Eating disorders can be hard to understand from the outside.
When someone you love has an eating disorder, it can be hard to understand what they are going through. You might be worried, unsure what to say, or frightened of making things worse... Which is where we come in 🩷
This page explains what can happen when their body doesn't get or have enough energy, and why looking 'fine' doesn't tell you how someone is 'fine'.
The behaviour might be visible. Eating less. Avoiding certain foods. Becoming distressed around meals. Saying they feel full, uncomfortable or unable to eat.
But the experience underneath that behaviour often is not.
We want to understand the person behind the eating disorder. What eating actually feels like for them. What they are frightened of. What feels uncomfortable. What thoughts are happening that nobody else can hear. What their body is experiencing that they might not yet know how to explain.
Then we help translate that experience into language the people around them can understand.
There is no single explanation for everyone.
That is why we try to understand what is happening underneath the behaviour, rather than assuming what it means.
What reassures one person might completely miss another.
The aim is to find the explanation that makes this person’s experience make a little more sense.
Sometimes that means explaining why restriction can become such a difficult cycle to escape.
Sometimes it means helping someone put words to sensations they have struggled to describe.
Sometimes it means helping a parent, partner or friend understand that what looks irrational from the outside can feel completely real, frightening and consuming from the inside.
The bits that get lost in translation.
Because food avoidance is not always simply about wanting to be thinner.
Eating might feel physically painful. Fullness might feel overwhelming. Certain textures, smells or sensations might be difficult to tolerate. Someone might experience nausea, bloating, pressure, fear or sensory overwhelm that they cannot properly explain.
If eating repeatedly becomes associated with discomfort or fear, avoiding it can begin to feel safer.
Then restriction itself can make eating harder, creating a cycle that the people around them may only see as someone “refusing food”.
That is why we try to understand what is happening underneath the behaviour, rather than assuming what it means.
“What does eating feel like for you?”
🩷 A little note from our founder
Understanding can change where you begin.
One of the hardest parts of having an eating disorder can be trying to explain something that does not even fully make sense to you yet.
I know because I spent five years experiencing that myself.
And one of the things I remember most clearly is how hard it was to explain something that felt enormous
inside my own head to people who could only see it from the outside.
That experience is a huge part of why this space exists.
Rerein is not a replacement for a doctor, therapist, dietitian or specialist eating disorder team.
What it can offer is another piece of the puzzle.
Lived experience. Translation. And a way of helping the people around someone understand a little more
about what eating, food, recovery and fear might actually feel like for them.