Befriending Anxiety In Eating Disorder Recovery

By: Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LCSW-C
Therapist & Founder of The Eating Disorder Center

Living with an anxiety disorder can feel incredibly tough. Anxiety shows up uninvited — tightening your chest, speeding up your thoughts, and filling your mind with worst-case scenarios. It’s uncomfortable. It’s exhausting. It’s completely understandable that most people’s first instinct is to try to push it away, avoid it, or attempt to find ways to numb out.

But what if fighting anxiety actually gives it more power? What if, instead of battling it, we could learn to befriend it?

This idea may sound strange at first. After all, anxiety can feel overwhelming and intrusive. It’s not something most of us want more of in our lives. However, in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), we take a different approach: instead of treating anxiety as a threat, we learn to turn toward it with openness, curiosity, and compassion.


Anxiety Is Not the Problem

Anxiety itself is not the problem. In fact, anxiety is a completely natural part of being human. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you — an old survival system designed to spot danger and keep you safe. 

Of course for individuals with eating disorders and/or anxiety disorders, anxiety is not activated by situations that are actually dangerous. Rather, I like to think of anxiety in those circumstances as a fire alarm that someone has pulled. It’s loud, it’s scary; however, there is no actual fire- just a noisy alarm going off. 

The problem isn’t anxiety— it’s the way we react to it. When we get caught up in anxious thoughts, treat them as facts, avoid situations that give us anxiety (e.g., certain food situations in an eating disorder or meeting new people in social anxiety disorder), or struggle against the feeling of anxiety, we tend to make it stronger. Trying to avoid or control anxiety often leads to more fear and a greater sense of being trapped.

In ACT, we recognize that anxiety is going to show up sometimes — especially when we’re stepping toward things that matter to us. Instead of getting stuck in a tug-of-war with it, we practice dropping the rope.


What Befriending Anxiety Actually Means

Befriending anxiety doesn’t mean giving up or letting anxiety control you. Instead, it means creating a new relationship with anxiety — one where you recognize it, allow it to be there, and still move in the direction of your true values (not an eating disorder’s values).

It might sound like:

• Noticing when anxiety shows up and gently naming it: "Ah, anxiety is here."
• Allowing space for the physical sensations instead of rushing to escape them.
• Watching anxious thoughts pass by like clouds, instead of clinging to them.
• Reminding yourself that you can feel anxiety and still take meaningful action.
• Eating lunch while an eating disorder voice is yelling at you. 
• Going to meet up with friends when social anxiety is telling you they will all judge you. 

When you stop fighting anxiety, you create more room to live your life. You give yourself permission to feel fear without letting it dictate your choices.

When we make space for and befriend anxiety, it has less power over us and typically will decrease with time. 


You Are Not Your Anxiety

One of the most powerful ideas we work with in ACT is this: You are not your anxiety.

You are the observer — the part of you that can notice thoughts, feelings, and sensations without being overwhelmed by them.

Anxiety might say, "You can’t handle this," or "Something terrible is about to happen."
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But you can step back and notice, "I’m having the thought that I can’t handle this." There’s a big difference between being fused with anxious thoughts and learning to see them as just words.

When you learn how to simply observe your thoughts and feelings (rather than being so caught up in them), anxiety loses some of its grip. You remember that you can experience discomfort and continue to walk in the direction of your true values. 

An analogy that I like to give is imagining that your anxiety is like a storm. When you are highly fused to your anxious thoughts, you are in the middle of the storm without an umbrella. When you can practice mindfulness of the anxious thoughts, it’s like watching the storm raging on from behind a window. It’s still there; however, you have more distance from it. 


You Can Take Small Pro-Recovery Steps, While Feeling Anxious

Befriending anxiety isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s a gradual process of learning to be with it when fear shows up.

Some days you might feel like you’re making progress, and other days it might feel like anxiety has pulled you off track. That’s okay. Healing is not linear, and building a new relationship with anxiety takes time and plenty of self-compassion.

One small step at a time, you can practice noticing anxiety, allowing it, and gently choosing to move toward what matters most to you. Over time, you’ll build a life that feels bigger and more meaningful — even if anxiety sometimes comes along for the ride (e.g., it’s a passenger in the car, not the driver).

You deserve a life that isn’t limited by fear. You deserve to be free to choose what matters most-even if you feel anxious while you pursue your true values. 
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Journal Prompts for Reflection

• What does my anxious part often try to protect me from?
• How have I learned to react to anxiety in the past? (e.g., numbing, avoidance, etc.)
• What would it feel like to welcome anxiety without fighting against it?
• If I could act based on my values instead of my fears, how might that help me in eating disorder recovery and my life?

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The Eating Disorder Center is a premier outpatient eating disorder therapy center founded by Jennifer Rollin. We specialize in helping children, teens, and adults struggling with anorexia, binge eating disorder, bulimia, OSFED, and body image issues. We provide eating disorder therapy in Rockville, MD, easily accessible to individuals in Potomac, North Potomac, Bethesda, Olney, Silver Spring, Germantown, and Washington, D.C. We also provide eating disorder therapy in Arlington, Virginia and virtually throughout Virginia. Additionally, we offer eating disorder therapy virtually in Florida, Pennsylvania, and California. We provide eating disorder and EMDR trauma therapy in Rockville, Maryland and virtually throughout Maryland and Virginia. We provide eating disorder recovery coaching via Zoom to people worldwide. Connect with us through our website at www.theeatingdisordercenter.com