Did Trauma Cause Your Eating Disorder?

What is Trauma?

When we typically think of trauma, things like physical abuse and major accidents come to mind. Yet, even common experiences like divorce, a toxic work environment, the death of a pet, and bullying can be experienced as trauma.

Trauma is Broken Down Into Different Types:

• Acute trauma-

  • This results from a single incident such as a car accident, catastrophic weather event, or sudden death of a loved one.

• Chronic trauma-

  • The trauma results from incidents that have occurred repeatedly  in a person’s life, including:

    • Long-term child abuse

    • War or combat situations

    • Ongoing sexual abuse

    • Living in a domestically violent environment

• Developmental trauma-

  • This trauma results from a single incident of trauma like a divorce or can result when a child is exposed to chronic trauma like emotional neglect. Adverse childhood experiences include chronic abuse, neglect, or other harsh adversity in their own dysfunctional homes. When a child or adolescent is exposed to overwhelming stress and their caregiver does not help reduce this stress, or is the cause of the stress, the child experiences developmental trauma.

• Relational trauma –

  • For adults who experienced developmental trauma in childhood are at risk for developing Complex Trauma, C-PTSD, or relational trauma. Relational trauma can also be experienced in adulthood. Some examples include intimate partner violence such as physical, sexual, or psychological abuse. Even toxic work environments.

Big T and Little t Trauma Still Have Immense Effects

Acute or single-incident trauma is sometimes referred to as “Big T” trauma. Relational and developmental trauma is called “little t” trauma. But, the mental health field is moving away from classifying trauma as Big T vs Little t and towards using ‘trauma’ as an umbrella term. This is because all types of trauma have an impact.

How Do I Know if I Have Experienced Trauma?

Trauma is not always obvious even to those who have experienced it. When we say trauma, we aren’t talking about an event, because we all respond to events in different ways. Trauma is not the situation, but rather the wound that results from the experience. Trauma expert Dr. Gabor Mate sums it up well, “Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”

Trauma Might Look Like a Variety of Things, Including:

• Experiencing flashbacks to an event

• Having nightmares about something that happened

• Avoiding situations that remind you of the event

• Taking responsibility for the emotional well-being of others.

• Adjusting your mood according to the mood of others to avoid conflict.

• Feeling emotionally unsafe in most relationships.

• Fearing failure or perfectionism is driven by your belief that anything short of perfection is a failure.

• Acting with self-sufficiency leads to isolation, loneliness, and more shame.

• Fearing abandonment, which results in behaviors that reflect a belief that others will eventually leave.

Are you wondering if your experience ‘qualifies’ as trauma? It is worth discussing with a trauma therapist. Clients struggling with eating disorder behaviors often convince themselves they aren’t “bad enough” to seek help. The same goes for trauma. When we compare our trauma to the stories we read or hear on social media, we might feel as though our trauma isn’t “big enough” to bring up in therapy.

If eating disorders and trauma are impacting your life, it’s important enough to talk about and deserves care.

How Does Trauma Impact My Eating Disorder?

Trauma from childhood sexual abuse is often correlated with eating disorders. But the truth is, there is not one single type of trauma that ‘causes’ an eating disorder.

“Anything that impacts an individual’s sense of self – like attachment injuries or divorce – could lead to the development of an eating disorder,” says Kindful Body therapist Samantha Young. “Eating disorders are very much about identity and autonomy, so anything that would threaten that would correlate with an eating disorder.”

An eating disorder can become someone’s identity and a way to cope with trauma.

In her eating disorder memoir Hunger, Roxanne Gay describes how she coped with sexual trauma by bingeing: “I was swallowing my secrets and making my body expand and explode. I found ways to hide in plain sight, to keep feeding a hunger that could never be satisfied — the hunger to stop hurting. I made myself bigger. I made myself safer.”

How Do You Treat Trauma in Eating Disorder Therapy?

When you begin PTSD treatment and trauma therapy or eating disorder treatment, your therapist will start by gathering a history of your life. During this initial assessment phase, a therapist might ask questions about your home life growing up. As well as your access to food, any history of substance abuse, suicidality, or other mental health challenges. You may also be asked about the different ways you have coped with negative experiences throughout your life.

This information helps the trauma therapist get the full picture of who you are and what you are bringing to therapy. It may lead you to see aspects of your life in new ways. We often don’t know whether or not something we’ve experienced is “normal” until we talk about it.

When it comes to your eating disorder therapy sessions, you are in the driver’s seat. You have the agency to choose what you want to address in therapy. That may mean you never talk about trauma at all.

If you do choose to do trauma work in therapy while recovering from an eating disorder, each session might look different.