Do you know what the root cause of your eating disorder is? Would you know how to heal it if you found the cause?

A lot of books have been written on the subject of eating disorders and most of them will have you dig into your family history to find the pain that has been inflicted upon you so that you can determine who or what sent you into a downward spiral. Then you can focus on healing the relationship or the situation.

My approach is this: It's a good idea to find your past "hurts" and get them into the front of your brain instead of locked into the dark corner of it but I also don't think spending a ton of time digging for every last morsel of who hurt you on Thursday February 13, 1992 or Friday September 12, 2004 is effective either. Obviously if you were abused or you can pinpoint a specific issue then you should work on releasing it.

More importantly, I like to get right down to the nitty gritty of the problem and I'll give you the answer now as I do with my clients.

Think about this for a moment. Let's say you were raised by very strict parents who never showed you love. They ignored you. They constantly compared you to your brother or sister. They hit you. They yelled at you until their voices went hoarse. They put you last.

Do you know what has happened to you?

Do you know what the one common denominator is for everyone who has been through these circumstances?

Do you want to blame your parents for the rest of your life for treating you so horribly?

Most people do stay in the blame mode and never move on. They turn to food as a way to control something in their life when they feel as though they can't control their circumstances. Food becomes the outlet. But then, because food was never meant to act in that capacity of comfort, they begin to lose control and the issue then becomes an eating disorder when all along it was abuse from their parents.

Do you think if the person works on healing their feelings about their parents that their eating disorder will go away? NO! NO! NO! It will not go away. Why? Because although the parents were the reason behind the neglect it is the neglect itself that is the root cause.

The person needs to deal with the root cause which is the feelings neglect has left on them. What the person needs to heal is a feeling of worthlessness; not feeling good enough to be loved. Not feeling good enough for anything is the problem.

Wow! What a difference that makes in the whole process of healing doesn't it? All this time you thought that if you dealt with your parents or the situation the rest would go away but that's not true!

Now you can see that getting to the bottom of the issue is where you need to be. Take a piece of paper and write out what you think started your eating disorder, then write down the feelings you felt because of the situation. Now you are getting somewhere!

One last thought - blaming someone else for your eating disorder is the best way to stay in your problem. Stop blaming others even if you know who they are. Let it go by telling yourself that you no longer need to feel that way. It is a thought and you can change your thoughts. Today you are working on you.