Dr Michael Grey of Grey Insight On How To Support A Loved One Who Is Struggling With An Eating Disorder
Don’t make it about yourself; this is not the time for you to be a travel agent and plan a guilt trip for a family member. They are already dealing with a lot, and it’s not your time to add more to their struggle. I have seen this so many times as a clinician: family members who are emotionally immature and manipulative attempting to “help” only to make it worse because they blame the family member for making their life “harder” or “looking for attention.” Take a step back, look in the mirror, and focus on your mental health because that’s all you can do. You cannot “cure” or “fix” this; making it about you and how inconvenient or uncomfortable it is will not help.
Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that affect millions worldwide, transcending age, gender, and cultural boundaries. They are not simply about food but involve a range of psychological, physical, and social issues. Supporting a loved one through this struggle can be challenging, requiring understanding, patience, and knowledge of the right approaches to truly make a difference.
In this series, we aim to shed light on the most effective ways to offer support, understanding, and hope to those battling an eating disorder. We are talking to psychologists, nutritionists, doctors, therapists, and survivors, who can provide valuable perspectives on nurturing recovery, fostering resilience, and promoting healthy relationships with food and body image. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Michael Grey, PsyD, LMFT.
Dr. Michael Grey is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the states of CA, FL, & NV and owns Grey Insight. Dr. Grey is a trauma therapist who specializes in Sexual and Gender Minority Mental Health, including BDSM/Kink, LGBTQ+, Consensually Non-Monogamous/Poly Relational constructs, and Sex Workers. Outside of therapy, Dr. Grey is a graduate professor developing and educating future clinicians to provide more affirmative care to marginalized communities. When he is not working, you can catch Dr. Grey at a farmers market, spending time with his partners, cooking yummy food, baking tasty treats, exercising, or hiking.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I never actually saw myself being a therapist, I knew that I wanted to be a doctor, I just never thought it would be a Doctor of Psychology. I think that life has a way of bringing us back to where it all began. For me I had a traumatic childhood filled with abuse, grief, loss, and in all of that I never really received the help that I needed. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I found people who were helpful and were able to help me heal from the hurt that prevented me from being my best. I became a trauma therapist because I wanted to help others overcome their hurts so that they can release that burden, and live life free from the weight of their past.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“I was taught to love my enemies, so I decided it was time to love myself.” I hold people to some very high standards, and I hold myself to even higher ones, and I know that when I fall short, I am my own worst enemy. I am so hard on myself, and I tear myself down, because thanks to my trauma, I was taught that I can never make a mistake. Now as a Doctor, I have unlearned that, and instead of being harsh, and unkind to myself, especially when I make a mistake, which is human… I started to love myself, and so far it hasn’t been too bad.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Yes, there are a few training programs that I am currently developing for clinicians to help approach trauma recovery especially sexual assault and violence incorporating BDSM/Kink. Another program that I am developing was born out of my dissertation titled The G.R.E.Y Method. My hope is to use the program that I created in my dissertation and bring it to life, so I can launch a pilot program, and train clinicians to provide affirming care for Sexual and Gender Minority People. They should be ready within the year, which is exciting.
According to this study cited by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, at least 30 million people in the U.S. of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder. Can you suggest 3–5 reasons why this has become such a critical issue recently?
Social media is the first one that comes to mind. Social media can be helpful and harmful. Many people have a difficult time understanding that social media is not reality. Many of these people with large followings have many filters and edited photos, which makes it appear to be reality when it is not. So many people on social media have been caught editing their photos. Yet, somehow, people still have difficulty accepting that social media is curated, edited, and unrealistic.
Another issue is “influencers.” While some wonderful influencers like my favorites, such as Mama Tot, Keith Lee, and Auntie Bev, there are also some harmful ones. Many spew misinformation and, quite frankly, let their issues with food impact people’s food choices. Some spew “diet” and “nutrition facts” when they have zero education about diet, nutrition, etc. People see their follower count, and take what these influencers say as absolute, and run with their suggestions. Many times, these influencers post their videos with such poorly articulated thoughts, that people watching it can take these videos personally and make decisions based on the emotions they evoke. Just the other day I saw a video that an influencer posted, and it was made to shame people, it started off like
“If I loved my body, these are the 5 things I would never put in my body” and I watched to see what it was, and everything they said sounded so privileged, and out of touch.
The obsession with “thinness.” It’s no secret that diets are a booming business. It seems like everybody is on Ozempic and trying to be thin because that somehow equates to health and beauty, and that’s not true. Society treats thinner bodies differently than bigger bodies. These messages are constantly displayed in movies; it’s a cliché: the overweight friend loses weight and is now hot, and everybody wants them….
