Anorexia is a mental illness which makes people think that they are too fat. Consequently people underfeed themselves often in an extreme fashion that can be life threatening. This desire mostly attacks young females from any social class.

What if

What if there was a lot more to it than that? Indeed there is much more to it. First, anorexia usually strikes children and young adults who fit a very precise psychological and sociological pattern. Second, the causes are much more complicated than finding oneself too fat and third, we will try to describe the behavior and way of thinking for a typical anorexic.

Not just everybody can aspire to anorexia, however in view of society’s trend toward pushing the abnormally thin version of beauty, it might eventually spread to other social classes who are presently content of lacking self esteem and generally going through life with hunger and shame. Indeed at present full blown anorexia is a snob, it almost always strikes in the upper social class. Children from solid to high income families whose parents usually have a high degree of education are more at risk. Anorexic children are usually “low maintenance” kids who perform extremely well in school and are very obedient by inclination. They are usually organized and goal oriented. They expect a lot from everybody but even more from themselves.

Now why would your typical perfect child (mostly females but boys are becoming increasingly at risk) embark on such a terrible ride? Well what you have to realize is that anorexia is not a “diet” disease which would be a simple eating disorder but a “control” disease. You have seen very young children try to take control of their food intake because it is the only thing that they can control; well, you see the morbid version with teenagers. Those high-achieving, self pressure induced teenagers see adult life coming with no guarantee that they are going to do as well and they crack. Sometimes the most insignificant failure and sometimes just the fear of eventual failure triggers it. The scared teenager then proceeds to regain control of his life through rigorous dieting at first and finally loses all control. During the starting phase the teenager will typically document his or herself “healthy” eating and will take interest in getting in shape (aerobics of all sorts and weight training for example).

Weirdly enough if you are looking for reasons, some findings seem to indicate that in case of girls their relationship to their father and how they are perceived by him might play a role. The eating pattern of the father might also be of importance. This would go against conventional wisdom which thought that the mother as a role model was more important. Those findings are new however and are not yet reliable.

As to the average behavior, as we said, you should expect a huge interest for nutrition and getting in shape. You will probably stop actually seeing them eat. They will have eaten before or will eat after for some reason or will feel a bit sick or just not hungry that night. Anorexic are master manipulators and the fact that they are usually bright kids with a record of always doing what is right allow them to get away with not eating.

What to make of it

If you are reading this you probably have the profile to either be an anorexic or to be in a family that might have one in it. So be careful because telling an anorexic to eat will make it fear a loss of control over his eating pattern therefore driving it deeper into his or her obsession.

You might need professional help depending on the degree of severity of the disease. Normally to regain control over the disease two things must be understood from the anorexic. The first is that it is a control issue and not a weight issue. The second one is that anorexics think that losing weight will solve all their problems and worries. The realization that there are no magic bullet that will solve everything is critical. To the anorexic once she or he will be lean enough there will be no relationship problems and every bad thing will go away. As long as wishful thinking continues the disease will flourish.

By the way you are never cured of that. Like an alcoholic the beast will always be waiting for a weakness on your part. It is a lifetime illness even though we don’t want it to be.