Comfort Eating and Unhappiness: How Can I Help if She’s in Denial?

Reader’s Question

I have a friend who is absolutely miserable. She eats to comfort herself and has gained 95 pounds since marrying her husband. I feel like she settled for someone not worthy of her when she got with him. They are always behind on bills and are in practically the same spot as they were when they got married almost eight years ago. She has this way of compromising everything in her life to make her situation acceptable or to make any of his irresponsible behavior “okay.”

My friend’s personality has changed just as drastically as her appearance. She no longer stands up for herself and has adopted a lot of her husband’s attitudes. Any time the subject is broached that she may not be happy, she excuses and denies all of it. I understand that I can’t fix it (and I know I’m the kind of person who tends to want to help too much), but it is hard to watch a good friend going down a self-destructive path in life. Her misery also makes me sad and frustrated. We have very little in common anymore because of the direction she now seems to have chosen. I don’t think I can be as involved as I used to be and still move forward with my own life and family.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

If your friend truly is “in denial,” she is unaware of what she’s doing, and she’s doing it because facing the reality of her situation would cause her even greater (i.e., unbearable) emotional pain. The other possibility is that she’s aware of what she’s doing and gets enough positive benefits from her relationship that she’s willing to sacrifice everything else, including the relationship she once had with you.

In the end, people change course when the pain of their present course becomes too great or costly (12-step folks call this “hitting bottom”) or when a much more attractive alternative presents itself and is relatively easily secured (i.e., involves less pain to secure than the pain associated with not changing). Some folks try to stage an “intervention” in which they confront the person in denial so heavily that the person has to face reality. But such interventions are very risky because there’s no way to know how much “denial” a person is capable of before they “hit bottom,” and because they can even further erode an already frayed relationship. So, if you want to help your friend, and you’re convinced she’s really in denial as opposed to consciously choosing her own course, you’ll do your best to make a relationship with you as desirable and free of stress as possible. It’s also important to encourage her to take small steps in the right direction and provide her the necessary support and reinforcement for doing so. The rest is up to her.