How to get help with eating disorders? 

Thank you for reaching out to us! Your question contains two parts:

1)How to get help with eating disorders? and 2)How to manage with emotional eating? 

1) When it comes to how to get help, it depends on how long you are studying in Sweden and if you are an EU citizen. If you are staying in Sweden for more than 12 months, and get registered in the Swedish population register in order to obtain a personal identity number, you can benefit from public healthcare and pay the same subsidized fees as any Swedish citizen. In that case you can book an appointment at a Healthcare centre (Vårdcentral/Hälsocentral/Husläkatmottagning) to see a therapist. There are also different online psychology options where the same fees apply. 

If you are staying less than 12 months you are only entitled to emergency healthcare according to your healthcare insurance conditions (unless your insurance also covers non-emergency healthcare). 

If you are staying less than 12 months but are a registered resident in an EU/EEA country, you can use your European Health Insurance Card to access what is called “necessary healthcare” and thereby pay the subsidized healthcare fee. Necessary healthcare is medical care that cannot wait until you return to your home country, and it is the healthcare professionals who decide what is defined as necessary care. 

If you are under the age of 23 (in some regions it is under the age of 25) you can often seek counselling at a Youth guidance centre (Ungdomsmottagning) where you live. Their services are free of charge.  

You can always call 1177, which is the National Health advisory helpline (call +46 771 11 77 00 if you are using a foreign sim card) to receive more information, and you can also turn to your local Student health services to find out more. 

2) When it comes to how to deal with emotional eating, there are a couple of things you can try on your own, and maybe you already have. It´s not easy to always make the right decision when you feel like eating even if you´re not really hungry, or when you´re craving for unhealthy snacks because you haven´t had the time to eat regularly or healthy enough throughout the day. It´s important to treat yourself with a lot of compassion and patience, and try to see the bigger picture on your journey towards less emotional eating. Temporary setbacks are normal and can be expected.  

The first step is to ask yourself what your long-term goal is. It can be tricky to set a realistic goal, and sometimes you need to aim for something that might mean a compromise between the food habits you wish you could maintain and the food habits you think you are able to keep. Is the goal to never give in for any cravings or is it ok to have some level of flexibility? Try to set a goal that is within your reach.  

You also need to divide your long-term goal into smaller goals that you can work on step by step. What could be your first step towards less emotional eating? Is it to eat more regularly? Healthier? Would you benefit from bringing food, fruits and snacks with you when you plan on staying at the university the whole day? You mentioned living on a budget as a student and getting poor habits – maybe you can collect affordable recipes and try to find some time during the weekends to cook freezer meals?  

Emotional eating is to consume food for different emotional needs. A lot of people turn to food to for comfort, to relieve stress, if we´re bored, or to reward ourselves. You could learn a lot from trying to map out what your triggers are and when the risk of emotional eating increases. You can do this by writing down during the week: In what situations do you overeat or give in for cravings? What emotions do you experience in the moment? What thoughts do you have? What did you end up eating? What was the immediate consequence? What are the long-term consequences? 

You will probably find out that emotional eating is associated with a short-lasting sense of reward or satisfaction, and is commonly followed by feelings of guilt, shame or disgust for losing control and eating too much, and in some cases also fear of gaining weight. In other words, it´s a negative cycle and you can learn a lot by mapping your typical eating patterns. 

Try to make plans in order to break the pattern. Maybe it´s good to not be too hungry when you go out grocery shopping? If you tend to eat because you´re bored it could be a good idea to plan to go for a daily walk around the time this tends to happen? It´s good to not be too strict with yourself or not expect too much too soon, in order to decrease the risk of failure that might feed into the need for comfort eating and also affect your motivation in a negative way. 

You can also try to give yourself some time and create a pause between the impulse to eat and your response to this impulse. Maybe you can start with waiting two minutes when you feel the urge to eat when it´s not a meal time? Use the time to give yourself the possibility to act in a way that is more intentional and more in line with your long-time goals. Is it possible to distinguish between if you´re really hungry or not? If you are hungry – is there something you can eat that would be a better choice than giving in for cravings? Could you maybe prepare a meal, even if it´s earlier than you had planned to? Do you need a fruit or a cup of tea? If you are not really hungry maybe you can try to engage in something – it can be reading, cleaning, watching a tv series, taking a short walk – and see what happens with the urge to eat something. If the urge tends to go away for a while maybe it gets easier with time and repeated practice to ignore the urge, at least more often than today? 

I hope you find the support that you need and that you found this answer helpful in some way. 

Good luck and all the best! 

Licensed Psychologist