Question: Why do some people have eating disorders?

Dr. Carolyn Ross: I think it's difficult to understand because they are so serious and there are so much evidence to support a biological basis. But my work in treating eating disorder patients as well in treating people with substance use disorders like alcohol and drug addiction have shown me that they are really - that's just a tip of the iceberg. The tip of the iceberg are the behaviors that we all see and we are concerned about, but underneath those behaviors is something that drives them.

The first thing is their emotions. So the emotional soup that many of our -- many friends and family members who suffer with these problems, they live from that place and that drives their behaviors. Then beneath that is the body sensations that are associated with those emotions, when you are angry, how did your feel? Our bodies are for all of the wisdom that we need to make the decisions we need to make about behaviors.

So when we are disconnected from the body, we lose out on a lot of that information. Beneath that, the body sensation areas are beliefs. In our beliefs, many times beliefs we formed in childhood that may now stand in the way. They may have served us well in childhood but now they maybe standing in the way of us getting what we need to get out of life. So identifying those beliefs and then finally hooking back into life.

For each of us, whether you have an eating disorder or you have cancer or you have some other debilitating illness, you have to have something that get you up in the morning and makes you willing to do whatever it takes and that's what I call the hook back into life. So if you haven't found that hook and you keep relapsing and struggling and relapsing, then probably there is something that stands in the way of you getting hooked back into life, and that's where your therapy should be directed, not just at the behaviors.