This blog post represents the author’s views and should not be interpreted as professional/medical advice or endorsed by NEDA.
When My Disordered Eating Circuit Was Encoded
It was at the age of 11 that my disordered eating circuit was encoded in my emotional brain. A bully at school had tormented me, and when I came home that day, distraught, there was a package of cinnamon rolls on the kitchen counter. I ate three of them in a flash.
Although I knew I had done something wrong (in our house, food was closely monitored), I had no idea what that was, and I combined my “fight-or-flight wire” with my “eating sugar” wire, leaving me with a new wire, one that would biochemically drive me to binge on sweets.
But that’s not the worst of it. My “missing chip” was that I had no idea how to process my toxic emotions, and that skill prevents stress wires from being encoded and also is core to erasing them, my brain began encoding wires to over restrict food, overexercise, and obsess about body size and kept me from healing.
On that day, I lost my freedom.
Turning Pain into Purpose
For the next 20 years, I organized my life around my food and weight, and not until I learned how to turn toxic stuck emotions into flowing feelings did I rewire my “pile up” of stress circuits and have freedom from that suffering. Having suffered myself, I became devoted to discovering the root cause of eating disorders. Eventually, I co-directed the eating disorder clinic at UCSF and, during my more than 40 years as a medical professor there, developed Emotional Brain Training (EBT).
The method is based on using emotional skills and the principles of neuroplasticity (the brain changes) and neurophysiology (the brain and nervous system function). It is aimed at empowering people to directly get freedom from their suffering. They learn the skills then use them to rewire brain circuits, not just for eating disorders, but most mental health problems, chronic diseases and daily stress.
This skill set is compatible with CBT, EMDR, mindfulness, and all trauma therapies, but using it requires a new way of thinking about eating disorders. Before the “decade of the brain,” when brain scans opened our eyes to the inner workings of the central nervous system, we “psychologized” eating disorders. I thought of my problems as emotional eating, binge eating disorder, purging, and body image disorder. These terms still apply, but as someone who was suffering, they did not clearly outline how to get better, which is to see my eating disorder as a few circuits and learn how to use emotions to rewire them.
Why Emotional Processing Holds the Key to Change
I knew my problem was not in the “thinking brain,” as I was aware of what I was supposed to weigh, how I should eat, and even a healthy way to feel; however, the circuits that caused my disorder were located in the “emotional brain,” the unconscious mind. Those circuits do not change by positive thoughts, rational decision-making, or insight. They only change with emotional processing.
My first hint that treatment was based on emotions, rather than tracking behaviors and thoughts, came when I read a study from a 1940 by psychiatrist Hilde Bruch and Grace Touraine, who demonstrated that emotional connection within the family was the primary cause of eating problems. As a young faculty member, I was eternally optimistic and thought, “Oh, I can teach emotional tools and solve that problem!” After developing emotional connection tools that eventually became the basis for EBT, our research demonstrated that they were effective.
Although we went on to apply EBT to the treatment of most health problems, it would take 25 years before brain studies showed why it was so effective, specifically that:
1) Circuits encoded during stress triggered strong biochemical drives to repeat behaviors in patients with eating disorders.
2) A moment of stress was needed to unlock these wires for erasure, but staying calm would not.
3) Skills to stay present to the emotions generated by that stress, not overthinking, and then quickly shut off stress and return to joy were needed to give myself freedom from my eating disorder.
The tools I had developed by listening to patients and revising them, so they saw better results conformed to these discoveries in brain science.
As stress-induced problems like eating disorders have become epidemic, more of us in health research have focused not on chemicals leading to drug treatments or behaviors leading to behavioral therapies, but on the brain circuits that control both. In this respect, the brain is both simple and actionable.
The EBT 5-Point System: Simple Tools to Create Joy
The first step in learning how to strengthen your brain’s capacity to gain freedom is to create moments of joy (“joy points”) throughout the day. This alleviates stress and prepares the thinking brain to do the deeper work of rewiring circuits that block our freedom more effectively. This “joy training,” also gives some immediate relief as in that joy state, all the stress circuits are deactivated so it supports both our well-being and our success in rewiring. It takes a couple of weeks to accustom the brain to “joy,” but it can be incredibly helpful in improving results.
The second step is to become highly effective in self-regulating by using the brain’s natural resilience pathways. It’s pretty simple. There are five levels of stress, each with its own brain area in charge and a specific tool to rapidly clear stress and return to joy.
After learning how to create moments of joy and rapidly and reliably turn stress into joy, the next step is to erase the unwanted stress wires. Erasure is the ultimate freedom, because when the wire is no longer residing in our brain, resilience and joy are effortless. Given today’s stress level, clearing that source of suffering is worth achieving.
At this point, use the Cycle Tool (brain state 4) to rewire the circuits that cause the eating disorder. The research shows that we have two types of circuits; stress circuits and joy circuits. When a stimulus arrives in the brain, it almost always activates an existing circuit and replays it. These have scientific names.
One is a homeostatic “resilient” circuit that promotes health, keeps us in conscious control of our actions, and delivers a surge of dopamine associated with joy (Joy is not happiness, but that glow in your body from optimal biochemistry and brain function, and the sign that you have completely shut off the toxic stress chemicals that cause health problems.)
