Sadorexia is a little-known eating disorder. It is an evolution of traditional anorexia nervosa, but much more dangerous for health because it includes suicidal or self-harming behaviors.
People who suffer from this disease usually reach a maximum level of thinness, until they run out of energy and seriously damage their body. They are often people with very low self-esteem and who feel that they have no control over what happens around them, so they focus all their efforts on the little that they think they can control: their diet.
Nowadays, the media plays the role of transmitters of values and role models. In this way, they have been responsible for overemphasizing the importance of the physical part in the image we project. This is the context that surrounds us and the one that has given rise to the first cases of anorexia.
The anxious search for beauty standards has led many people, mostly women, to try to modify their image with measures that put their health at risk. The catwalks, places where models parade (the name is not accidental), are full of transformations, surgeries, excessive weight-loss diets, etc. We are talking about a public exposure that is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg of what happens in society.
Sadorexia and other eating disorders
Eating disorders are characterized by severe disturbances in eating behavior. There are two classic disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa .
Anorexia is characterized by a distorted body image or by a very strict restriction of food consumption. In contrast, impulse control in bulimia works differently: the diet of the person who suffers from it is usually full of binges and purging measures. In both cases, there is usually a rejection of the body image due to a negative evaluation of it .
This time we are going to focus on anorexia since it is directly related to anorexia. Among the most frequent symptoms of anorexia nervosa are the following:
- Ideas, even obsessions, for having a weight below what is considered “ideal”.
- Distorted perception of the body, feeling “fat” when objectively one is thin.
- Suspension of menstruation ( amenorrhea ).
- Progressively lower intake of foods, especially those considered “dangerous” (fats, sweets, etc.).
- Decreased sexual desire and activity.
- Poor physical health: respiratory infections, poor digestion, headaches and back pain.
- Constant feeling of cold, dry skin, hair loss, appearance of fine body hair, significant weight loss.
- Weakness.
From a psychological point of view, these are disorders that appear in people who give excessive importance to body image when defining themselves. Common thoughts are “I am worth more if I am thin.”
At the same time, it is common for anorexia to feed and nourish a mood of negative valence, in which emotions such as sadness or feelings such as melancholy predominate. In this context, we find great difficulty – even inability – to enjoy pleasurable situations, the need to please others and be accepted, isolation or deterioration in social relationships, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, nervousness, irritability, etc.
How can we detect anorexia?
Sadorexia ( sadomasochism + anorexia) is considered a second-generation eating disorder that, as we have already said, has evolved from anorexia. It combines anorexic behaviors with bodily abuse and the use of masochistic weight loss methods that inflict pain and take away the desire to eat. This ends up causing rapid and permanent weight loss.
Sadorexia is a method used to achieve extreme thinness, which is visible only to the eyes of others. Those who suffer from this disease begin to lose more and more kilos with the feeling that it is never enough or are gripped by an intense fear of gaining them back.
Therefore, today, pain is also identified as a formula for maximum weight loss. There are three types of self-abuse or self-injury:
- Permanent mutilation or disfigurement: that is, the amputation of a limb.
- Stereo mutilation: hitting, biting, cutting deeply…
- Superficial mutilation: cuts, burns, broken bones, etc.
Self-harm can also be used as a way to let out their emotions and feelings. These people think that physical pain prevents them from paying attention to the emotional pain their illness causes them, and causes them to hurt themselves.
Are there effective treatments for anorexia?
The truth is that this is a very current disorder on which almost no studies have been carried out. Due to the speed with which information advances on social networks and the Internet, new diagnostic entities are created practically every day.
Thus, it is very difficult for science to respond at the same speed as society poses problems and demands solutions. In any case, in the absence of studies that allow us to talk about a specific and effective intervention, protocols are being adapted in consultation that we know work with other disorders in which body image and self-esteem are affected.