How Anxiety and Eating Disorders Are Linked—And How to Heal
Anxiety and eating disorders are often deeply connected, as disordered behaviors with food and body rarely manifest in a vacuum. Most folks with eating disorders have at least one co-occurring mental health condition, the most common being anxiety.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 48 percent of people with anorexia, 65 percent with binge eating disorder (BED), and 80 percent with bulimia also meet the criteria for anxiety.
This co-occurrence surpasses any other mental health or substance abuse condition. What’s more, research shows that anxiety is predictive of subsequent eating disorder behaviors in more than 50 percent of adolescents and young adults.
The more you know about this connection, the more effectively you can work to unravel this tangled web of challenges. Together, we can explore the link between anxiety and eating disorders and uncover how to heal with compassion.
The Intersectional Nature of Anxiety and Eating Disorders
Eating disorders and anxiety share a number of the same root causes and risk factors, including perfectionism, emotional distress, neuroticism, self-consciousness, post-traumatic stress, and an intense desire to maintain control.
Here are just a few specific ways in which the undercurrents of these two conditions overlap.
Control and Coping Mechanisms
At their core, both eating disorders and anxious tendencies are maladaptive tools to cope with overwhelming emotions or circumstances.
When you lack a sense of control and stability in life, it’s tempting to latch onto behaviors such as constant rumination, food restriction, compulsive exercise, and overeating to distract from a situation, feeling, or emotion that feels unmanageable, or conversely, to make it feel more manageable.
These behaviors can temporarily numb anxious thoughts and help you regain an illusion of control. This often makes them coping mechanisms for emotional avoidance.
Perfectionism or Rigid Expectations
The relentless urge to strive for perfection is another trait that eating disorders and anxiety have in common. According to the Journal of Eating Disorders, perfectionism fuels rigid expectations, harsh self-criticism, unrealistic goals, compulsive habits, and an intense fear of failure.
This impulse to achieve excellence at all costs can lead to shame, low self-esteem, chronic stress, and a belief that your worth is tied to performance. It can also contribute to poor body image, a fixation with thinness, or weight-control behaviors, the research continues.
Neurological Imbalances or Disruptions
There’s a biological component to both of these mental health conditions. Anxious impulses and eating disorder behaviors can take root due to neurochemical disruptions in the brain’s reward center.
For example, a dopamine imbalance could throw off the part of your brain that regulates appetite motivation, hunger and fullness cues, taste stimulation, and other factors that influence food choices. This can result in anxieties, compulsions, ritualistic behaviors, or sheer lack of interest in eating.
Sociocultural Pressures and Biases
Western culture’s narrow definitions of beauty, performance, and success can also fuel anxiety and eating disorders. The constant exposure to diet culture, discrimination or stigma around certain body shapes, and the glorification of mainstream heteronormative ideals can pressure marginalized folks to either conform or feel inadequate.
The BMC Public Health Journal found a high correlation between those who encounter harmful appearance-related biases and the risk of anxiety, low self-esteem, eating disorders, or other mental health issues.
Healing from Anxiety and Eating Disorders
Healing is not a one-size-fits-all process—it requires a personalized, compassionate, and actionable approach that accounts for your unique mental health needs. Here are some tools and strategies you can use to explore both your anxiety and your eating disorder while moving toward healing.
Cultivate Mindful Awareness
Mindfulness is the state of being aware of the moment you’re in and observing any emotions, thoughts, or sensations that come to the surface without judgment. Interestingly, folks in eating disorder recovery who practice mindfulness are less vulnerable to body image fixations, perfectionist tendencies, emotional distress, and anxious ruminations.
If you’re not sure how to cultivate mindfulness, here are a few simple ideas to start you off:
Listen to a meditation or write in a journal for about 5–10 minutes each day.
Concentrate on taking slow, deep, conscious breaths from your diaphragm.
Tune into your hunger and fullness cues, then respond to them with intuitive eating.
Activate all five senses by noticing an object you can taste, see, hear, touch, and smell.
Note that forcing yourself to be mindful around food and your body can be triggering if being present with these things doesn’t feel safe. If this practice feels unsafe or pushes you deeper into your anxiety, consider asking for the help of a mental health professional who can help guide you.
Reframe Critical Inner Dialogue
Eating disorders thrive on harmful narratives and critical self-talk. Thoughts such as “ I weigh too much,” “I am a failure,” or “I will never be enough,” reinforce the anxiety, fear, and shame that can push you toward extreme behaviors.
While self-criticism is associated with more eating disorder risk factors, self-compassion has been found to boost resilience, nurture a positive body image, and enhance healing outcomes. Self-compassion teaches you how to confront mistakes with a curiosity to learn and grow from them, rather than to feel ashamed of them.
Here’s an example of how to shift from negative self-talk to self-compassion:
As a critical thought comes to your mind, pause, and consider how you would respond to a best friend, loved one, or child in that moment. You would likely not be critical or mean—you’d be loving and kind. Now respond to yourself in that same way.
Form a Trusted Support Network
Eating disorders thrive in isolation. Plus, those who lack meaningful social connections are more prone to loneliness, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues that could exacerbate harmful behaviors.
This is why it’s vital to build a community of folks you can trust to offer both support and accountability in the healing process. Below are some resources to help you establish this network:
Join Project HEAL’s virtual meal support group if you want a structured, judgment-free zone to help combat anxiety during meal times.
Talk to friends or family members with whom you feel safe. Even if all they do is listen, this gives you a chance to let emotions out and feel seen and heard.
Connect with peers who are also in recovery through a clinician-led community support group. Here are some we recommend.
Reach out to a licensed therapist who can help you untangle the root causes of your anxious ruminations and eating disorder behaviors, then teach you to form new coping mechanisms and a healthier relationship with yourself.
Create Restorative, Flexible Routines
Rigidity is a common predictor of both anxiety and eating disorders, so it’s helpful to counteract this mindset with flexible routines that provide a sense of order without feeling too restrictive.
Instead of forcing yourself to stick with the same relentless habits and behaviors, experiment with some alternatives that encourage self-care and restore a sense of true well-being. As basic as these routines might sound, they can make a significant impact:
Limit your exposure to content or interactions that fuel anxious thoughts, harmful beliefs, body image comparisons, and other mental health concerns. (Should you delete social media?)
Consume meals that feel balanced, nourishing, and enjoyable at consistent times.
Ease stress levels and calm the nervous system with gentle, restorative movement (as guided by your clinician, should you have one), such as a walk in nature, a casual bike ride with loved ones, or a yoga practice.
Your Anxiety and Eating Disorder Don’t Have to Run Your Life
Just as anxiety and eating disorders overlap, so do the various ways to heal. If you want more support, tap into our resources at Project HEAL. We work to remove the financial barriers to care, so you can pursue the healing you deserve.