The other is an allostatic “reactive” circuit that promotes disease, takes our thinking brain offline, and triggers a biochemical cascade that causes us to revert to our previous health-damaging behavior. Rather than landing us in a state of joy, it leaves us drained, feeling bad inside, or on a false, unhealthy high. They trigger compulsive and addictive behaviors. The Stress Circuits are the root cause of most health problems, including eating disorders. The Joy Circuits are the solution.
Two Varieties of Stress Wires: Core and Survival Circuits
With freedom in mind, the strategy is to clear away as many Stress Circuits as possible until our eating disorder symptoms disappear. Here again, the brain keeps it simple. Although there are countless chemical compounds in the body, there are only two types of Stress Circuits: Survival Circuits and Core Circuits.
My sugar binge circuit and the related ones were all Survival Circuits that activate fight-or-flight drives to repeat maladaptive responses like binge eating, restricting, and more. This is helpful to know because it gives us the power to do something meaningful to help ourselves. We can erase and replace them with circuits that cause healthy eating and responses. In EBT, the “Stop A Trigger Tool” is designed to rewire them with a simple process of talking briefly about what you do that you want to stop doing, then expressing emotions quickly to unlock the circuit, and finally, after the message from the emotional brain appears in the thinking brain, using that information to erase the circuit.
The other type of circuit is a Core Circuit. These are false beliefs, such as: I have to be in complete control, I am not worthy, and I must be perfect. My brain encoded all three of these, but there are 100s of others. In EBT, we rewire them with the “Feel Better Tool.” This tool is much like the Stop A Trigger Tool, but the words that appear in the thinking brain are a false belief. Although rewiring Survival Circuits is exciting because it changes our responses, rewiring the Core Circuit’s self-damaging beliefs can be equally powerful, helping someone in recovery avoid replacing the eating disorder with another form of excess.
It’s Encoded, Not Your Fault
What is the significance of this brain-based approach to eating disorders? As I use the method with my patients, they often say at the first session: So, there is nothing wrong with me. I tell them, “Correct.” Although eating disorders cause suffering and put people at risk of death, the original cause is not their fault. These wires are encoded during moments of stress overload, often early in life, when the thinking brain is offline and the brain encodes wires without the filter of questioning whether that belief is reasonable and true. Once encoded, it requires emotional processing to rewire that circuit into one that promotes health and joy, rather than disease and suffering. If nobody teaches us that the problem is not us, just a few stress wires or how to use emotions to erase them, of course our recovery from eating disorders will be slower and more fraught with relapses.
EBT provides the skills to rewire these circuits in a mobile app and community support for learning how to use it, a self-help support to treating eating disorders, therapists are certified to provide coaching to clients in using EBT. You can start integrating the science behind EBT into how you think about eating disorders by saying:
- I will never judge or shame myself for my eating disorder. It’s just a few wires encoded in my emotional brain through no fault of my own.
- I have unstoppable drives to restrict. They are driven by circuits that take my thinking brain offline and biochemically drive me to repeat that pattern.
- Eating disorders are family affairs, as the emotional brain has no walls. I need these skills, and so do my family members.
- The emotional brain is the social brain, so I need to be in community with others who are using these tools to rewire our emotional brain from stress to joy and gain the freedom we have always wanted.
Rewiring Circuits Brings Real Change
Brain science is showing us that eating disorders can be treated with therapy, community support, and medications, but that the very root of the problem is brain circuits. The good news is that the approach of rewiring these circuits gives us something actionable that we can do. We can erase and replace them with wires that create joy.
Some patients ask me, “How will I know when I have rewired a circuit?” The answer I give is always the same: “Your response will change automatically. As our responses are based on activations of circuits, when the circuit is gone, so is the urge, drive, and behavior.” When the wire is gone, our inner conflict about eating and weight vanishes, and we are at less risk of moving from over restricting to binge eating or from underweight to a higher weight. The new wire is homeostatic, which means it automatically gives us a sense of inner balance that brings us freedom from moving from one stress-induced excess to another. We can put our history of eating disorders behind us having learned how to turn toxic emotions into flowing feelings that lead to joy, we are finally safe.
We never go looking for health problems, such as eating disorders, but if your life circumstances have encoded wires that led to one, there can be benefits. For me, recovery from an eating disorder led to stopping my pattern of overcontrol and thinking way too much to a better life of being kinder to myself, more compassionate, more resilient, and more purpose-driven. As you apply these ideas and tools to support your recovery, chances are you will find that you have built a better brain, with the skills to gain freedom not only from eating disorders and but from all their stress-induced replacements. Most important, rather than waiting for joy to come your way, you can process your toxic emotions into flowing feelings and your magnificent emotional brain will create all the joy you need and then some.
Resources
- Are you concerned you might be struggling with an eating disorder? Take our confidential screening tool.
- Are you looking for an eating disorder treatment provider? Find treatment in your area or online.
- Are financial barriers preventing you from seeking the support you need? Learn more about free and low cost support options.
Laurel Mellin, PhD, has been treating people with eating disorders for over 40 years and is the founder of emotional brain training (EBT). She is a New York Times bestselling author and a retired professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is the executive director of the Solution Foundation, a nonprofit organization that trains health professionals in the method. For more information about Dr. Mellin and EBT, please visit ebt.org (for patients) and ebtcertification.com (for health professionals).
