Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Creative Act

Eating disorder recovery is a creative process from rigidity and repetition to new ways of thinking and being.

Like most of my blogs, newsletters and articles, when I get started with the process of writing it can feel clumsy and awkward.

As I sit down, I put on some music to help me get into the zone and take a moment to pinpoint what that original spark was that brought me to write in the first place.

That spark was just a feeling that tells me, “It’s time to write”.

Armed with only a gut feeling to create, I start by playing with words with a sense of curiosity and lightness. I begin to type out and delete sentences over and over again before I feel something land.

When that “thing” lands, the writing begins to flow with a bit more ease. There’s a river to move with and a current to follow.

I share this bite of #bts because it reminds me of a similar process that many of us go on when we embark on the journey of transformation.

Maybe you can relate to this: Sometimes we have no idea why we signed up for those coaching sessions, or joined that support group, or how we even got ourselves to a plant medicine ceremony.

Yet here we are.

And somehow, we know we are exactly where we are meant to be even if we have no idea where we are going.

We followed a spark.

Something deeper was pulling us closer to ourselves. The logical, cognitive mind often cannot rationalize or make sense of the reasons why, but the intuitive, feeling body just knows that this path must be followed.

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This brings us to a concept called “organicity” which is a core principle of Hakomi Therapy, a form of somatic therapy. This concept is based on the premise that as organic beings, all humans are inherently able to self-correct, heal, and reorient to inner alignment.

This is a natural process that exists in all human beings, and when we are in a safe and supportive environment (and the nervous system recognizes this safety internally too), this movement towards healing and regulation organically unfolds (without us having to will it or force it to happen).

This shift our focus from what is wrong to what is already whole. In fact, the eating disorder behaviours themselves are also not wrong.

Rather than focusing on how the eating disorder behaviours are maladaptive or “disordered”, we can notice how these food and body behaviours are strategies of survival rather than strategies of dysfunction.

Just like the Hakomi principle of organicity, the body is always trying to return to balance and healing; although like with disordered eating behaviours, that attempt towards wholeness doesn’t quite bring resolution.

I believe an eating disorder is the body’s creative adaptation to find some sort of regulation (inner harmony) and sense of protection.

Sometimes, the eating disorder behaviours are the only strategies we have access to in order to stay connected to and functioning in the world.

At the core, an eating disorder represents a deep yearning to reach out to connect with others but, for many reasons that I won’t get into too much detail here, there quite simply isn’t a hand that we can trust to grasp onto and pull in close to attach to and feel safe with.

So, when I see an eating disorder, I see an opportunity for those who are in supporting roles to reach out our hands and meet it, because the body is communicating, “Even though I can’t reach out my hand, see me. I’m still here, I’ve survived, and I want to thrive - and I can’t do it alone.”

This is the spark.

This is the spark of creativity.

It is the spark that finds its way to healing, organically, adaptively, and creatively.

This is the spark that knows something can be different.

It is the spark that guides us towards practices, people, and places that inspire new ways of thinking and feeling. This path of thinking and embodying something different is the same path of living a creative life.

Eating disorder recovery requires creativity. I’m sure many of you reading this know that eating disorder behaviours are often rigid and repetitive, with little room for something different to occur.

Addiction recovery and healing from trauma require similar creative pathways. And so, creativity is the way through from the old status quo to the new status quo.

To access creativity requires a particular nervous system state. We have to shift from a narrow vison of protection and defense (ie. flight, fight or freeze) to a more open vision (ie. social engagement), where our somatic architecture is shaped by a sense of groundedness, belonging, dignity, and presence.

This can be achieved through co-regulation, through feeling the warm support and loving awareness of another human, animal, or nature being.

It can also be achieved through nourishing and soothing the senses, thus resourcing the body from the inside out.

A creative outlook can be achieved through practices that tease apart and soften the neural connections that strongly enforce and rigidly hold onto old beliefs and embedded constructs, such as meditation, microdosing, and plant medicine or psychedelic journey work.

And when we start to lean into the belief that, “I deserve to heal, and I am worthy of live a life that feels good for me” we create more possibility to try something other than the eating disorder. This is further strengthened when we know there is support around us.

Indeed, it takes great courage to try something different, new, or unknown!

All creative people (which includes you) know that the first word on a page, first mark on a canvas, or first step on the dance floor require bravery because in that moment of open, liminal space we have no idea where it will lead.

However, when we know in our bones, when the hairs on our neck stand up, when our when heart flutters, or when we have that gut knowing, that this is the path to follow.

When we listen to the innate intelligence of the body, we know what direction to go towards. Recovery is the practice of developing and integrating sustainable and adaptable tools and resources to face the unknown with courage and creativity.

Rather than contracting and becoming small in the face of change, we can open towards it and be transformed by it.  

Recovery, which is an act of surrender (which is different to giving up), can feed us and nourish us and change us, bringing us deeper into our own embodiment, breath by breath, step by step, choice by choice.

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As I sit here, I look back at what I have written. I had no idea that this is what I would write, but I trusted that spark of creativity, and with patience arrived that these 1328 words.

Writing this has been a nourishing act for me. Most the time, I end up writing and sharing is the medicine that I so desperately need. It is not just the content that feeds and inspires me, but it is the creative act itself that is deeply soul-nourishing.

In this creative state where so many people report a sense of flow, presence, spaciousness, connection and alignment, the inner chatter quietens.

It is in this state of being where eating disorders cannot exist. (Read that again).

There are many ways to walk the path of recovery. The recovery path is a creative path, where anything can be considered a resource and an ally as long as it resonates and lands within you.

That resonance will communicate in and through your body.

I trust you in finding your way to hearing the body, and I trust your body and its cues and signals.

You know what direction you need to go in. Trust it. Follow that spark of resonance.

It’s that same resonance that has brought us all here together, united by a similar feeling. Each of us followed a spark within, a spark from the body, to walk this path of recovery.

I am so glad we are here together, co-creating a reality that support body trust, connection, and love.

Sending you all of my deepest appreciation and gratitude.

To read more on psychedelics and microdosing:

6 Ways Microdosing Psychedelics Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery

Psychedelics Can Help People In Eating Disorder Recovery Establish Self-Trust

Envisioning The Embodiment Of Authenticity With The Help Of Psychedelics

When You Reach The End Of A Meal

Living nomadically taught me a lot about eating disorders. This is what I learnt…

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coming home after eight months of travelling has left me feeling like I’ve reached the end of big meal. I can finally lie down by the fire and rest - and let the food digest.

And whilst I’m digesting my experiences from Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico, the States, and the UK, there is also certainly a lot to digest on a collective level from this year which I am sure many of you acknowledge, sense, and feel.

The ability to digest our food, emotions, and experiences is a deep and complex process.

Our digestive system is governed by our autonomic nervous system which is like our inner surveillance that oversees of all of the automatic processes in our body, including our ability to perceive and scan for safety and threat.

