Anorexia 2 Essay, Research Paper

Anorexia and bulimia are excessive eating disorders. Anorexia is the act of starving oneself, usually to maintain a certain physical image. Bulimia is a disorder in which one person eats an excessive amount (bingeing) and then purges the food on purpose. Bulimics usually induce vomiting or use laxatives of some sort.

There are many similarities in both illnesses, the most common being the cause. There seems to be a common occurrence of sexual and/or physical and emotional abuse in direct relation to eating disorders (though not all people living with Eating Disorders are survivors of abuse). There also seems to be a direct connection in some people to clinical Depression. The eating disorder sometimes causes the depression or the depression can lead to the eating disorder. All in all, eating disorders are very complex emotional issues — Though they may seem to be nothing more than a dangerously obsessive weight concern on the surface, for most men and women suffering with an eating disorder there are deeper emotional conflicts to be resolved.

Many factors like the ones below can cause a person to become anorexic or bulimic:

+ Need for control in one’s life

+ Need to please others

+ Dread of being fat.

+ Depression

+ Low self esteem

+ Unresolved abuse as a child

+ Social attitude toward peer pressure and toward thinness

+ From the book FEELINGS BURIED ALIVE NEVER DIE the emotions listed are:

o Feels totally unable to please parent (usually mother)

o Feels unable to live up to expectations of others

o Feelings of self-rejection/self-hatred