Anorexia: Life in a Cult
I saw a client recently who said how helpful the analogy from Anita Johnston's book Eating in the Light of the Moon had been for her. It likens anorexia to finding a log to cling onto when you fall into a raging torrent of a river - the log keeps your head above water and helps you regain some feeling of control over your life. When the river calms, you still cling to the huge log, too scared to let go and swim back to shore. As Johnson says, “The very thing that saved your life is now getting in the way of your getting where you want to go”. This clearly illustrates how, once anorexia takes hold, it becomes extremely difficult to escape.
Unfortunately, anorexia nervosa is a severe, life-threatening eating disorder. It’s also far more than a struggle with food and body image. It is a mental, emotional, and physical entrapment that can be likened to being pulled involuntarily into a cult, where your identity, autonomy, and rational thinking vanish. For the individual struggling, it can seem like the only option to feel safe. By examining anorexia through the lens of cult psychology, it’s easier to understand its grip and explore the therapeutic approaches to recovery. No matter how it pulled you in, it’s how you get out that really matters.
The Cult Parallel
To understand anorexia as a cult, it’s useful to listen to Dawn Smith’s TED Talk, “Why I Left an Evangelical Cult,” where she recounts her experience of becoming caught in a belief system that demanded unwavering obedience and conformity: nail varnish was the work of evil. Much like cult members, individuals with anorexia often internalise rigid, punishing rules about food and self-worth, leading to isolation from family and friends - and abandonment of their true self. The idea of leaving causes extreme fear – it's all you know.
As another example, in the film Divergent, members of the Dauntless faction are injected with a serum that erases free thinking. This is a powerful analogy for the way anorexia functions, acting as an invisible serum and erasing your identity, leading sufferers to perform acts of self-denial and destructive behaviours. It is this systematic stripping away of autonomy that makes anorexia so dangerous.
Similarly, Grace Bowman’s memoir, Thin, about her experience of anorexia, illustrates the relentless, deceptive nature of anorexia. Her words, “I can spend the whole day lying. I don’t actually tell any lies, I just act out the big one,” encapsulating how anorexia deceives. The individual is conditioned to distrust their natural impulses and intuition, becoming terrified of failing to conform. They become a vessel for the disorder’s ideology, unable to discern truth from the warped reality presented to them.
Reclaiming Your Identity: The Journey Out
Recovery from anorexia, more difficult perhaps than escaping a cult, is a process of reclaiming your real identity and autonomy. Dawn Smith’s story of breaking free from her cult confirms that freedom from a cult is possible. She faced the challenge of stepping away from everything she had once believed and – despite her fears about leaving - found herself, much happier, on the other side.
Grace Bowman’s narrative reminds us that anorexia feeds on lies, control and fear. But with targeted therapy, support, and perseverance, its grip can be loosened.
Therapy Principles for Treatment
Recovery begins by acknowledging anorexia’s hold. We need to at least consider that the ‘cult’ mindset is holding us back in life to begin to escape it. Just as cult deprogramming relies on re-establishing connections with people outside the cult, therapy emphasises rebuilding relationships with supportive individuals. Group therapy, family-based treatment (FBT), and support networks help break the isolation anorexia thrives on. Further self-compassion practices help counteract the self-loathing indoctrinated by the disorder. And finally, therapy encourages individuals to analyse the motivations behind their behaviours and beliefs. This approach aligns with how people are deprogrammed from cults—by questioning the indoctrinated rules and rediscovering their voice and values.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy-Enhanced (CBT-E) is a specialised treatment for eating disorders. It is based on cognitive-behavioural principles and addresses the needs of individuals trapped in eating disorders. Here are the core principles of CBT-E:
CBT-E is designed to treat all forms of eating disorders, recognising that individuals can move between different types over time (e.g., anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder).
The therapy targets specific factors that maintain the eating disorder, such as:
Overvaluation of weight and shape
Dietary restraint and restriction
Event-triggered changes in mood that influence eating behaviour
Perfectionism and low self-esteem
CBT-E is tailored to each patient’s specific issues and needs. It includes developing a shared understanding of the eating disorder and sets personalised goals for treatment.
It involves 4 stages as follows:
It focuses on engaging the client, educating them about the disorder, and developing a regular eating pattern.
A brief review phase to used to evaluate progress and refine the treatment plan.
The main phase addresses the maintaining mechanisms of the disorder, with targeted interventions to challenge unhelpful beliefs and behaviours.
Consolidates progress, prepares for potential future challenges, and plans for maintaining change after therapy ends.
The treatment involves specific strategies such as self-monitoring, cognitive restructuring to challenge distorted thoughts, and behavioural experiments to modify maladaptive eating behaviours and reinforce healthier patterns.
CBT-E addresses not just the behavioural symptoms (e.g., restricting food intake and bingeing) but also underlying issues like body image concerns and psychological factors such as anxiety or perfectionism.
7. The ultimate goal of CBT-E is to help individuals achieve a sustained recovery by developing a new way of thinking about food, weight, and shape, reducing the risk of relapse – and escaping from the cult.
Conclusion:
Much like Dawn Smith found freedom from an evangelical cult, you can free yourself from the anorexic cult. By understanding the deceptive nature of anorexia, usingtherapy to dismantle its beliefs, and fostering trust in yourself, recovery becomes not just possible but a journey that finds a way to rediscovering who you were always meant to be, beyond the lies and false promises of anorexia.