Being on the lookout safety and danger is something our nervous system does behind the scenes and influences what we move towards or move away from, or if we stay neutral.

The ability to do this is essential for our survival. It is quite mind-blowing when you think about it!

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If there’s a history of developmental trauma and chronic daily stress, what we perceive as safe or dangerous isn’t always accurate. It’s like the dial is tuned into the wrong station.

Stored trauma energies (aka fight, flight, freeze) and accumulated stress send constant signals to the body that it needs to be on guard and in protection mode.

We might feel afraid to face the stored stress survival energies (they are indeed powerful energies - they are here to keep us alive after all!) within us and as such, put up walls and armour to ensure these feelings stay hidden out of sight - from ourselves and others.

And if we internally feel fear, we begin to see the world through a similar lens as a scary place. As within so without.

This occurs because we always looking to establish and maintain a coherent sense of self. If our internal world is filled with fear, we will find evidence and data from the outside world to keep this inner narrative of self coherent.

It is very discombobulating when our internal narratives of who we are and what the world is like are shaken up - either through big life transitions, psychedelic journeys, or confronting changes - because we are forced to find new information as a way to update our story of self, along with rewiring the nervous system to reflect this new version of reality.

This is embodied change from the inside out.

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Polyvagal Theory points to the neurological link between regulated eating with our sense of safety. We now know from a physiological standpoint that to effectively take in food, we have to feel safe.

So, it makes sense why we can’t really sit down and have a meal whilst trying to run from a bear!

But for many of us, experiencing urgency, anxiety, or armoring (aka running from the bear) is often the state we find ourselves in when we eat, and which later leads to issues like IBS, constipation, or inhibited digestive functioning.

This occurs when survival energies of flight, fight and freeze from past traumatic experiences accumulate and get stuck in the body causing dysregulation - which shows up as rigidity, narrow perspective, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, addiction, and eating disorders.

Over time, this dysregulation becomes the baseline or the new normal. We simply get used to it even if it doesn’t feel all that great.

And it’s from this (dysregulated) baseline of how we feel on the inside that influences how and what we perceive the world around us, how we engage with the others, the decisions we make, and the choices we take.

As such, Polyvagal Theory states that when we feel safe we can effectively digest our food when we reach the end of a meal.

Me looking out to the sunrise in Tulum, Mexico

So what we do to begin to quiet the inner storm, put down the armour, widen our perspective, and Notice Safety that is around us? How about we practice together:

First, let’s take a breath.

Feel your feet on the ground, allowing roots to grow from the soles of your feet into the soul of the Earth.

Orient to your surroundings, taking in light, shadows, colours, shapes, sights and sounds in and around your space.

Notice where you are, right now, right here, in this present moment.

I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this right now that your environment is safe, your body is safe, and you are safe.

Recognize the safety there is here right now by attuning to yourself and yourself in your environment and check in with your body and see if there’s any part of you that wants to soften in this recognition.

Perhaps your eyes, jaw, chest, shoulders, fingers, or lower belly can release a little bit of tension by leaning into and receiving the support of the ground and the containment from your environment.

This ground that is underneath you isn’t going anywhere, and it has the capacity to hold all of you, including mixed feelings, contradicting thoughts, and opposing parts. All of you is held.

There is nothing to prove, achieve, fix, or get right. You are enough as you are and you are held in that.

Check in again. Is there anything else within you that can drop, release, or open into this support - this support that is right underneath you?

Notice how your ability to soften and put down a little bit of armour (aka tension) is relational. It is through relationship - in this case, with the stable, unwavering support of the ground and the holding container of your space - that we have the space to shift from protection to safety.

And one last time, notice your breath.

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Our sense of safety doesn’t come from just the absence of threat, but when we land in the presence of a trusted, accepting other.

On a nervous system level, safety comes from sensing that there is something reliable and trustworthy with us. This is something we can play with by noticing the ground underneath and connecting to the environment around us.

as mammals we are hardwired for connection, and our sense safety and ability to establish self-regulation comes through co-regulating - which is the process of grounding, balancing, and centering ourselves through having the presence of someone else with us.

When we are with another human who we trust, our body can finally let out a big sigh.

The armour can be put down. On a nervous system level, we move from dorsal vagal parasympathetic shutdown (freeze) and sympathetic arousal (flight or fight) into ventral vagal connection (social engagement).

When we are in ventral, we feel expansive and grounded, connected within and to the world around us, curious and creative, present and regulated.

Internally, the chaos subsides, and we can perceive the world as more welcoming and inviting.

How we feel in our bodies improves and we feel less of an urge to critique, harm, or judge our bodies.

As we feel more regulated inside, our capacity to eat widens naturally. Our digestive system also smooths out, leading to better nutrient absorption and excretion.

Emotions can flow more easily, and we can let go with greater trust.

The pervasive narrative of “I don’t know who I am without this eating disorder” has less grip and we begin to explore and embody a more aligned story of self.

As we start recognizing moments of safety, noticing how it feels in the body, and orienting to those people, places, and things that support our nervous system, the eating disorder can naturally let go of us.

This, for me, is the true process of recovery, that is sustainable, long-lasting, and deeply authentic. Recovery is a natural process that works with the capacity of the nervous system. It doesn’t require fear tactics, will, grit, or more sympathetic force or rigidity. It is an organic unfolding.

Recovery is a practice, not perfect.

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Making my way back to South Africa, I am filled with appreciation. These eight months weren’t always easy. There were ebbs and flows, ups and downs, shadows and light. There were several hard-to-swallow moments and digestive challenges, so to speak, and also a lot of beauty, expansion, and discovery. And through it all, it was all held.

I am now sitting at my metaphorical dinner table and looking at my plate. I feel complete. My tummy communicates to my brain, “we have had enough”. And with that, I wash the plates and cutlery. I go sit by the fire and let my body rest so it can process this eighth-month meal. Patience and gentleness are my allies right now as I digest and integrate.

By the warmth of the fire, I remember that there is enough for me, I have done enough, and I am enough.

I invite you feel into and explore your own sense of enoughness.

There is enough for you, there is enough for everyone, you have done enough, and you are enough.

This is the pinnacle expression of the digestive system.

I am wishing you all a smooth and nourishing last month of 2023. May this year and all that it contained integrate with ease so that you can step into the new meal that is 2024 with refined clarity.

The Ingredients For Eating Disorder Recovery

Eating disorder recovery is a creative process, unique to each person.

It’s a process that organically unfolds. It is the process of breaking out of habitual ways of thinking, feeling and believing and trying on something different, connecting new dots, and making fresh associations.

Like a creative process, recovery cannot be rushed or forced as it moves at the pace and capacity of the nervous system.

It is useful to know what the basic, overarching ingredients are as we enter the recovery journey. Similarity, like in any creative process, it is useful to have a framework or a scaffolding to hold and trust the unknowns that come with the territory.

The four foundational ingredients include social connection, sensory nourishment, interoceptive awareness and resting and digesting.

