clothes?”
Why it’s harmful: Even positive comments can reinforce a focus on worth and value coming from appearance. And even when you are making comments about someone else, this shows a level of focus and evaluation on the outward appearance of others that can feel unsupportive and upsetting for someone with an eating disorder. When someone is already having a hard time with their relationship with food, exercise, or their body, these comments can be mentally taxing at best and distressing at worst.
Try this instead: Say nothing at all or compliment their (or someone else’s) personality, strength, or non-appearance-related qualities.
2. Don’t Minimize Their Struggle
Most people are not actively trying to minimize the experiences of others, especially those of our friends and family, but sometimes we say and do things that unintentionally and unknowingly minimize the struggle of the person with the eating disorder.
Examples:
“Just eat more”
“It’s not that serious.”
“I can’t even tell you have an eating disorder!”
“I wish I had your discipline; I could lose a few pounds.”
Why it’s harmful: Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions, not phases or choices, and these kinds of comments can make the person with the eating disorder feel more isolated, misunderstood, and distressed than they may already feel. This can also make them less apt to see you or go to you as a safe person to share with or even just be around.
Try this instead: Validate your loved one’s feelings and acknowledge the seriousness of their experience, even if this means simply being there or listening. Sometimes listening means more than anything you could say!
3. Refrain from Food Policing
Through my own recovery journey, I became acutely aware of how much people talk about food, what they’re eating, and what other people eat. Some of it is because so many of our social gatherings and situations center around food and in other situations, it feels like a “safe” topic in a room full of people with different personalities, opinions, levels of connection, and life experiences.
Because of how much people tend to talk about food, it’s particularly important to watch how we engage in conversations about food with someone who is struggling with or in recovery from an eating disorder. As mentioned above, sometimes these comments come from a place of care and concern, but that doesn’t make them inherently helpful.
Examples:
“That’s a lot of food!”
“Are you going to finish your lunch?”
“That’s ALL you’re eating? Aren’t you still hungry?”
“You can’t be full; you barely ate anything!”
or even just staring at someone or their food while they are eating
Why it’s harmful: Monitoring food intake and food choices can increase anxiety and shame. This can make someone who may already be struggling with eating in from of others even more anxious and apprehensive to do so.
Try this instead: Allow autonomy and avoid making comments about the type or amount of food your loved one is eating. If you are a parent or caregiver supporting a child through treatment, talk with your child’s treatment team about strategies and best practices regarding encouragement in this area.
4. Avoid Giving Unsolicited Advice
This is a good rule of thumb when it comes to engaging in conversations with anyone about food, exercise, bodies, and behaviors involving one or more of these things. Part of the reason for this is because you never know who is struggling and to what degree they are struggling, and another part is because what may be sound advice for one person could be harmful to another. Avoid suggesting any changes in eating or exercise behaviors, or in supplement intake.
Examples:
Suggesting diets, “clean eating,” a supplement you are taking or have heard good things about
Encouraging a new work out program or exercise routine
Why it’s harmful: Unqualified advice may contradict professional guidance when you are talking to someone with an eating disorder. Many of the suggestions people give each other about food, supplements, and exercise are ultimately rooted in diet culture and are therefore unhelpful and often subjective or incorrect.
Try this instead: Avoid advice related to food, exercise, body alteration, and supplements. Encourage seeking professional advice if someone does ask your opinion and offer physical or emotional support instead.
5. Don’t Center Yourself in Their Recovery
I want to empathize with parents who are helping children through an eating disorder journey. That can be incredibly trying, scary, and stressful for everyone involved. It is important to remember, though, that comments that focus on your own feelings about and experience with someone’s eating disorder, especially as a way to try to encourage or motivate someone, are not helpful.
Examples:
“Please, enter treatment for me. I’m so worried about you.”
“I can’t handle seeing you this way.”
“When I was younger, I struggled with body image, and I just figured it out on my own.”
“You’re stressing me out with your eating habits.”
Why it’s harmful: Making someone else’s illness or recovery about you or your feelings can create confusion and guilt. This also implies that the person with the eating disorder can just heal *like that* if they care about you enough. This can undermine the severity of the disorder and the person you love’s struggle with it.
Try this instead: Focus on being present for the person struggling and seek your own support system if needed outside of your loved one with an eating disorder. Eating Disorder Therapy in PA has several resources and therapists who are here to help if you need to get connected.
6. Avoid (all) Comparisons
Comparing the way people look, eat, and cope with an eating disorder can be seen as insensitive. This is another situation where even if your intentions are pure and your heart is in the right place, it is usually not helpful or necessary to compare any part of your friend or family member’s journey to someone else’s or even to their own previous behavior/appearance, even if it’s intended as encouragement.
Examples:
“You are recovering so much faster than [someone else].”
“Have you seen [name]? They are looking so sick lately; you don’t look like that at all!”
“At least you’re not as sick as [someone else].”
“Wow, you are eating so much more than you used to - that’s great!”
Why it’s harmful: Comparing struggles or experiences can unintentionally invalidate someone’s experience. There are a lot of assumptions that tend to precede these comparisons, many of which aren’t generally fair to make.
Try this instead: Treat their experience as valid and significant on its own, and recognize that a comparison to their previous appearance, habits, or to the appearance or journey of someone else is not necessary, helpful, or even appropriate.
Compassion and Connection when Supporting a Loved One With an Eating Disorder
Supporting someone with an eating disorder requires empathy, patience, and an openness to potentially changing your own patterns of communication and care. Your willingness to learn for the person you care about is a beautiful demonstration of support and connection. Remember, you don’t have to have all the answers—being present, validating someone’s experiences, and respecting their journey are the most compassionate and often most helpful things you can do.
By: Erika Muller, Assistant for Wildflower Therapy LLC
All images via Unsplash
How Can Eating Disorder Therapy in Philadelphia, PA Help You?
If you’re looking for someone to come alongside you to help you start or come alongside you during your eating disorder journey, our therapists in Pennsylvania are honored to help! In fact, you can get to know a little bit more about them here and book a free consultation here.
Other Mental Health Services Provided by Wildflower Therapy, Philadelphia, PA
Life is a unique and sometimes messy journey for each of us; we all have our own individual battles to fight. Our therapists know there is no one-size-fits-all approach to any of life’s challenges and because of that, we offer many unique perspectives and approaches to help meet you where you are with our Philadelphia, PA Therapy services.
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