Parents, sometimes parents are our first bullies, and those parents who were fat and bullied project their unhealed and damaged selves onto their children, causing issues with their eating and developing a terrible relationship with food.
Based on your insight, what can concrete steps can a) individuals, b) corporations, c) communities and d) leaders do to address the core issues that are leading to this problem?
Understanding that health has no set look or size. We must stop equating thinness with health and thickness with unhealthy bodies. As a bigger person, I am for body positivity and for my health. I am a healthy person; I work out 5–6 times a week, I eat a Mediterranean diet because that works for my body, I take my vitamins and supplements, and I don’t drink alcohol or smoke. Looking at me and my body size, people will think, “He’s lazy; he needs to lose weight; he should just go to the gym.” I have heard that all my life, and now I laugh because I work out more than the average person; my doctor says, “You have the heart of an athlete,” and society would see me as an unhealthy person.
We also need to stop labeling food as “good” or “bad.” Food is just that, food. So many people demonize food and constantly push “fad” diets like Keto, Carnivore, etc., which do more harm than good. I describe food as functional or dysfunctional for my body. I explain it to patients as “I am lactose intolerant, eating ice cream, and chugging a milkshake is not functional for my body because it will hurt my body in the end, so it’s not functional for my body, doesn’t mean dairy is bad for everybody.”
As you know, one of the challenges of an eating disorder is the harmful and dismissive sentiment of “why can’t you just control yourself.” What do you think needs to be done to make it apparent that an eating disorder is an illness, just like heart disease or schizophrenia?
I think that people try to rationalize something that cannot be rationalized. I was with my mentor, Dr. Jane Gordon, EdD, as she was giving her lecture to her Psychopathology class, and a couple of students kept having a difficult time grasping the concept of eating disorders. Keep in mind that these are graduate students who will eventually be therapists, highlighting that we, too, as a profession, struggle to validate that eating disorders are an illness. Dr. Gordon, who specializes in eating disorders, stated, “Stop trying to rationalize something that cannot be rationalized; you don’t try to rationalize a cancer diagnosis; why are you trying to rationalize an eating disorder? Both are an illness.” That always stays with me, and I think that the black-and-white thinking with family members causes the person struggling with the eating disorder to feel more isolated, afraid, and misunderstood.
Can you please share with our readers 5 ways to support a loved one who is struggling with an eating disorder? If you can, can you share an example from your own experience?
1 . Family Therapy: The whole system must be working on their mental health; this can tear a family down and highlight issues that have not been addressed. Often, there are a bunch of problems that people haven’t worked on. Primarily, parents haven’t worked on their issues, and they project that onto their kids, and it causes a lot of dysfunctions. The person with the eating disorder is the visual representation of the dysfunction; most of the time, it has nothing to do with the food; it has to do with control, and when they have little control, the only thing that they can control is if or what they eat. From my own experience, I grew up in a tumultuous home; dysfunction was our last name. I was also a child who was sexually abused, and so I turned to food for comfort, with the thought in my child brain that if I am fat and “undesirable,” I cannot continue to be sexually abused. My caretaker had untreated mental illness, and my father was incarcerated, resulting in a dysfunctional home, and at the core of the issue, I wanted control.
2 . Educate yourself: Eating disorders are challenging to manage and even harder on the family, but the more information that you can have, the better so that you can approach your loved one from a place of compassion and understanding, even if you don’t fully understand it. Join a support group, seek peer support, and speak to a therapist with specialized training so you can work on yourself and gain insight into the disorder.
3 . Listen to the messages you send. How is your relationship with food? Have you commented about weight, body image, etc.? Children especially hear this when parents talk badly about their bodies, and they internalize this as if there is something wrong with them. Therefore, they should stop eating or do what they can to be “better” and get your love and attention. I would hear the way my mother spoke about weight, her body, and other people’s bodies, and I internalized it. Even though she won’t see a therapist, she has disordered eating and has had a struggle with eating disorders, and so have several people in my family. When my parents took custody of me at the age of 8, I was a chubby kid, and my mom helped me lose weight with the best intentions and glorified when I was able to fit into jeans as a kid. This started to path with my body image issues, eating disorders, and maladaptive relationship with food. Restricting, purging, fasting, binging, and using laxatives was exhausting.
4 . Don’t make it about yourself; this is not the time for you to be a travel agent and plan a guilt trip for a family member. They are already dealing with a lot, and it’s not your time to add more to their struggle. I have seen this so many times as a clinician: family members who are emotionally immature and manipulative attempting to “help” only to make it worse because they blame the family member for making their life “harder” or “looking for attention.” Take a step back, look in the mirror, and focus on your mental health because that’s all you can do. You cannot “cure” or “fix” this; making it about you and how inconvenient or uncomfortable it is will not help.