With these four ingredients to form the base, there is a lot that we can explore in eating disorder recovery.:

Social connection, established through co-regulation, is the process of regulating our nervous system with the support of someone, either through trusted friends, a therapist, attuned group support healing spaces, and even pets.

When the nervous system is in a state of regulation, the process if ingesting digesting is more neurologically accessible, and the eating disorder voice is quieter.

You can read more about the impact that co-regulation has in this article. Whilst it is focused on the importance of psychedelic guides, it has relevant gems pertinent to this first ingredient.

Sensory nourishment is the exploration of resourcing the body in different ways so that it feels regulated enough to engage in the complex process of eating.

Some people with eating disorders have sensory sensitivity so when we support from a bottom-up, body-first approach we integrate the sensory system in order to take in food in a regulated way. Supporting what is either overwhelmed or underwhelmed by adding in nourishing sensory-based resources, fortifies the whole body-mind, softening the edges around eating in general.

There are many ways to resource the body that doesn’t only involve food. Working with the far senses (sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste) and near sense (vestibular, proprioception and interoception systems) are ways to support the modulation, discernment and responding processes that happen when someone comes into contact with information/input from the outside and inside world.

To read more about how recovery is an additive process, head this article for further reading.

Since there is often a disconnection from the body and often a focus on the outside image of the body, practicing interoceptive awareness is fundamental to reconnect from inside-out.

Many people with eating disorders are often energetically sensitive so the boundaries between self and other are blurred, making it challenging to distinguish what is theirs’s and what is someone else’s stuff. Practicing different ways of clarifying one’s own inner cues is part of establishing healthy boundaries.

If you are curious about the link between interoceptive awareness and recovery, this article on cultivating self-intimacy goes deeper into this fascinating topic.

Resting and digesting includes exploring our relationship with rest (not always easy in a world of diet culture!) and our sense of worth that is not based on achievement or performance.

Spending time in Nature can remind us that there are cycles to life rather than one monotonous hustle culture drumbeat. Mother Nature can invoke a deep remembrance of our enoughness, belonging and worth.

This article on slowing down and this article that goes into my personal journey with relearning how to rest speaks further to this ingredient.

These four ingredients when added appropriately provide a delicious scaffolding for creative, sustainable eating disorder recovery, allowing for greater cognitive flexibility, emotional intelligence, somatic safety, nervous system regulation, and a sense of hope, possibility, clarity and direction.

What ingredients or elements have helped you in your journey of shifting out of rigidity to greater flexibility, and exploring new patterns or trying new things? I would love to hear from you!

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

Why I Travel The World For My Eating Disorder

Traveling has been one of the most important tools I have utilized in my eating disorder recovery journey.

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Along with the Inner journeying with psychedelics, traveling has expanded My awareness.

I have always loved traveling. I remember my first-ever solo trip when I was 25.

It was the first time I felt mentally stable enough to travel alone. Unlike many people I knew who went traveling after school, I needed a few years to work through my eating disorder to feel capable to meet the wider world on my own two feet.

Right after finishing school, I went into an in-patient clinic, and thereafter spent a number of years finding safety and trust with food and my body. 

When I decided to go traveling, I knew it was time to meet another layer of my eating disorder. I was ready to break down the routine, familiarities, repetitive patterns, and all what I knew in order to connect with the part of me that deeply feared change. 

The eating disorder part of me didn't like change. It didn't like my body changing. It wanted food to be predicable. It desperately wanted certainty. It wanted to cling to the shores of the known.

When I decided to go traveling, I took a breath and consciously chose to push off the shore and figure out how to swim in the middle of the river. 

When people ask me what helped me in my recovery, traveling is one of the things I mention. 

By moving the literal ground from underneath me, traveling requires me to develop resources and practice tools that support in finding my inner ground and that help me keep my head above water regardless of where I am in the world.

Traveling is a tool that helps me clearly see where I am still gripping to the shores of the known. 

It is a light that shines on the places that fear change - these places can often hide when I am in the routine of everyday life but are hard to ignore when I'm in the constant change of travel. 

Through traveling, we meet our most tender parts. We also have a chance to meet our hearts in a new way. We can step outside of the habitual ways of perceiving ourselves and reality and connect with our deepest longings and what we care about on a soul level.

Traveling acts like a compass that helps us excavate our values and find our centered alignment that offers direction on how to move forward on the recovery journey.

Along with plant medicine, which is a journey within, the literal act of traveling expands awareness.

Since eating disorders and disordered eating are in a sense a narrowing of awareness by hyper-focusing on food and the body, inner psychedelic journeying and outer travel become tools for recovery because they help widen our focus and help us seeing wider, deeper, higher, and further.

Throughout all of my travels over the years, I am always reminded of this potent medicine of travel.

It hasn't been easy - I have been stretched in more ways than I could have imagined, but I am emerging with new perspectives, fresh eyes, refined resources, and a newfound compass, guiding me towards what I deeply care about. 

Moving closer to what we care about brings us deeper into our aligned embodiment. And this is what eating disorder recovery is all about. 

Download my free ebook, One Way Ticket To The Soul! It’s an eating disorder recovery handbook that was created for folks who are navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating and who desire to travel in a way that supports their recovery journey. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to download it.

Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

Orthorexia And The Fear Of Death

Orthorexia is the expression from the body sharing its fear of dying.

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Orthorexia is the obsession with super healthy or clean eating. People may restrict certain foods or food groups and be particular about how meals are cooked. They may choose to not eat out at restaurants or at social events or have set Meal times.

These rules are created to support someone’s personal idea of health. Whilst there is nothing wrong with choosing health, people navigating orthorexia experience extreme guilt or shame when they “break” their rules, which usually results in self-punishment.

The healthy eating rules are often very rigid, and if people don’t seek support, these rules become narrower and harder to get out of.

Orthorexia impacts many people, in subtle and extreme ways, especially in diet culture where certain foods are moralized and others are demonized (to read more on diet culture, I highly recommend the extensive work by Chrisy Harrison). Diet culture can make orthorexia hard to identify since we live in matrix where many orthorexia tendencies are normalized or championed.

When I came across the term “orthorexia” a many years ago, I started to see how I was also struggling with it.

I could trace Orthorexic tendencies to my childhood where being seen as healthy by those around me gave me a sense of “I’m doing ok and I’m a good human.”

Seeing where this restrictive form of eating came from made sense, but it didn’t explain why I still felt terror when eating “unhealthy” foods in the presence of others who loved me for me and who thought I was a good human regardless.

When I went underneath the fear of eating “unhealthy” foods, I met a deeper fear.

I started to see how much fear I held around dying.

The orthorexic voice was trying to keep me alive by having me eat only the cleanest of clean foods.

Little did I know at the time that my obsession with healthy eating was actually killing me due to restriction I was placing on certain kinds of foods.

I don’t think death is spoken often enough in eating disorder recovery.

I don’t think death is spoken often enough. Period.

At the core, I think this what many of us are afraid of - and all of the maladaptive behaviours and addictions are in some way attempts to push away the reality of death.

