Being Mindful of Triggers
You may have heard people joke about trigger warnings or joke about being triggered, but triggers are a very serious matter in eating disorder recovery.
The definition of the word "trigger", when used in conjunction with mental illnesses, can vary based on the illness.
For eating disorders, triggers = anything that can cause you to return to disordered eating behaviors or thoughts (British Columbia Children's Hospital).
It can be something you see or hear that causes an intensely negative, and often uncontrollable, emotional reaction that can lead to a relapse. One example is hearing someone talk about cutting out carbohydrates from their diet, which could trigger you to feel like you are unhealthy and disgusting for eating carbs so you must now eat less of them. Triggers can merely upset you, or they cause you to change your behavior by restricting your intake, increasing your exercise, etc.
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Eating disorder triggers are an extremely important issue due to their prevalence. While someone who's trying to recovery from a drug or alcohol addiction can largely avoid situations that involve that substance, it is impossible to avoid food, people talking about food, advertisements about food, etc.
When I was working towards recovery, it was very damaging to hear people talk about dieting or exercising. It made me feel fat and like I had to revert to my disordered habits. If anyone ever made a comment about the food on my plate or the food that I ate, that could make me relapse and restrict my food for the next week.
Even now, it makes me very uncomfortable to hear people talking about reducing the amount of fat they eat or how often they go to the gym, since it makes me feel like I too need to eat less and exercise more. Fortunately, I now am able to hear those things without changing my behavior, even if it makes me upset, but it took me a very long time to get to this point.
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Learn More:
- "The World is my Trigger" — published by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa & Associated Disorders
- Coping With Triggers — published by the Eating Recovery Center
- Relapse Prevention — British Columbia Children's Hospital: Kelty Mental Health
- 3 Tips for Coping with Triggers in Eating Disorder Recovery — National Eating Disorders Association