Keeping Our Heads Above Water During Turbulent Times of Change and in Eating Disorder Recovery
I hope that you’re finding moments of pause and pockets of grounded ease as you navigate these times.
It’s no question that we are in a turbulent chapter in the world right now.
We may be facing many kinds of feelings and questions that can feel destabilizing or dysregulating. It’s challenging (if not impossible) for our mind-body to hold all this complex, ever-evolving information in one go.
I’m aware that many of you here reading this are extra sensitive souls and you may be feeling overwhelming energies, like grief, anger, confusion, or despair.
Many of us who have a history of disordered eating or eating disorders learnt from a young age to hide or edit our feelings and found out along the way that using food or focusing on the body in certain ways kept the depth of our emotions out of sight.
Perhaps we didn’t learn or get to practice how to be with big emotions. It is possible that growing up we heard the narrative from people around us say things like, “don’t make a mountain out of a molehill” or “there’s no use crying over spilt milk”.
If our emotional expressions and experiences were misunderstood, ignored, or shamed, we end up finding ways to cut off from our authentic truth in order to meet the acceptable standards created by others.
Disconnecting from our emotions simply feels safer.
I believe that disconnecting from our emotions from a young age was a survival response when we were in an environment that did not support the rich fullness of our expression.
I also believe that many people with eating disorders are incredibly sensitive, intuitive, and deep feelers. And underneath the eating disorder behaviours is a colourful tapestry of feelings, sensations, and energy.
This means that the pathway of recovery is one of reclaiming our gift of sensitivity and cultivating that into empathy and attunement that can be shared with others.
The ability to feel is a superpower and when we can fully embrace it as such, it is healing force not just for ourselves but for the hearts of those around us.
Eating disorder recovery is the process of:
Learning to trust our inner experience and internal voice.
Validating our feelings as important and worthy.
Befriending our own feelings, and slowly surrendering into the depth of them.
Opening up to the body and practicing how to track and be with raw sensation.
Cultivating compassionate awareness as we allow more space in the body to receive the truth of our experience.
It’s possible that at this time when there are highly charged feelings swirling around on a collective level, we may automatically disconnect from our feelings.
When we find ourselves in the choppy, turbulent waters of disruption and uncertainty, we inevitably reach for the things that we know have worked in the past.
As such, you may notice that the eating disorder voice seems louder. If this is the case for you (at it might not be), remember that we are collectively and individually experiencing big and heavy waves of feelings. It makes sense that when things get extra intense, the eating disorder ramps up too.
However, if we can pay attention to that, we have a choice as to how we want to navigate these turbulent times.
My hope is that you find your way to keep your head above water by perhaps finding a log to hold onto, or a hand to reach out to as way to process in coherent and meaningful ways.
Whatever you’re experiencing right now and however you’re navigating these stormy seas, I see you.
And I trust your body’s ability to digest what you’re experiencing at a pace that feels good for you.
Finding moments of pause, feeling the ground underneath us, inviting space into the body via breath, movement, sound, or being in nature, and co-regulating with loved ones are ways we can support ourselves and our nervous systems to be with whatever we may be feeling in sincere and honest ways.
Rather than editing our feelings or reducing our experience to “it’s not that big of a deal”, we can directly connect with the body through raw sensation and tuning our embodied awareness from the inside-out as a way to hear, witness, and honour how the body is making sense of things, what it needs to feel safe, what it requires to reestablish a sense of regulation, and what it is asking from us to feel nourished and replenished.
The small actions that we take to fill up our cups amidst the bigness of these times accumulate, and significantly ripple out into the world as we build the capacity to show up to ourselves.
Thank you for the courageous and committed work that you do in the quiet temple of your heart.
This work, which is an ongoing practice, is incredibly meaningful not just for our own well-being but for those around us and for the generations to come.
May how we choose to show up in these times, connected to our bodies, and the deep and beautiful feelings that run through them, give permission to others to live whole-heartedly embodied.
Photo by Erik Dungan on Unsplash