When Food is Family details how familial issues and the family’s relationships with each other can play a role, sometimes a significant one, in the development of an eating disorder. Nature may stack the deck, but nurture plays the hand. This book is based on the framework of Attachment Theory – that emotional support, understanding, empathy, and acceptance during a child’s development are the foundation of self-esteem and self-worth throughout life. Without healthy attachments, self-esteem is diminished and the capacity for empathy toward self and others is impaired. When this happens, a relationship with food becomes a replacement for the healthy relationships a child craves – it provides a false sense of self-esteem and is a way to measure one’s worth that may seem simpler than the complex world of human interaction.
Eating Disorders are a family affair. When Food is Family allows family members to explore and rebuild relationships with each other that were damaged before the eating disorder evolved and continue to be impacted by its existence. The book teaches families, through expository text, experiential reflections, and step-by-step exercises, how to develop an “emotional language.” It explains that trust, empathy, and respect are the core methods by which we communicate our love for one another, and teaches readers how to experience and convey these concepts toward each other – especially toward the person with the eating disorder. When Food is Family helps build a relational infrastructure within the family that is critical for dismantling the eating disorder, and it shows how to maintain healthy bonds in the family and in relationships yet to come. The book provides family members with a step-by-step approach to understand what attachment means, why connection to each other is important, how relationship breakdowns can lead to an eating disorder, how food becomes the relationship of choice, and how to go about repairing these relationships so that food, and the eating disorder, are replaced by healthy relationships within the family.