5 . Do not enable the eating disorder. While we want to support the family member, there is a fine line between being supportive and enabling. As a trauma therapist, I was collaborating with an ED Therapist as we worked to help a patient overcome both her ED and Trauma. One of the things that we noticed as providers was that the family was making a lot of “accommodations” to provide support when it was actually enabling them. Despite their best intentions, the trauma responses and eating disorders were running the show. The family members were compromising their boundaries to appease the disorders, which allowed the person to control everything, and that is dysfunctional. The family stopped living their life and became prisoners in their own homes because they were told they should be “supportive” but didn’t know what that meant. Don’t make changes in your life to accommodate the eating disorder; if you want to go to a restaurant, and they don’t want you to because it makes their eating disorder uncomfortable, that’s okay; you can go and eat dinner, and they can stay home. Sticking to your boundaries is essential, preventing resentment, burnout and further enablement.
How do you navigate the balance between offering support and respecting the autonomy of a loved one with an eating disorder?
Ask your loved one what you can do to help support them, for example, helping them stick to regular eating times, implementing boundaries following mealtimes, and having a space to talk about how they are feeling; they may tell you to go away, they may tell you they don’t want your help, and they want you to leave them alone. Just know that those responses typically have to do more with the battle in their mind than it does with you. You can acknowledge their response by saying, “I hear you; I want you to know that I am here if you need me,” and letting them come to you.
Is there a message you would like to tell someone who may be reading this or who is currently struggling with an eating disorder?
As a queer person, I want to say something to the queer man navigating this journey. I see you; I know many people forget that this impacts us, and we’re often overlooked. However, I see you. I understand that it is hard to ask for help; chances are you’ve probably been let down in the past and have had to figure it out on your own. However, you don’t have to keep doing that. People want to help and can help; I know it may not seem like it right now, but some people care, despite what your brain may tell you. It may be hard to admit when we need help, but this is the time we need it, and there is no shame in asking for it; it doesn’t make you weak. I also want to let you know that it will be a battle; it is not easy, and I am not the one to paint it as a pretty picture. I will not lie to you; I will be honest: it will be hard. I know that the queer community praises unrealistic body expectations, and I am sorry. I know that many in the community are shallow, and I am sorry if you have ever been made to feel like you are not valued or loved. I want you to know that you, with your sunny disposition and tender heart, have always been and will always be enough.
In your experience, what are the most effective strategies for building resilience and a positive self-image in individuals recovering from an eating disorder?
The best way I have found to build resilience and boost a positive self-image is by identifying our strengths. We often focus on the negatives and areas we lack. We need to highlight our strengths and appreciate them. Also, I surround myself with positive people who nourish the soul, not those who eat it. This allows individuals to shift their perspective from a negative-focused one to a more positive mindset. Now, I am not saying engage in Toxic Positivity; I am saying that negative thoughts will arise; it’s okay to sit in those thoughts, challenge them, and keep them moving; don’t meditate or stay in that negative mindset because that can consume us. Lastly, challenge our negative thoughts and put them on trial; what evidence do we have that supports these negative thoughts, and what evidence do we have against them? All these things can help people who are recovering from an eating disorder build resilience and a more positive self-image.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have helped people with this struggle? Can you explain why you like them?
The Eating Disorder Recovery Podcast with Dr. Janean Anderson. I know that she no longer makes episodes. However, it was helpful for me and spoke to issues I was facing. Her podcast included MEN because we hardly see male representation with eating disorders and disorganized eating.
Also, there are a few books that I read that also helped, such as It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn, What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo, and most recently, I’m glad my Mom died by Jennette McCurdy. These were some wonderful books that helped me along my healing path.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the largest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
With so much polarization and division in the world today, I would love to sponsor an event where people from different cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds come together and have a meal with one another. You turn on the TV or scroll through social media, and it’s always about this group vs that group and how one is better than the other. Have we not learned anything from history, or are we doomed to repeat it? I believe that if we sit down with each other, break bread, and see the humanity in each other, we can see that at the end of the day, in our human experiences, we are all more similar than we are different. I would like to believe that one day humans will love one another, and I think sharing our cultural foods with others is one small step in that direction.
How can our readers continue to follow your work online?
IG- Grey Insight
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
Dr Michael Grey of Grey Insight On How To Support A Loved One Who Is Struggling With An Eating… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.