This fear is totally understandable in a world that tries to defy aging, ignores wisdom from elders, vilifies the season of winter, leaves out any rituals that signify the ending of something, runs away from grief and forgets about the exhale.

Our culture doesn’t support death. And diet culture certainly doesn’t. We are instead filled with fear when we are reminded of impermanence.

Orthorexia is an expression of the fear of death. This means that the body and the nervous system are in a state of fear - and so how we go about supporting folks who are navigating orthorexia should be done with a lot of kindness, compassion and safety.

Any eating disorder recovery treatment that instills more fear, shame or pathology only leads to the nervous system putting up more defense and protection.

For a nervous system to come out of fear, we have to greet it with safety, containment and attunement.

As such, eating disorder recovery is the process of allowing the feelings of fear be authentically felt whilst held in a safe way. We don’t have to ask the body to do anything else than what it is authentically experiencing.

Over time, we learn about what it means to accept change and impermanence in day-to-day life, and preparing the nervous system to hold the diversity of feels that arise in that process of accepting that things end.

Recovery is allowing the old body to evolve so that our new body - that can hold more of life with greater capacity - can be embodied, carving the way forward for our greatest aspirations and dreams to come to life.

Eating disorder recovery is about exploring nature’s seasons and the seasons within, giving permission to the body to move through its inner cycles of change.

Eating disorder and Orthorexia Recovery Are about noticing what things we grip onto for stability and familiarity, and to practice being curious about th things that we hold onto so tightly, whilst learning how to adapt, change and be in the ever-changing landscape of life.

Recovery is practicing making space internally rather than constricting when the opportunity to transform arises.

Recovery is learning about making peace with the fundamental nature of reality, which is inherently impermanent.

It’s about slowly developing capacity to step more and more into the vast unknown with grounded presence.

It’s about accepting that at the end of the day, we don’t know and that the only thing that is for certain is that all of this majesty and chaos, and tragic comedy of life, is all impermanent. 

Are Eating Disorder Coping Strategies or Strategies of Regulation?

Are eating disorders regulation strategies or coping strategies?

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Rather than trying to think about makes sense cognitively, can you sense into your embodied wisdom to land on what makes sense for you?

When you read this question, “are eating disorders regulation strategies or coping strategies?”, do you notice a difference in your body between these two different ways of describing eating disorders?

There’s a slight difference between perceiving eating disorders as strategies of regulation versus coping.

Over the years, my perspective has shifted from seeing eating disorders and disordered eating tactics as ways of coping to attempts at regulating.

When we consider an eating disorder as the body’s attempt at regulating the nervous system, we begin to see these food behaviours as strategies of survival rather than dysfunction.

And that ultimately someone has developed these strategies as a way to survive and meet life in the best ways they know how, which is connected to what kinds of rules they learnt around what’s acceptable or unacceptable to be seen by the outside world.

These rules are often transmitted to us way before our language has even formed by our attachment figures, from our caregivers to greater societal and institutional forces.

We inherit these rules before we are able to string coherent sentences together on just how much of who we are we can bring into the world.

These rules impact our sense of embodiment because on some level we have to tuck in and suck back aspects of our authentic self in order to look acceptable and stay in attachment with those around us who set the rules and standards.

This impacts our relationship with other humans. If we cannot show up authentically in connection with others, there will be a sense of something is missing within us.

Either we will have to hold back an aspect of ourselves, become tight, or withdrawn, or we might overdramatize, take up space, or conflate.

If our sources of connection growing up were not enough or too much or not attuned, it affects our nervous system development and ability to self-regulate.

And it is this exact same neural pathway that allows for attuned, safe connection that allows for regulated digestive processing.

This is what Polyvagal theory brought to light: Our ability to nourish ourselves physically with food and through relationships is neurologically linked.

Our relationship to food reflects our relationships. Like food, we need connection and attachment to survive - without it, we can’t survive.

Needing connection is hardwired into our system and it is what helps us develop a sense of self and a self in the world.

Connection is our first form of nourishment and one that we need throughout our lives.

Since food is a primary form of receiving and taking in physical nourishment, how we learnt to relate with others - our first form of nourishment - shows up most acutely with food.

If we didn’t receive the kind of nourishing care we needed from our caregivers and greater societal forces from a young age, the state of our nervous system gets impacted.

For young developing children, it is super dysregulating for the nervous system to have to stay in attachment with another who cannot safely provide us with our needs and wants.

As such, we find really intelligent ways to stay in connection (in order to survive) through disordered eating behaviours, whilst having a semblance of our needs and wants to be provided for in a way that doesn’t totally overwhelm us (this is inherently a regulating tactic, at least in the short-term).

However, when it’s not our authentic needs being met, it is usually not a particularly satisfying experience.

Eating disorder behaviours are the body telling us what is missing in the attachment system, and the behaviours are in some way an attempt to meet those needs and wants in the ways that the body knows how. This is an attempt to try regulate and bring things into balance.

Looking at eating disorders from this perspective means that we need to add in support and resources to meet whatever has been missing in the attachment system that speaks at the level of the body, so that there is an overall sense of regulation in the nervous system.

When we look at eating disorders as strategies of regulation, we start to bring in resources and practices that speak to the nervous and the body, from them bottom-up.

An eating disorder is the use of the senses and the body to try find regulation. It is a bottom-up strategy in and of itself, and as such, adding in support that works in a similar bottom-up way means that there is a greater chance for healing compared to a top-down, cognitive approach.

Indeed, the brain and the nervous system are geared to survival and are in a place of fear. This means, that along with lack of physical nourishment, the higher brain isn’t online.

Top-down processes require the brain to be fully optimal in order for cognitive-based therapy to work. For people with eating disorders, due to their physiology and nervous system capacity, CBT and other top-down therapy processes simply don’t land.

We have to work directly with the body.

When there is a robust regulation that is sustainable and supports overall well-being, the capacity to eat becomes easier.

When we see an eating disorder as an attempt to regulate a nervous system that is in need for safe connection, we can begin to add in supportive elements that don’t shame or pathologize (which creates further defense and disconnection), and instead invite warm and welcoming resources that attune to the part of the nervous system (and the soul) that yearns for love.

Indeed, we all know by now that eating disorders are so much more than just the food.

We know it’s never about the food at the end of the day.

So what are eating disorders actually about?

When we choose eating disorder recovery, what we are practicing is relearning and rediscovering how to receive nourishment.

Nourishment comes in many different forms, the most important one being relationships. As mammals, we are inherently wired for connection. We cannot bypass this - we very literally need it for our survival. Co-regulation with another is the most natural way for our bodies to ground, anchor, settle and regulate.

Rediscovering how to take in honest, supportive and loving connection is at the heart of recovery.

Since most eating disorders represent ruptures or deficits in the attachment system, I see disordered eating patterns as a representation of how one has learn to restrict intimacy from a very young age. Eating disorders symbolize a starvation for connection.

