The False Self of Food Addiction

Phil Werdell, M.A.

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For food addicts who have not yet found a path of recovery, it gets worse: the most advanced food addicts have developed and live most of their lives in a false consciousness or false self. As food becomes one of the most important, if not the most important, thing in their lives, the false starving of physical craving increases and the irrational, false thoughts of rationalizations become so pervasive that these false ideas begin to be confused as the food addict’s self.

When experiencing a false sense of self, food addicts perceive themselves as being the disease rather than as just having a disease. It seems to them not only that they are just hungry when they are actually in a state of craving but also that the decision to eat was freely chosen by their inner most and true self. Thus, even when asked to consider that they might be powerless over food, this does not seem to be true to them. They see themselves as simply not wanting to quit when in fact they are acting out of distortion of will.

In this false self consciousness, the food addict retreats into isolation. Typical behaviors of the food addict at this stage include eating alone more often, not answering the telephone when eating, eating while reading or watching television, even skipping social functions or work responsibilities to binge.

Because there are more and more negative consequences to isolated binging and because the food addict sees these as free will choices, this leads to all sorts of critical judgments about self: “”I’m stupid,” “I’m bad,” “I’m defective, “ “I’m sinful,,” “I’m incompetent,” and so forth.

Eventually, a sense of shame develops which is so deed that this feeling itself becomes a reason to eat: “If there is something wrong with me, I might as well eat; ” “If I’m incompetent, there is nothing I can do about it;” “If I’m immoral, I deserve the negative consequences.” The negative concepts of self become a part of the disease thinking which in turn lead to more eating and more negative results.

For the food addict who is in this downward spiral, begins to see this aspect of addictive experience as almost all that is real. In fact, in the later stages of food addiction, life becomes mostly a cycle of eating to satisfy a craving, an ever short period of satisfaction and numbing of the pain, then further demoralization. Just occasionally, at what addicts often call a “bottom,” the physical, emotional and spiritual pain is so severe that the food addict is able to see the truth, that they are power-less over food, their food addictive thinking and the disease process.

What can food addicts do at this stage? On the one hand, few are able to do anything by themselves. On the other hand, with another recovered food addict or someone to help them find a spiritual path, it is relatively simple to find a way out.

Those who are stably abstinent from their own binge foods and who have worked seriously on their own emotional and spiritual recovery can help even the most progressed food addicts to see when they are “in their disease.” or false self. Those in recovery quickly discern the irrational thinking and denial of a food addict new to recovery. The experience of rigorous physical abstinence makes it possible to notice one’s own experience of false staving, and this basic insight allows a gradual discernment of one’s own false thinking about food. It also gives the recovered food addict a healed intuition about the thinking and behavior of other food addicts.

So, the simple truth is that when a food addict’s disease has progressed to the point that they are at least sometimes confused as to what is true about their experience in relationship to food, they need help beyond themselves. One of the most obvious ways to get this support is to find other food addicts who have had just the same problem and ask them to help.

There is more, though, that we can say that is helpful in knowing whether one is caught inside one’s own food addicted mind. There are simple guidelines for food addicts in relapse to know whether or not they are in denial:

• First, are you free from guilt and shame about your eating and out-of-control behavior with food?

• Second, do you yourself see your powerlessness over food, and are you able to describe it being very specific about the food and about your addictive thinking about food?

• Third, do you see that you need a Power beyond yourself in order to be food abstinent, and are you willing to surrender to this reality?

If you answer each of these questions “Yes,” then you have taken the first step in seeing your own deepest food addictive denial. If not, then you may have serious spiritual work to do.