Anorexia, the Cult Leader in Your Head
cult: “a group with tenets and practices regarded as coercive, insular, or dangerous…a great devotion to an idea…a system of beliefs and rituals”
(Merriam Webster)
Like a cult, anorexia often begins with the charm of a gentle seduction, promises of safety, control, peace, and protection. It makes you feel special, chosen, and seen. Over time, the indoctrination gives way to a dysfunctional and abusive relationship.
Just like a cult leader, anorexia creates an “us versus them” mentality. Anorexia will tell you that the outside world is dangerous. It promises to act as guardian and protector, and that nobody else – not your parents, friends, children, therapist, or dietitian – knows what you need. Only anorexia “gets it.”
Love bombing, a term with which you may be most familiar in the context of abusive romantic relationships, is a behavior frequently displayed by the anorexic voice. Anorexia promises safety and certainty. It rewards you for following its rules, completing its tasks and rituals, all while skillfully eluding detection by the outside world. The rewards come following the performance of a compulsion/ritual in the form of a feeling of fulfillment, pride, praise, and temporary reduction in anxiety.
As with a cult, you must continuously prove your utmost allegiance to your eating disorder, and over time its demands become greater and more extreme. Anorexia will continue to move the goal posts, pushing you to lengths that an observer may view as absurd. You must continue to follow through with the next sacrifice, the next special rule; otherwise, you will feel the wrath of your inner cult leader. Anorexia will not let you rest; if it allows you some time off, you might actually recognize how toxic it is.
Anorexia will convince you that it is unsafe to disobey its leadership. It fills you with shame and psychological suffering when you consume more calories today than you did yesterday or miss your workout. The intense feelings of shame and mental pain then prove your anorexia “right.” (The good news is that feelings cannot kill you, and sitting with the profound discomfort of disobeying anorexia without compensating/”repenting” is 100% possible.)
You may be able to intellectually understand why the people in your life who care about you say the things they do. You might even experience a moment of clarity in which you begin to doubt the voice. But, when it comes to actually acting against anorexia’s command, it feels like the stakes are impossibly high. The cult leader reminds you that it’s too risky and dangerous, that it wouldn’t be worth it. The outside world is trying to trick you, to destroy the hard work you’ve put into creating a sense of safety, fulfillment, and belonging.
The profound fear that to lose anorexia would be to lose yourself is itself a symptom of the disorder. As an egosyntonic illness, anorexia makes it incredibly difficult to separate your thoughts from the voice of your eating disorder. Anorexia becomes something you value and protect because it feels like you. Any threat to your eating disorder feels like a threat to your deepest sense of self. Who wouldn’t feel defensive, angry, and invalidated when questioned like this?
Leaving feels impossible – who would you be outside of the cult, without your eating disorder? How will you move through the world without the structure that anorexia has created for you? Why would you leave when its rituals provide comfort and predictability, when your obedience makes you feel special?
Because over time, and with support, you finally start to see the cracks. You notice its inconsistencies, the unmet promises. You look around and realize how profoundly isolated you are. You can no longer relate to your friends. You’re close to dropping out of your graduate program. You notice your child exhibiting a disordered relationship with food. You hit a critical threshold of physical and psychological torture. You realize that there is nothing special about anorexia.
And sometimes, you just grow too exhausted to sustain it, and the carrots it continues to dangle in front of you grow less tempting.
Leaving a cult and choosing recovery from anorexia means leaving your former support system and the world you thought was safe. It takes enormous courage to do something like that when so much of you worries it will be a mistake and that you won’t be able to handle it. You don’t need to have all the answers to leave the cult leader in your head. The time is now.
As you intentionally act out against your inner cult leader:
Fight the isolation that the cult leader wants for you: surround yourself with people who care about you and who do not fixate on food or engage in body talk
Explore a brand new interest or activity that has absolutely nothing to do with food or exercise
Grieve the loss of what anorexia promised (and what it delivered)
Accept that at first you may have very mixed feelings about the recovery process. Continue to anchor yourself in the values that make your life worth living
I use this metaphor not because it is perfect, but because it is a powerful one that has landed with many people who have recovered from eating disorders, particularly AN. It is not my intention to diminish or simplify the experience of living in/leaving a cult, nor the complexity of eating disorders, which are biopsychosocial.
Inspired by the podcast The Anxious Truth - A Panic, Anxiety, and Mental Health Podcast by Drew Linsalata