The Women Who Look Like They Have It All Together Are Often Carrying the Most

Some struggles hide best inside the women who look the most put together. They look disciplined, accomplished, self-aware. They are the athletes, the high achievers, the women who know how to perform, produce, and keep going. From the outside, it can read as confidence, but in reality, that polished exterior is sometimes covering a life built around proving worth in ways that feel so normal they hardly register as suffering.

Erin Washington’s conversation on Over 50 & Flourishing is about just that. What begins as a candid reflection on her decades-long battle with anorexia and body image quickly opens into something much bigger: the “good girl” conditioning, perfectionism, and pressure so many women carry long after they stop calling it a problem. 

When achievement becomes identity

For Washington, the early roots of her eating disorders were tangled up with something that looked positive on the surface: success. Soccer had structured her life since childhood. She excelled quickly, starting varsity as a freshman in high school and helping lead her team to back-to-back state championships. The accolades kept coming, and with them came a sense of identity.

That structure collapsed when she reached college. After playing Division I soccer, Washington made the difficult decision to quit during her sophomore year. Suddenly, the thing that had defined her daily life and her sense of worth was gone. “My whole life had been soccer,” she says. “That had been my identity, my value, and my worth.”

Without that framework, the coping mechanisms she had been quietly using for years intensified. What began as anorexia during high school athletics eventually shifted into bulimia, which she said she struggled with for a decade. 

The ‘good girl’ trap runs deeper than food

As Washington began unpacking the roots of her behavior in therapy, a pattern started to emerge that had little to do with nutrition or exercise plans. Much of it traced back to perfectionism and the pressure she had placed on herself from a young age. “I held myself to an unachievably high standard, so I was never enough,” she explains.

Through therapy and conversations with mental health professionals, she began exploring how early family dynamics can shape that mindset. Being the firstborn, she learned, can sometimes create a quiet pressure to maintain attention or approval as younger siblings arrive. That translated into constantly proving herself through sports, academics, and appearance.

And those habits followed her into adulthood. Compliments about weight loss, she says now, reinforced the behavior at the time. “If I got a compliment, I would take it further,” she says. “When you’re complimenting a person’s body, you don’t know if you’re praising an eating disorder.”

Healing was more than stopping the behaviors

Unfortunately, ending the most destructive behaviors didn’t mean the mindset disappeared overnight. Even after Washington stopped purging, she realized she was still living inside the same restrictive thinking. For years, she thought she was doing everything “right.” She exercised constantly and kept her food intake minimal, yet she remained frustrated with her body and exhausted by the mental effort it took to maintain that routine.

The turning point came unexpectedly when a trainer challenged the very logic she had been following for years. Instead of pushing harder, he suggested she eat more and focus on strength training. The advice initially felt impossible to accept. “Someone telling me to eat more to lose weight was like—you’re sabotaging me,” she recalls thinking. But when she gradually shifted toward eating enough and building muscle instead of punishing her body through cardio, something changed. Her metabolism stabilized, the constant stress around food eased, and she began listening to her body rather than trying to outmaneuver it.

What women model without realizing it

Washington says that nowadays, she notices the quiet messages women send about bodies, often without meaning to. As a mother, she’s become increasingly aware of how easily those messages can be passed down. Small habits that seem harmless can shape how children interpret food, appearance, and self-worth. Even something as simple as insisting a child finish their plate can override their natural fullness cues. “My daughter will say, ‘Mommy, can I be done?’ and I realize she’s listening to her body,” she says.

The same awareness extends to how adults talk about themselves. Washington remembers watching the women around her diet before vacations or major events, absorbing the message that a body had to be smaller before it could be worthy of being seen. Now she tries to model something different. She avoids criticizing her own appearance in front of her daughter and reframes food as neutral rather than something to earn or fear. “You are the model [for your child],” she says. “They’re watching you.”

What happens when you stop dulling yourself

As Washington began to feel more grounded in her identity, the changes extended far beyond food or exercise. The clarity that came with healing forced her to confront other parts of her life that no longer felt aligned.

Eventually, that included her marriage. After years of feeling like she was minimizing her ambitions or downplaying opportunities, Washington realized she was shrinking parts of herself to maintain the relationship. Two and a half years ago, she filed for divorce.

The decision was complicated by the reality of raising two children and the weight of what separation would mean for their family. But she also considered what her daughter would learn by watching the relationship continue unchanged. “I would never want my daughter to live that way,” she says. “I have to show her that you don’t dull your life for anyone.”

The life she’s building now reflects that shift. Washington hosts the podcast ThERINpy, writes about healing and identity, and runs the Blue Butterfly Foundation, which supports teen girls navigating body image and self-worth. Much of that work exists because she eventually chose to speak openly about what she once believed she would take to her grave. And sharing it changed everything.

If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, help is available. Contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or go to NationalEatingDisorders.org.

To hear Washington’s full conversation, listen to Over 50 & Flourishing wherever you get your podcasts.

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