Disordered Beliefs

[Done-With-It!]

Disordered Beliefs

Eating disordered individuals often adhere to distorted beliefs that are a direct result of their eating disorder. Most people with eating disorders view their bodies inaccurately, placing inordinate value on appearance. Some examples include thoughts such as “ If only I was thinner, then I would be happy” or “ If I ate what I wanted to eat, I would become huge”. These distorted beliefs become a source of emotional discomfort and can cause other related problems for individuals suffering from anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating. Beliefs about events, others and self have a significant influence on feelings and actions taken. For anorexics, bulimics, and compulsive eaters, when beliefs are distorted, then resulting feelings and actions may not match true situations. For eating disordered individuals to rectify their distorted beliefs into matching their current situation the eating disordered individual must first:
1. Become conscious of their belief system;
2. Identify the eating disorder distortions they contain and any benefits that may have been obtained from the distortions; and
3. Learn to substitute more accurate non-eating disordered alternative beliefs for the distorted beliefs.
The following are definitions of some of the most commonly used distortions among anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating.

Black or White Thinking

This type of eating disorder distortion is also known as all or nothing thinking. Individuals suffering from anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating often see themselves in terms of extremes. Black and white statements include: I am either good or bad, a success or complete failure, worthwhile or worthless. This type of distortion has devastating consequences on self-esteem since small imperfections are taken as proof of a belief of totally worthlessness. Instead, eating disordered individuals must learn to see that life mostly exists in the gray. A fair inventory of anyone will show negative as well as positive attributes.

Overgeneralization

This eating disorder distortion is when an anorexic, bulimic or compulsive eater takes an isolated event and then draws a broad general rule from the event. This new distorted broad rule is then applied to numerous situations. An example would be from a sexual abuse experience by an abuser, which could be over generalized to the belief that "all men will abuse me". An alternative belief would be that the offender is an abusive individual, but not all men I come into contact with will abuse me.

Mislabeling

This is a distortion whereby an eating disordered individual takes a single personal deficiency and mislabels her or himself as completely negative. An example of this distortion would be "I did not stop the binge, therefore I am an entirely weak person". No one event or characteristic determines our entire worth. Eating disorders are diseases that willpower alone will not arrest.

Mental Filtering

This distortion in anorexia, bulimia or compulsive eating occurs when a negative detail is picked out from an event and obsessed on to the exclusion of all other facts. This is called mental filtering because the negative detail remains but all other information is filtered out. For eating disordered individuals, if someone tells them ten positive attributes of their personality and one negative attribute, they will focus on the one negative attribute to the exclusion of the ten positive attributes.

Disqualifying the Positive

This eating disorder distortion is where any positive experience is transformed into a negative one by discounting. A common example would be receiving positive attention from a person and believing that "the only reason he pays attention to me is because he wants something from me". This distortion prevents individuals suffering from anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating from receiving affirmations and positive messages from others.

Magnification

and

Minimization

Magnification refers to the distortion for anorexics, bulimics and compulsive eaters of magnifying negative attributes and deficiencies. Minimization is the eating disorder distortion of downplaying positive attributes. These eating disorder distortions are a double-edged sword against self-esteem since negative aspects are exaggerated and good points are minimized.

Emotional Reasoning

In this type of distortion anorexics, bulimics and compulsive eaters take feelings and turn them into facts. For example, many eating disordered individuals feel guilty about the eating disorder behavior and through this type of distortion anorexics, bulimics and compulsive eaters rationalize that since they feel guilty about the eating disorder behavior, they must be guilty. In actuality, eating disorders are diseases and therefore no one is to blame even though the eating disordered individual may be the one having the feeling and carrying the burden of guilt.

Should Statements

Many individuals suffering from anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating live with the "tyranny of the shoulds". These should statements are often unrealistic expectations for the eating disorder individual and others, often setting the eating disorder individual up for disappointment and failure. Examples include: "I should have willpower"; "I should be able to stop this"; "I should have known better"; I should have told someone"; "She should have known"; and "I should have stopped him".

Personalization

This eating disorder distortion is a misattribution of responsibility often found in survivors of abuse. Victims of abuse often inappropriately accept the responsibility for the abuse. A common misinformed statement is, "I must have been responsible for the abuse since I did not resist and it went on for so long". This is not true since a victim of abuse often does not have the capacity or knowledge to resist abuse.
These are just some of the more common distorted thoughts and beliefs. Rader Programs understands how individuals develop these thought processes and can help individuals replace these dysfunctional thought processes with healthy accurate beliefs.


http://www.raderprograms.com/beliefs.aspx

[Done-With-It!]

Did they read my Mind, or what.

[Little Missy]

Good info Miss Done!! Thank you!!

[Nina]

Hi Miss Done. I know that this was from several years ago, but I decided to pop back in here tonight. I saw this thread and read it and I want you to know that I appreciate you posting all of this here. It all very much describes my faulty thinking processes as a compulsive overeater. Even the last one can be likened to my way of thinking even though I've never been abused. I have the same thinking process, in that I always blame myself for how others treat me, no matter what the situation. Again, thanks for sharing.

[Done-With-It!]

Originally Posted by Nina

Hi Miss Done. I know that this was from several years ago, but I decided to pop back in here tonight. I saw this thread and read it and I want you to know that I appreciate you posting all of this here. It all very much describes my faulty thinking processes as a compulsive overeater. Even the last one can be likened to my way of thinking even though I've never been abused. I have the same thinking process, in that I always blame myself for how others treat me, no matter what the situation. Again, thanks for sharing.

I'm glad it helped. I used to have issues with a lot of those thoughts also.
It can be really hard to deal with and to change the thoughts, so I'm glad
it helped!