Eating Disorders: What to say & not to say

• Avoid judgement
  When talking with a person struggling with an eating disorder, avoid being critical. They are already trying to manage their own strong self-criticism. Positive support helps the most.

• Avoid personal comparisons
  Even if you’ve had a lived experience of an eating disorder yourself, avoid giving advice based on your own experience. Most of us have experience with overeating (e.g. Christmas time) and then dieting and/or doing some ‘get back into shape’ exercise regime. This may have been relatively easy for us to achieve. But an eating disorder is a mental illness. Transformation is not just a matter of embracing common physical solutions like diet and exercise.

• Avoid trigger topics
  When having a conversation with someone who has an eating disorder, it is recommended to steer clear of the following topics: weight, appearance, food, calories, diets, being perfect.

• Active listening/Motivational interviewing
  Ask questions, listen and then feed back what you have heard. It is strongly recommended not to jump in to find the solutions but meet and stay with them where they are at.

• Take the focus off food and weight
  The person with the eating disorder is already likely to be over focussed on food and weight issues. It is recommended to talk about other subjects where possible.

• Introduce positives
  Try to talk about things you like about the person:
  – personality (e.g. kindness to animals)
  – strong skills and abilities (e.g. ability to do puzzles)
  – their smile, their laugh
  – how they are a good friend, mother, worker etc

• Interest areas
  Talk about general areas that they are interested in (not involving food or significant exercise).

• What engages? What closes?
  While talking, pay attention to what engages the person. And also what conversations or words shut them down. Learn from each conversation. You can also ask them straight out what topics to avoid so they feel more comfortable with you.

• Social engagement
  Encourage and invite them to be part of social situations that are not focussed around food or significant exercise. Go to the movies, the beach etc.

• Be aware of moments of clarity
  When the person with the eating disorder has a moment of clarity about their situation this can be a significant turning point in their recovery. Positive reinforcement of moments of clarity can be helpful.

• If you need to talk about the condition…
  Externalise the condition. For example you can say: “Is that the eating disorder influencing you?”. This helps to motivate change, decrease the risk of the person feeling judged and clarify in your mind that the person has a disorder and it not them being ‘difficult’.

This being said, there may be times when just ‘being there’ without a lot of conversation is the best support you can give.

As long as they know you are aware and care about their situation, and are open to talking about it supportively.