As we continue to walk the recovery road, we start to allow the nourishment of relationships into our lives; our cup feels fuller as our lives take on more meaning. We feel fed through the nourishment of connection.

As we take in more nourishment in this way, our autonomic nervous system is supported through co-regulation, shifting our bodies from a state of protection to a state of connection.

This state of connection is closely linked to the ventral potion of our parasympathetic nervous system, which is exactly where we want to be, on a nervous system level, to ingest and digest food.

When we embark on the journey of rediscovering how we want to be in relationship in a way that regulates, feeds and supports all parts of ourselves, we can naturally be nourished by food too.

By adding in support that speaks to the body and nervous system, we offer scaffolding for the parts that are holding back or holding in from an embodied perspective so that the body-container-temple can grow its capacity to hold the fullness of the soul.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash

Why Intuitive Eating Or Mindful Eating May Not Be Your First Step - And You're Not Wrong For Using A Meal Plan

I remember when I started my eating disorder recovery treatment many years ago, and one of the first things my dietician did was get me started on a meal plan.

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Together we set goals, identified safe foods, and made room for some challenges that felt within my capacity.

At the time (I was around the age of 17), I was really numb and disconnected from my body.

My nervous system was dysregulated and afraid which made it hard to connect internally and discern my internal cues.

My body was afraid - which I interpreted as me being afraid of my body.

All of this fear made it challenging to hear my authentic fullness and hunger cues or discern what foods I wanted to eat.

It was hard to stay present whilst eating and soon as the meal was done, I tried to find ways to override and distract myself from the rest and digest phase. It was really hard to sit in the quiet stillness and yield into the pause that the rest and digest part of my nervous system was asking me to do.

I also didn’t have a clear sense of self either. The eating disorder was the only thing that I could identify with. Boundaries, likes, dislikes, wants, needs, desires were all a foggy, out-of-reach haze to me. But the eating disorder on the other hand, was something I could grasp onto and orient around.

Not having a clear sense of self is very common for people with eating disorders.

For some people, they were given the message from the outside that their expression and who they are is wrong in some way, and so they learnt to shapeshift into a more palatable version, disconnecting further from their authentic self.

People pleasing and fawning are common tactics amongst people who struggle with disordered eating.

Others may be energetically sensitive, where distinguishing between what is mine and what isn’t mine is foggy. For these people, boundaries may not be easy to enforce, and information from the outside world can be interpreted internally as one’s own.

The eating disorder can provide someone with a sense of having edges through the food and body rigid rules. Identifying with the eating disorder (which is external) can give someone a sense of self when internally the scaffolding of self is shaky.

Looking back, I can see that if I tried to follow intuitive eating, I would have been lost at sea.

During those first few years, I literally needed a meal plan - something visual, something I could hold in my hand, something I could write down, a piece of paper with edges - to begin to connect with my body’s cues.

I could measure out my food which connected me with my visual sense, that helped me integrate my sensory system.

If someone had told me to stop planning my meals from the beginning and try intuitive eating or mindful eating, I would have been completely dysregulated.

For many years, the concept of mindful eating went totally over my head.

“Mindful eating” brought up the image of someone sitting very quietly, chewing very slowly, and being aware of each and every moment of preparing, plating, cutting up food and swallowing food. No thoughts. Totally calm.

As someone who has a history of eating disorders and who supports others on their recovery journeys, I find this concept of mindful eating too idealized.

Eating is a complex and intimate process.

We are taking something outside of us (aka food) and bringing into our own bodies. The steps that the digestive system undertakes to metabolize, assimilate and digest food is complex, and sometimes, we need to nourish the body in other ways so that it is regulated enough to begin to be nourished by food.

Oten in traditional treatment, the focus is nourishing the person with food (either by introducing more food, a meal plan, and/or more variety). But sometimes the body is not regulated enough to meet the complexity of eating.

So instead of mindful eating, I share with my clients (and with myself), the idea of "regulated eating".

Regulated eating is doing whatever is needed to feel a sense of enough safety in order to take in and digest food. 

When the nervous system feels enough safety, we have entered into the parasympathetic portion of our nervous system which is the most effective state for our digestive system to be in to carry out the necessary digestive processes.

If you notice that you are white knuckling through a meal that on the outside looks like a nice and neat version of mindful eating, but inside your panicking, then your nervous system simply isn’t going to feel safe and this impact digestive functioning and the ability to eventually eat intuitively.

For some people, sitting in silence brings up discomfort. Listening to music or a podcast softens the edges. 

For others, eating alone brings up anxiety or uneasiness, and having a conversation with a loved one whilst eating is a healthy distraction. 

Some people, when told to eat slower, feel panic and fear and so rather than slowing down, they need to move, bounce, walk, roll, squish, tap or squeeze something whilst eating to feel regulated.

Sometimes folks need specific kinds of lighting, smells or sounds to be present or tuned off whilst eating to feel grounded and present.

For others, having a meal plan is way more easeful for the nervous system and helps the connect to their bodies in a more direct way.

A large part of my eating disorder included tracking and monitoring, and so my recovery plan needed to meet me where I was at, and meal planning in service to my recovery was just that.

Over time I slowly and naturally transitioned off meal plans as I became more confident in hearing my body’s authentic cues and trusting them to be mine. I began to establish a sense of self and started to fear my body less - and this process of connecting to myself from the inside out had to be done through an external resource first.

I’m grateful that I had this experience where the meal planning wasn’t shamed and as my capacity increased, there was support in slowly letting it melt.

For those of you who are navigating eating disorder recovery and are using a meal plan, you’re not wrong or broken.

There can be many reasons as to why meal plans can be helpful, especially if there’s sensory processing issues or sensitivity, a history of attachment wounding, and/or a nervous system that is in defense or protection.

For people to intuitively eat, the first step is to “connect with your fullness and hunger cues”, and if you fear connecting to your body or haven’t establish clear interoceptive awareness, intuitive is almost impossible.

Being able to eat intuitively is something that must be worked towards over time.

We often need to explore other ways to connect to and nourish the body, through the senses (which include our five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell), but also our near senses which include the interoception, proprioception and vestibular systems), so that the body can be resourced and feels safe enough to take in food.

When resourced enough in these other ways, the body becomes regulated enough to engage in the complex process of eating and can then become a resource and ally for the healing process. This is where our intuition then becomes available as a guide for the journey.

Depending on what you envision for your recovery, intuitive eating may not be the first goal you set. Maybe your goal is finding a sense of regulation when you eat, and that could be supported through meal plans.

Getting clear on your current capacity along with the visions and dreams you have for your healing, is uniquely yours.

How walk your journey is also yours and is an opportunity to embody your authenticity.

Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash

Keeping Our Heads Above Water During Turbulent Times of Change 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.

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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

From Restriction To Receiving: The Pathway Of Eating Disorder Recovery

At the core of any eating disorder is the frequency of restriction. This means recovery is all about learning how to receive.

