Common Causes of Binge Eating Disorder

by Stella Stathi

''We are all influenced by our parents' patterns of thinking and behaving. Likewise, the family environment you grow up in may, in different ways, encourage the development of Binge Eating Disorder later in life. Eating for emotional reasons, which is a fundamental characteristic of BED, can be picked up on and assumed by children, when they observe their parents or other family members engaging in this behaviour -even more so when food is explicitly used as a reward or punishment toward the children themselves. 

If your family used, or abused, food as a coping mechanism, you may have found that free, healthy, genuine emotional expression was not encouraged or even allowed, as grown-ups who are not comfortable and intimate with their own emotions, are bound to treat their children's emotional display the same way. 

This tendency towards emotional suppression, in combination with the behaviour of overeating being passed down from one generation to the next, within your family, can lead to you establishing a love-and-hate relationship with food and fostering impulsive behaviour. Both of these set the foundation for the more serious and challenging manifestation of Binge Eating Disorder, with its more compulsive and secretive nature, to develop.''

As featured in RSCPP's article, Therapists explain common causes of Binge Eating Disorder (BED). For the whole article, please click here: http://www.rscpp.co.uk/content/causes/binge-eating-disorder.html.