The “Boring Complex” Among Disordered Eaters
I was chatting with someone in my DMs the other day about body image. She casually mentioned that she felt like she had to look a certain way to “make up for being boring or something.”
This struck a chord. I remembered how many sessions I spent in college talking to my therapist about how incredibly boring I was, trying to convince him that it was true (he wasn’t buying it).
“I know I don’t seem boring here,” I would say, “but in real life, I’m boring. I have nothing to say. I don’t have strong opinions. In conversations, I just stand there and smile and nod or say something stupid like, ‘really? oh yeah. me too.’”
My therapist would tell me that he thought I was the opposite of boring — but he had no idea what he was talking about. A genius in other ways, but on this point, mistaken.
I realized during this DM conversation that I no longer considered myself boring, and no longer felt like I needed a “good body” to make up for it, but couldn’t remember when or how that self-perception had gone away.
I polled my IG followers to see how many other people had a “boring complex” as well. At the time of this writing, 88% answered that yes, they also feel boring.
So what is it about people with disordered eating and body image that makes us feel like we are boring?
A boring person, as I’ve always seen it, doesn’t have a lot to say. Doesn’t contribute much to a conversation. Okay at repeating and listening, but offers nothing back in the way of original thought or a meeting of energy.
It can’t be true that almost 90% of an audience with food and body issues is actually boring.
What seems more plausible is that almost 90% of an audience with food and body issues is also struggling with things like a muted sense of self, a lack of confidence, chronic people pleasing, decreased self-efficacy, shame, and constant running background noise in the way of self-criticism and calorie counting.
All of which make it really hard to engage in conversations that require things like attention and focus, mental flexibility, comfort with peers, willingness to be vulnerable (especially if you don’t agree with someone), a sense of humor, and simply knowing who you are and what you have opinions about.
I doubt that you actually don’t have things to say. I doubt that you’re empty and void of any depth. I doubt that your energy is bland, or that you’re dull, or that you’re “boring”.
It’s more likely that your Self has gotten lost. Dieting and conforming to body standards is, as Naomi Wolf puts it, a potent sedative.
Do you notice that you feel the most “boring” around people you don’t know very well, or people who effortlessly command a room (ie people with whom you feel vulnerable, or threatened by due to their very large sense of self, which might swallow you whole)?
But do you feel “boring” among the people with whom you can let your guard down (ie. the place where your most authentic self is most likely to come out and play because it feels safe and accepted)?
You’re not boring.
You’re hiding under boring.
Maybe the fear is about being more powerful.
If we stopped counting and tracking and measuring and people-pleasing and caring about what other people think —
— if we accepted the parts of ourselves we previously held back in the name of fitting in or avoiding conflict —
who would be left standing there?
Find her. She’s your ticket out of boring.
