When Being Too Thin Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

If we think that anorexia is reduced to a simple whim for being thin, it is that we are only looking at the tip of the iceberg. It is a complicated disease, one of those with the highest mortality rate. For this reason, we should never confuse the disease with the symptom.

We are not aware that this need to be thin is a form of self-destruction. Many of the people start from a problem that they cannot control and that they transfer to the strict control of their diet, as a way to protect themselves from their fears and defenselessness. Thus, the need to find a positive reinforcement in their body image appears, a need that is above the love of their own life, of their own survival.

But why is all this happening? Is it a mental issue or are there other factors that are beyond our control and that affect our brain? Today we will answer these questions and discover how that obsession with thinness is only a small part of what anorexia really means.

What goes through the head of a person with anorexia?

People with anorexia consciously try to decrease their food intake and even become so disciplined that some manage to avoid food almost entirely. The less they eat the better.

So, could we then speak of a mental disorder? The truth is that this term can be misleading. Therefore, what we are sure of is that it is produced by the effect of a compulsive behavior in which there is great concern about the consequences that the action of eating may have.

This indicates that the brain of people with anorexia does not work the same as that of a healthy person. All of us have a response system to pleasure and reward that is very important to our survival. In the case of people suffering from anorexia, this system is altered.

For example, every time a healthy person feels hungry and eats his brain will produce a positive response. In this way, your relationship with food is healthy. The same does not happen in a person who suffers from anorexia, as he will not be able to differentiate the negative stimulus from the positive one.

But this is not everything. There have been many neurobiologists who have determined that in people with anorexia there is an alteration in the functioning of the neurons responsible for communication with that part of the brain that detects hunger. That area coincides, curiously, with the region where the emotions, sensations and perception that we have about our own body reside.

Our hormones are also going to be partly to blame in this whole situation. In people with anorexia, many of the hormones that stimulate appetite and weight have low levels, which causes a serious disorder with food.

These are some of the characteristics that people with anorexia can show, although there are many more that can manifest themselves. As we can see, the component of self-esteem is very important. This coupled with other underlying problems cause the person to “want” to stop eating.

At this point, what we are sure of is that anorexia is not a whim. For this reason, facing the intervention without the help of specialists and from a single strategy, such as forcing to eat, without working on other aspects, such as reinforcements, will hardly make the person improve their abilities to hide and deceive us.

Think of it as a wake-up call, the manifestation of a deeper problem. It is not just a question of appearance, of eating or not eating. Behind the anorexia there is a sunken person, with deep problems in his inner world that must also be treated in parallel. Obviously, the lack of nutrients in what can finally make you die, but this does not mean that we should only intervene on the symptom, on the pain, and not on what generates it.

Anorexia does not mean being thin to look better, anorexia implies problems, insecurities, pain and sadness. Not eating is just a way, no longer to feel good, but to avoid feeling bad. The reinforcement of the behavior comes from the avoidance of suffering, by removing as much as possible that feeling that your will is weak and they are useless.

In this way, the anorexic person ends up fearing food like someone fearing a lion or a snake, because they see them as the worst enemy for the controllable world they are trying to build. A world in which for them, the only hope is to have a gray day among all the black days.