Expanding into Receptivity for Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating disorder recovery is about developing capacity within our own nervous systems to be able to receive.
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When there are the tendrils of eating disorder behaviours, there are usually fears of receiving. Through the tactics of the eating disorder, which is to defend, armour, protect, or push away from anything that gets too close, one is unable to receive.
Why is receiving so hard?
Receiving requires us to take all of the food in, to chew and swallow all the way through, to slow down enough to digest. Receiving asks us to be intimate with food and to not push it away even when it feels like it is sitting deep and full within us. To be in recovery means to expand our capacity to receive.
Being able to receive is deeply intimate.
It requires being seen. It requires being close to another. It requires connection. It asks an individual to acknowledge their worthiness, deservingness, and their existence – because without that, who is it that receives?
Developing capacity to be with the present moment – aka connected in and to the body – is one way to receive whatever is here, without using food and body tactics as strategies to reject it.
And of course, being present is not easy. An eating disorder’s main goal is to exit and reject the present moment. So by developing nervous system capacity and regulation to receive more glimpses during the day, embodied, connected and mindful, are ways to start receiving more
This is what my recovery is focused on right now. I'm paying attention to the moments where I restrict, deny, or reject what is coming towards me to be received - be it a compliment, a hug, words of support, or eye contact.
It is often in the places of deeper connection and intimacy where I don't want to receive. These are the places where the old eating disorder voice raises its head and wants to build walls of defense so that nothing can come too close. And it’s in these exact places where I have the opportunity to choose differently: to say yes, to expand, to take up space, to allow my voice to be heard, to embrace, to allow for (safe and consensual) intimacy, to believe in myself.
Stepping out of self-rejection and restriction and into receptivity means stepping out of feeling wrong and into worthiness.
I invite you to practice looking for moments in your day where, instead of rejecting or restriction, you embrace and embody the art of receiving.
This means that as we open up to more receiving, we start to release patterns of restriction.
Whatever form your eating disorder or disordered eating patterns manifest in, they are usually all tied up in restriction. Either there is restriction of food, which can manifest as anorexia or orthorexia, but can also manifest as binge/rebound eating which is a response to earlier food restriction.
Restriction can also come in the form of restricting your feelings and emotional expressions (like sadness, anger, grief, or joy), restricting your needs and desires, restricting play and pleasure, restricting social interactions, or restricting yourself from spontaneity and new situations. As such, an eating disorder is often a symbol of some kind of restriction that is happening in another aspect of your life.
When did you feel you had to restrict or hold back a part of yourself in order to belong or feel accepted or recognized?
Can you identify what part of yourself that was that had to go into hiding?
Eating disorders indicate parts within us that have had to hold themselves back in order to stay safe – because at one point freely expressing, expanding, spontaneously creating, and taking up space were not supported. These are the places from which eating disorders form.
Where in your life can shift from restriction to expansion?
What stands in your way?
What are you protecting yourself from?
Are there small moments in the day where you practice, embrace and embody expansion and deeper connection with your body?
It is important to note that making connection with the body takes time. When there has been a history of eating disorder, connecting with the body is often the last place we want to go, and it’s the place we need to venture into.
From my own experience, I realised about at some point in my recovery that I was still very much in my head and still triggered and afraid of my body. Walking my own recovery path for the last 14 years eventually led me to embodiment practices. This was the work that was missing in the early days of my recovery. A big piece in this work of reconnecting with the body has been bringing to mindset of a blank canvas.
When I started this work, I had so many expectations. I thought I would finally feel all of my feelings, identify all the nuances of my physical body, release all the traumas held in my cells and tissues, and be free! That has not been the case. I’ve learnt that the best thing I can do is to not try force connection or try change, manipulate or create an experience – and to rather just arrive as fully as I can in each moment ready to engage or not.
Sometimes the conditions are right for me to venture in and other times it’s not the right moment, and to even allow the old reactions of shutting down and closing off to happen – and to not beat myself up about it.
This is the tool of compassion at work and is one of most important tools we can practice in our recovery. I’m sure many of you know that in the depths of an eating disorder, little compassion is present. So when we bring compassion into the picture, we are already shifting, healing, recovering, and transforming. Where in your life can you bring a touch more compassion?
Photo by Lina Trochez on Unsplash