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Whether it’s restriction of food, subtle dieting, an avoidance of a food group on certain days, eating at specific times, exercise focused on weight-loss, or a suppression of emotions, social connection, or boundaries, or one’s truth, restriction and as such, hunger, is at the core of an eating disorders.

A hallmark of eating disorder recovery is learning how to reconnect to hunger cues.

Hunger says: “I need food”. It signals a basic need that all living beings have: the need for nourishment. Hunger is the drive to stay alive.

We recognize hunger through signals of emptiness, rumbling, thoughts about food, and changes in our mood or attention. 

But hunger isn’t so black and white. 

Sometimes we eat because it sounds good, or the occasion calls for it. Sometimes we eat based on our schedule and have to eat even when we’re not hungry because if we wait until afterwards, we’ll be ravenous. Sometimes we eat to soothe ourselves when we feel sad, tired, or some uncomfortable feelings.

Indeed, hunger isn’t just biological.

Diet culture has taught us that our hunger is bad and is the enemy. Wellness culture has taught us to only eat when we receive the biological signals - and to stop immediately when we feel full.

The external rules, stipulated by diet culture, cause us to bypass, override or ignore our bodies, impacting how we trust ourselves, and connect to our desire. 

Connecting to our hunger cues is a reminder that our bodies are alive and want to live and thrive. Connecting to our hunger is a practice of reclaiming and receiving our desires from the inside out. 

Connecting to our hunger cues is a gateway into reconnecting to our deepest wants, needs, yearnings and desires directly through the body.

Hunger can be an opening into exploring our needs and wants - and what rules we have learnt from society that have limited us in our self-exploration of desire. Listening to our hunger in its many forms gives us clues into our ability to receive.

The stomach is the place where we hear and feel our hunger cues and is the place that also receives the nourishment that we give our bodies.

Restoring relationship with our body’s unique way of expressing when it’s hungry or time to eat gives clarity to the beliefs we hold around trusting our hunger - not just our biological food hunger but the trust we hold (or don’t hold) for our soul’s deeper hunger.

This exploration also invites us to explore what we need in order to feel safe enough within ourselves and in our environments to nourish the deep soul layers of hunger.

Oftentimes, the soul nourishment that folks with eating disorders need is attuned relating. Being attuned to is deeply nourishing. It is the medicine and nourishment that the soul needs to receive.

“Attuned relationships give a traumatized nervous system the ability to recalibrate. When we feel safer, we can better digest trauma, integrate pain, and develop post-traumatic learning. And the more attuned relational environments we create, the more we contribute to the self-healing mechanism of the world.” - Thomas Huebl

Since an eating disorder will find ways to isolate and separate from the world and from the body itself, the medicine that is needed is compassionate connection. Recovery cannot be done alone.

the eating disorder is a reflection of the kind of connection and relational attachment one received from attachment figures that include caregivers, family, work, community, cultural, societal, and spiritual frameworks.

These attachment figures teach us in obvious and insidious rules around connection, belonging, love, and self-expression.

These figures offer conditions of attachment; in order to have safety and connection, one must follow the rules set out by the attachment figures.

And so, we may have learnt that our authentic expression wasn’t accepted or allowed because it wasn’t attuned to, understood, or validated.

In order to belong, feel safe and be in relational connection, people may shut off parts of their authentic selves to receive some form of recognition, and to gain the safety and connection necessary for survival.

It is from these places where the disordered eating behaviours manifest and represent through food the kind of connection rules one had to abide by.

the path of eating disorder recovery is learning to receive (aka metabolize) relational attunement that is in response to our authentic selves.

Receiving this kind of nourishment is deeply healing on a soul level. This is what the eating disorder wants to truly eat and be filled up with.

What is your body hungry for?

What is your soul hungry for?

Is there anything that stands in the way between you and your hunger?

Can you give yourself unconditional permission to explore your hunger and allow yourself to fully receive it?

Our hunger cues can be a gateway to listen to the deep layers of what the body wants to receive, fully.

Photo by Santiago Lacarta on Unsplash

Have You Expressed Compassion To Your Eating Disorder Today?

Self-compassion is one of the greatest tools we can use in eating disorder recovery. Utilizing it with sincerity takes practice and patience, but once integrated into our toolbelt, it becomes one of our most potent and adaptable tools.

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Perceiving compassion as a tool means that it becomes something we can pick up, practice with, and become better at utilizing the more we work with it.

For people navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating, the food and body strategies (such as restricting, calorie counting, binge eating, body checking etc) have been the #1 tools in their toolbox to cope through challenging moments in life.

This is why I believe that many traditional treatments for eating disorders don’t work in the long-run. Often the focus is on getting someone to stop the eating disorder behaviour (which is restrictive by nature, and often brings up feelings of shame and fear).

When the main tool in the toolbox gets taken away, there is a pendulum swing that happens whereby the person will do whatever they can to hold onto the eating disorder even tighter.

When treatment is restrictive (which is the same frequency of the eating disorder itself) and does not add, establish, and integrate uniquely resonant and regulatory skills that address directly what need the eating disorder is trying to manage or resolve, the cycle of restriction perpetuates.

This means that rather than turning away from the eating disorder and taking it away from an individual, we need to meet it and turn towards it. We need to give the eating disorder full space to communicate.

Indeed, eating disorders are the body’s attempt at communicating to us about how someone is experiencing and digesting life.

Rather than telling someone that they can no longer engage in the food behaviours, which can be shaming and pathologizing (and silences the body!), we can get compassionately curious about the behaviours instead, and ask what the body trying to communicate about how safe or unsafe the body feels, the level of regulation or dysregulation in the nervous system, and what the needs are that the body is trying to meet in the ways that it knows how.

As such, engaging with the disordered eating from this level requires a deep and sensitive listening to the body – and how the body is communicating.

And the body communicates in a different way to the mind which communicates through talking, cognitive meaning making or thought, but through sensation, 5 sense perception, and movement.

When we recongise that the eating disorder is the body’s way of communicating its needs, the organization of its attachment and defense system, and what it is yearning for to thrive, we need to speak directly to the body – and find ways to nourish and resource the body itself.

By resourcing the body, it can ultimately become an ally and a resource in the recovery process.

And this is the goal – for the body itself to a resource in the recovery process.

The body is not something to be feared or an enemy.

When listened to and collaborated with, trust develops between you and your body, opening the door for its wisdom to be shared.

And ultimately, you then become your own guide for the recovery journey ahead.

This is an approach of adding in compassion as a way to get to know the eating disorder part of ourselves, which is often a younger, scared part of ourselves. Compassion to this younger part of ourselves is the best medicine we can offer ourselves.

With compassion, safety develops, and this allows the body to begin telling its story and stating its needs, honestly, vulnerably, authentically.

When we realize that the eating disorder is trying to meet an important need rather than cause harm, we can get compassionately curious.

What is the need that is trying to be met underneath the food or body strategies?

