Eating disorders are the deadliest mental health condition – reconnecting with your inner body sensations can help reduce self-harm

Did you know that anorexia is… the deadliest mental health condition? One person dies from an eating disorder every hour in the US Many of these deaths are not due to health consequences related to starvation, but from suicide.

Until 1 in 5 women and 1 in 7 men in the US develop an eating disorder before the age of 40 and 1 for 2 people with eating disorders will think about ending their life. About 1 in 4 people with anorexia or bulimia nervosa will attempt suicide, and people suffering from anorexia are at risk of dying by suicide 31 times more than peers without this disorder.

In fact, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and suicide deaths are not suicidal in nature. everything more common among people with any type of eating disorder compared to people without an eating disorder.

Why might this be so?

I am clinical psychologist which studies eating disorders and self-harm, and I have spent the last 15 years researching this question. We still don’t have an answer. However, new work on perception of the body’s internal state shows some promising treatment options. And what we learn can help anyone improve their relationship with their body.

Eating disorders and interoception

To understand why people with eating disorders are at risk of dying by suicide, I first ask you to do a short thought exercise.

I want you to really think about your body: Think about your hair, face, arms, stomach, chest and legs. What words and feelings come to mind? Are there any things you would like to change? You can close your eyes and try this.

I’m guessing that while you were doing this thought exercise, you probably weren’t thinking, “Every part of my body is amazing. Five stars, it wouldn’t change anything!” In fact, many people tend to be pretty negative i very critical thoughts about their bodies.

Here’s another question for you: What do you do with the things you don’t like? For example, what do you do when you encounter a person you don’t like, a food you can’t stand, or an overwhelming list of household chores? Do you care about them, do you accept them? Probably not. Most people tend to avoid, despise, or criticize things they don’t like. This allows them to separate and disconnect from these hated things.

But when you think negatively about your body and try to avoid it, you end up disconnecting from him and losing the ability to understand what is happening in your body. You begin to see it not as your body, but as an object.

This ability to recognize, interpret and respond to internal signals in the body has a name: interoceptionalso called the sixth sense. It refers to the ability to recognize, interpret, and respond to a variety of bodily sensations, such as emotions, hunger and satiety, temperature, and pain.

Interoception can be broken down into different components and interoceptive accuracyor how accurately you can notice different inner sensations measured in various ways. These include psychophysiological measurements such as the heartbeat perception test, which compares a person’s perceived number of heartbeats without comparing the heart rate to the actual number of heartbeats over a given period. It is believed that people with larger discrepancies between the perceived and actual number of heartbeats perceive cardiac sensations worse and, therefore, have poorer interoception.

Interoception and health

My research over the last decade has discovered that the worse your interoception is, the more disconnected you are from your body and the less aware you are of what’s going on inside it. The more disconnected you are from your body, the easier it is to harm yourself, whether through eating disorders or suicidal behavior.

Interoception is crucial to understanding and caring for your body. For example, to eat properly, you must be able to feel hunger and fullness. If you weren’t able to see the pain, you could end up hurting yourself. You also need to be able to understand the emotions you feel in order to respond adaptively to different situations.

Research suggests that interoception is integrally linked to mental and physical health, and interoception impairment is thought to be: risk factor Down various mental disorders. For example, if you are unable to sense when you are hungry and when you are full, it may lead to restrictive or binge eating. Conversely, if you are overly aware of your internal sensations, such as your heart rate and breathing, this can lead to symptoms of panic disorder.

When you lose connection with your body, it becomes easier to harm it as an object you hate. My team’s research has shown that people who have he tried to commit suicide they have poorer interoception than people who didn’t do it and people who did he tried to commit suicide many times have worse interoception than those who have only tried to commit suicide once. People from newer and fatal suicide attempts have poorer interoception than more distant or less lethal attempts.

Interocepton impairment is more strongly associated with suicidal thoughts and attempts than other risk factors such as hopelessness, gender, and post-traumatic stress.

Reconnecting with the body

But many people haven’t always been so disconnected from their bodies.

I have two young children who are learning what their body can do and discovering that it is becoming more and more amazing. My 7-year-old son and his friends love doing gymnastics while standing on one leg or walking on the balance beam. And my daughter, who is almost 3 years old, loves her round belly: she proudly displays it and plays it like a drum. Little children haven’t learned yet talking to their bodies in the rough way that many teenagers and adults do. They did not begin to disconnect from their inner senses.

To reduce self-harm, I encourage you to try to regain your sense of connection and take care of not only your body, but also the bodies of those you love. It’s not easy, but researchers are exploring many ways to improve interoception.

For example, my team developed a training program to improve interoception, the so-called Reconnecting with inner sensations and experiencesor GROWTH. First, we educate participants about interoception and the importance of cultivating awareness of inner sensations to improve mental and physical health.

Then we teach them how to pay attention to their muscles progressive muscle relaxation techniques and to Hunger and satiety signals through mindful and intuitive eating.

Then we familiarize participants with the concept body functionality asking them to think about what their body can do, rather than judging it by its appearance. For example, instead of thinking, “I’m gaining weight,” “I’m too old,” or “I’m too slow,” they might think, “My legs helped me get out of bed today,” or “My arms let me hug the ones I love,” or “This the scar shows my body’s ability to heal.” This is important because body image is related to many aspects interoceptive awareness.

Finally, we teach participants to recognize emotions and change behavior. Emotional awareness is a key element of interoception, so we ask participants to think about where they feel these emotions in their bodies, how they can distinguish specific emotions, and how they can respond to stress more effectively.

Consumer culture it doesn’t encourage you to listen to your body, so relearning how to do this may take time and dedicated practice. However, I believe that rewards can literally save lives.

This article has been republished from Conversationan independent, nonprofit organization providing facts and trusted analysis to help you understand our complex world. It was written by: April Smith, Auburn University

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April Smith receives funding from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health.