The First Step: Understanding Eating Disorders from a Family Perspective

There is a reason that eating disorder treatment facilities require family therapy for patients. Dysfunctional behaviors, like the compulsions of body checking, restricting food, and purging, are maintained by the environment they exist within. That sounds a bit science-y so here are some bullet points to break down the importance of family members improving their health so that an identified patient can more easily find relief. 

• In the same way that cogs in a clock fit together, if one family member changes the way that they do things, it affects everyone else in that family system. Others must adjust when one person changes. This is why, even if the identified patient won't seek treatment, they often find relief when others in the family start improving themselves. 
• Children learn much more from what they see and hear, even if it isn't conscious, than what they are taught. A parent saying, "love your body!" but scowling when they look at their bodies, and scolding themselves for what they do or don't eat, more than cancels out any benefit of the body positive comment.
• Since eating disorders are a way for someone to grasp for control, when parents are either too negligent or too micro-managing, eating disorders can be a way of coping for a child. This is also true in partnerships. When parents/partners take a look at how their actions may be controlling or neglectful, the eating disorder has less room to thrive.
• Because individuals can not improve their emotional or relational competence much more than that of the overall family's emotional and relational health, it benefits all members when the family works together to improve its functioning. Think of an athletic team- one star player can only do so much in a game. If the entire team gets stronger and more skilled, the star player can improve even more because she is in the company of improving teammates who are also strengthening and growing.

Improving family health could mean more of the family members taking an individual interest in their personal growth- through reading up on their Enneagram type, asking people outside of the family what they could work on to be better in their relationships, exploring their spiritual connection, or working on making changes to themselves with individual therapy. Improving family health could also mean the family makes time to go to family therapy with a licensed family therapist, someone who has studied systems theory and understands ways to help families improve their functioning. The pay-offs in how good it feels to be around your family members AND how much better all of your relationships (even outside the family system) improve make the hard work beyond worth the time and discomfort involved.