When we go underneath, we find that usually these needs are rooted in trying to find a sense of connection, safety, belonging, love, attunement, agency, boundaries, dignity, and regulation. These needs were often not met when we were younger, and this points to the kind of attachment wounding we may be carrying - and as such, provides us with evidence as to why the defensive system is on high alert.

When we recognize what the need is, we can add resourcing tools that meet the deeper needs of the eating disorder. These resourcing tools ideally have sustainability, longevity, and can support our overall well-being in the long-run, rather than restrict our vitality.

When we add these tools and skills, the eating disorder doesn’t have to work so hard or all alone to meet those needs because we have other resources alongside to support ourselves.

Recovery from this compassionate perspective means that we can sit next to the eating disorder, whilst adding - and practicing - new support structures and tools at the same time.

From this place, we can practice what it’s like to be in recovery without the pressure of needing to be “recovered” or no longer engaging in the behaviour.

Over time, these new support structures take root, anchoring into our way and transform how we relate to our bodies, with food, and with life. When these additional resources become part of our embodiment, we can naturally mature of out the eating disorder.

From this perspective of recovery, we can practice what it’s like to rely less on the eating behaviours but without shoving the eating disorder into a corner.

After all, the eating disorder wouldn’t have existed in the first place if something within us hadn’t been shoved to the corner.

As such, compassion is needed, restriction not.

Compassion is not just an attitude but a tool that we can apply to our recovery process. It is a tool that forms the foundation from which how we approach all aspects of the eating disorder recovery process.

When these additional tools support us more and more in meeting these important needs, the eating disorder doesn’t have to do all of the work, and we can naturally grow out of the eating disorder.

It can let go of us.

This approach to recovery is additive and compassionate rather than restrictive.

Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash

Leaving Behind Your Embodied Legacy

I want to offer my gratitude and respect to each one of you who are walking the eating disorder recovery path. I thank you for doing your individual work that is part of this embodied collective transformation.

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Your inner work ripples out, affecting the collective’s understanding of what it means to be a human in a body, giving other people permission to live more fully and embodied.

Indeed, this path of eating disorder recovery is the deepening into our own embodiment.

The deeper we explore our own embodiment, we open up to the ways in which we learnt to inhabit our own body based on what we learnt from the bodies of those around us growing up.

From a very young age, we absorb the world and the people around us. What we see shapes and molds our perceptions of reality - and what gets shaped along the way is our understanding of bodies.

Through picking up our caregiver’s body language, tone of voice, posture, movements, gestures and facial expressions, we inherit somatic legacies that get passed down, non-verbally, through the generations.

These inherited somatic legacies are passed down and impacts our somatic organization and sense of embodiment in the world.

It is when we become present to and question our inherited (and unseen, habitual and automatic) somatic legacies, that we can start to realign with our authentic embodiment - and can dream into our somatic legacies that we want to leave behind for future generations to be inspired by.

We can dream into and envision a world that is free from eating disorders and diet culture. This is the path we can pave right now, influencing our collective trajectory towards a more attuned and trusting relationship with our bodies and with life. This is the embodied legacy that we can leave behind for the generations to come.

If eating disorders did not exist…

What would you think about?

How would you show up in the world?

How and what would you eat?

How would you talk? What would you say?

What would your relationships look like (to your body, and to other bodies)?

What would be allowed? What would you say yes to?

What would you say no to?

What feeling would be felt? What walls would drop? What edges would soften?

What would you focus on or create?

What aspects of our society would cease to exist or transform?

What collective narratives would be rewritten around being a human in a body?

How would self-acceptance, self-compassion and worthiness fit into this new world?

What would you recover, uncover, or discover about yourself?

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As we begin to dream into the embodied legacy that we wish to leave behind, we have to let go of who we once were and to fully grieve the ending that chapter. We let our tears water the seeds of our becoming, nourishing the tree that will provide shade for future generations.

When we walk the recovery path, we transform.

We go further beyond the place where we were before the eating disorder, often exceeding our expectations of what we thought was possible.

And the disordered eating recovery process is a transformational process both for the individual and for the collective.

Through our own process, we have the opportunity to leave behind an embodied legacy that transforms and shapes the ways in which future generations relate to their bodies, the bodies of those around them, and the body of the Earth.

This transformational process takes time (sometimes it takes many generations) and requires plenty of pauses to rest and digest, going at the pace that feels safe in our nervous systems as we stretch into the unknown territories of our inner landscapes.

We build courage strength, softness and patience so that the growth and healing that takes place can integrate, land fully and take root. Let your seeds anchor deep into the soil so that there are strong foundations from which your tree grows.

As you walk your transformational process, I invite you to reflect:

What are your personal values? What do you deeply care about and what brings you great meaning and fulfillment?

What steps need to be taken in order to align with and embody these values?

In embodying these values, how would you show up in your body in the world?

Imagine how this aligned embodiment could inspire and influence those around you in how they relate to their bodies and each other.

Envision how your authentic embodiment could leave behind a powerful and proud legacy that shapes future generations.

What is the somatic legacy that you will leave behind? This vision is possible when we embody it now.

Photo by Nikoline Arns on Unsplash

Why I Don't Call An Eating Disorder An "Eating Disorder"

Through personal explorations and through the support of plant medicine and nervous system work, I have come to understand that an eating disorder is not a disorder.

Having been in eating disorder recovery for 15 years, I haven’t yet found the right language of how to describe what an eating disorder is. For me, it doesn’t feel quite right to call it an eating disorder an “eating disorder”.

The eating disorder is not the disorder. It is someone in the process of trying to solve a problem (made up of behaviours, feelings, thoughts and beliefs).

The “disorder” is actually responding and representing an external environment that is dysregulated and disordered that has resulted in one’s individual nervous system to become dysregulated.

If we want to treat eating disorders, we need to reassess how our societies operate.

We have to look at eating patterns/“disorders” from this systemic vantage point because eating “disorders” are pointing us towards what we’re missing as a society, and what’s out of balance within these larger forces.

What is out of balance is a society that simply does not offer enough safety and acceptance for individual survival stress/trauma to be processed and digested.

When we experience something traumatic and don’t have someone safe around us to help us make sense of the event, stress survival energies of flight, fight, and freeze get trapped in our bodies.

Over time, these survival energies form a toxic soup in our bodies and cause havoc on our biological processes and our mental and emotional functioning. In an attempt to restore some form of internal balance, we may reach for food and body coping strategies. This is what an “eating disorder” is.

The eating disorder is pointing to the imbalances and the unprocessed trauma that is stored in an individual’s system due to the trauma that has been passed down through the collective.

At its core, an eating disorder is an attempt to try to restore balance to these micro and macro imbalances.

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What we are missing within these larger networks are teachings that guide on how to track our own physiology, to listen to our inner cues, to resource and regulate in healthy ways, and to express emotions.

We are missing moments to slow down, co-regulate, and attune with others because our go-go society pushes us to override our own system, our authentic impulses, and erode our boundaries in order to keep up.

