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Eating disorder – and eating disorders – know no boundaries. No one is immune because they can claim a certain gender, age, body weight, income level, education level, skin color or ethnic/cultural background. Eating disorder is an equal opportunity offender, even if it is less likely to be recognized in people who do not fit the stereotype of young, white, female, thin, cis-hetero, and middle-to-upper class.
Unfortunately, disordered eating and eating disorders are also on the rise, and the stress and uncertainty of the COVID pandemic accelerated this rise. It’s too early to know for sure, but I suspect that continued political uncertainty, coupled with threats to the bodily autonomy of women and queer and trans people, will continue to fan the flames of disordered eating.
All of this said, it is important for researchers and clinicians like myself to continue to ask questions about how we can protect ourselves and others from the pit of vipers that is disordered eating. How can we prevent the fall at all? How can we walk away before the damage to physical, emotional and mental health is too severe?
A recent meta-analysis of 135 studies attempted to answer this question by examining the associations between disordered eating, self-criticism, and self-compassion. Spoiler: Being more self-critical is associated with more disordered eating and less self-compassion. Let’s look at this more closely.
The double whammy of perfectionism and self-criticism
Self-compassion is treating yourself with kindness, care and concern during life’s struggles or when facing personal inadequacies, mistakes and failures. Self-criticism is treating yourself negatively, heaping blame on yourself when you make a mistake, seeing it as further failure if you dare to struggle with something.
A tendency to self-criticize can increase your susceptibility to mental health problems and help you maintain those problems once they develop. The evidence has proven it self-criticism is a risk factor for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and many aspects of disordered eating; including food restriction, purging behaviors and excessive exercise.
Self-criticism can damage your relationships with friends and family. It can also exist alongside low self-esteem and perfectionism, in a sort of chicken-or-the-egg situation.
If you struggle with self-critical perfectionism — when you are overly critical of yourself and constantly worry that others are criticizing you — you may be particularly at risk of overeating, restrictive dieting, and body dissatisfaction.
Many people have trouble cultivating self-compassion because they think it’s silly and fluffy, or a little too charming—even if they have no problem showing compassion to other people. But if you struggle with self-critical perfectionism, developing self-compassion will feel even more difficult, because you’re afraid that if you’re too compassionate, too kind to yourself, you’ll have no chance of living up to the standards that might—just might—make you worthy and acceptable enough to avoid your own self-criticism and the (mostly imaginary) criticism of others.
Ironically, it’s self-compassion that can protect you from the hamster wheel of perfectionism and soften the sting of criticism. Self-critical perfectionism is a losing game, because you will always one-up yourself. You will never get to the point where you feel like you have done enough, that you are enough.
If you think self-compassion is the opposite of self-criticism, you’re partially right, but it’s really more subtle than that. Self-compassion includes awareness, self-kindness, and common humanity. The opposite of this is over-identification (with negative thoughts and feelings), self-righteousness and isolation.
Why self-compassion?
Although self-criticism and self-compassion are not two sides of the same cointhere is a lot of solid research that shows that when we strengthen our self-compassion muscles, we experience less self-criticism.
Having higher levels of self-compassion also helps us be more resilient to stress (useful in general, but especially during times of worry) and improves cognitive and psychological well-being. Higher self-compassion is also associated with lower levels of negative body image and higher levels of positive body image, along with less disordered eating.
So if you say, “Yes, I’m a self-critical perfectionist” and struggle with disordered eating and negative body image, The idea is not to directly work on being less self-critical—but to work on building self-compassion.
If your first reaction is, “I’m not worthy of compassion” I’d say that’s a red flag or a canary in a coal mine. Because YOU are worthy of compassion. We are ALL worthy of compassion. This is the “common humanity” part of self-compassion: we are all human, we are all fallible, we all make mistakes, we all struggle or suffer in ways big or small.
Your struggles or mistakes may be bigger or smaller than the next person’s, but you are both equally WORTHY of self-compassion and compassion.
And if the next reaction is “But I HAVE to be perfect,” then that’s another red flag. Again, we’re human, we’re not perfect…so why do you feel like you’re different? Why do you hold yourself to tougher standards? The alternative to striving for perfection is not to take a screwball approach to life. There is a middle ground to try to do our best in a reasonable way that doesn’t eat away at our physical or mental health.
(I realize that walking the middle path is HARD if you’re prone to all-or-nothing thinking. So if this is something you’re really struggling with, it might be a good idea to bring it up to a therapist.)
Inviting self-compassion
I want to reiterate that trying to reduce self-criticism does not in itself increase self-compassion. This is similar to how reducing negative body image does not in itself increase positive body image. While it can be helpful to gently challenge self-critical thoughts, if you want more of the good (self-compassion) in your life, you must actively invite it and practice building these skills.
I’ve written about self-compassion many times (because it’s important!) and the links to those articles are below. Also, here are my favorites that I’ve written about self-compassion multiple times (because it’s important!) and the links to those articles are below. Also, here are my favorite self-compassion resources that I use myself and share all the time:
Also, there were some great episodes about self-compassion on the Ten Percent Happier podcast:
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Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN, is a registered dietitian nutritionist based in the Pacific Northwest, journalistintuitive nutrition consultant, authorand speaker. Her superpowers include; debunking nutritional myths and empowerment of women feel better about their bodies and make food choices that support pleasure, nutrition and health. This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute personalized nutrition or medical advice.
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