We’re missing trust between others and towards our own bodies because society and diet culture champions physical and emotional hardness, competition, and comparison.

We’re missing moments to rest and reflect and so we lose touch with the intuitive nudges from our bodies, and rely on external rules rather than internal, aligned cues and authentic, biological impulses.

We’re missing connection to the great Earth body because society is more concerned with extraction and consumption than reciprocity. The nourishment that we receive from the Earth is lost. The nourishment that we receive in taking care of the Earth is lost.

This results in a feeling of something is missing. A stomach that can never feel full. A spiritual starvation.

I have discovered that the eating disorder behaviours naturally fade when we learn how to regulate and balance the nervous system.

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This doesn’t address the larger systems that are inherently dysregulating, disconnecting, and disempowering, and that instill mistrust, not enoughness, comparison and smallness.

What will it take to create foundations that support a regulated society and the structures that uphold it that invites us into a befriending relationship with food and our bodies?

The eating disorder is not “wrong”. And the person navigating an eating disorder is not wrong either.

Eating disorders have wisdom and they are pointing all of us as a society to where the deepest healing and regeneration are possible.

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And to also remember that an eating disorder is not only not a disorder, but it is not about the food either.

Eating disorders are the body’s attempt at communicating to us about how someone is experiencing and digesting life.

Rather than telling someone that they can no longer engage in the food behaviours, which can be shaming and pathologizing (and silences the body!), we can get compassionately curious about the behaviours instead, and ask what the body trying to communicate about how safe or unsafe the body feels, the level of regulation or dysregulation in the nervous system, and what the needs are that the body is trying to meet in the ways that it knows how.

As such, engaging with the eating disorder from this level requires a deep and sensitive listening to the body – and how the body is communicating.

And the body communicates in a different way – not talking, meaning-making or thought, but through sensation, 5 sense perception, and movement.

When we recongise that the eating disoder is the body’s way of communicating its needs, the organization of its attachment and defense system, and what it is yearning for to thrive, we need to speak directly to the body – and find ways to nourish and resource the body itself.

By resourcing the body, it can ultimately become an ally and a resource in the recovery process.

And this is the goal – for the body itself to a resource in the recovery process.

The body is not something to be feared or an enemy.

When listened to and collaborated with, trust develops between you and your body, opening the door for its wisdom to be shared.

And ultimately, you then become your own guide for the recovery journey ahead.

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Holding The Heart: The Eating Disorder Recovery Journey

Eating disorder recovery is learning how to be with more fullness. Recovery from an eating disorder or disordered eating is the process of increasing our capacity to be with more of life, to be filled by life.

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No longer restricting life, eating disorder recovery requires us to embrace the fullness of each moment.

It means being able to hold the fullness of a feeling, whether it be grief, anger, pleasure, or excitement.

So, take note for yourself - when you get nervous or on edge, or anxious or overwhelmed, or irritated or scared, what do you do?

How do you navigate that feeling?

What do you reach for as a way to cope?

Eating disorder recovery is the development of our own inner resilience and self-compassion, that is both strong and soft, that can hold and navigate the intensity of the moment, whether the moment is intensely beautiful or intensely challenging.

Eating disorder recovery, at its core, asks us to be with our hearts - the heart that feels the complexities and paradoxes of being a full human in this full life.

Getting in touch with our hearts is at the heart of recovery. We can strengthen the connection to our hearts by:

• Placing our hands over the chest area and breathing into it

• Noticing the pace and rhythm of the heartbeat

• Massaging the chest area

• Connecting to the diaphragm that moves with the mediastinum (the sac that holds the heart)

• Engaging in activities that bring different types of heartrates as ways to consciously strength and support the heart muscle

• Hugging another (people, animals, trees etc) and feeling the heart-to-heart connection

• Singing, sounding, dancing, breathing

It is known that Struggles with emotion processing (aka connecting to the heart) are central to the developmental and maintenance of eating disorder symptoms – and so the question is, how can we relearn how to connect to heart and feel?

These heart-strengthening and heart-softening practices (listed above) can support our connection to the heart, increasing our capacity to be with a wider range of ebbs and flows.

We can grow our tolerance to be present with the fullness of life without getting overwhelmed, shutting down, or using food and body coping strategies to numb it away.

Indeed, many people navigating disordered eating or eating disorders are scared to feel – and eating disorders can numb away feeling, be it through restriction, binge eating, purging, over-exercising, or a hyper-focus on body image.

Eating disorders often develop as maladaptive coping strategies when a person feels like their internal resourcing and capacity are overwhelmed by what’s happening in their life.

Often people are afraid that feeling the feels will overwhelm them – like a tidal wave, or like the sky will fall down, or like the world will dissolve into chaotic confusion, or that the feelings will just never, ever stop, or the heart will metaphorically bleed to death.

This means that if we want to start connecting to the heart and its feelings, we need to go in bit by bit, literally feeling in bite-sized bits.

As such, relearning how to feel is a process that takes practice, patience and courage.

It is a practice.

That means that we need to develop and practice adding sustainable external and internal resources that support the growing of our capacity to be with the inevitable ebbs and flows of life.

We are strengthening the heart, supporting its resiliency and ability to surrender and soften.

We can practice feeling the feels, whether it be sadness, anger, resistance, numbness, joy, pleasure, or love for a few moments, and then back away and resource ourselves with something that brings soothing, settling and anchoring.

Recovery is a practice, and practice takes time and titration.

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If people around us growing up didn’t model a supportive way to be with their own feelings (either they were numb or explosive in how they experienced their feelings), or if our feelings were misunderstood by our caregivers, we may learn ways to disconnect from our bodies and feelings.

This where disordered eating strategies come in as a way to numb the painful feelings, as well as the pleasant feelings.

This is why for many of us, relearning and growing capacity to connect with the heart is a practice, particularly when we didn’t learn how to do it as young children. The good news is that connecting with our emotions and inner state (aka developing introception) can be relearnt as adults even if we didn’t have caregivers around us when we were younger to teach us.

We slowly learn to trust that what we feel is valid and safe to feel, and how we express our feelings is important and accepted.

And we don’t want to feel things all in one go – otherwise that may overwhelm the system. We go in slowly, asking what wants to be felt, tracking sensations and how it feels in the body, whilst staying connected to the environment, here and now. Additionally, remembering that we always have choice and agency in the process – we can slow it down, put the feeling in an imaginary box and return to it at later stage, reaching for healthy resources that helps us ground, tether, and downregulate.

Relearning how to feel can be navigated with the support of another person, with whom we can co-regulate with. Through someone' else’s co-regulating, safe, and accepting presence, we learn how to be with our own feelings, and find our way through to self-regulation.

We can intentionally grow our tolerance to be present with the fullness of life without getting overwhelmed, shutting down, or using food and body coping strategies to restrict or shrink life.

Let us learn how to be full of life, rather than starving life.

We can let life more through us.

We can let life excite our hearts.

Trusting.

Empowered.

Resilient.

Heart-Centered.

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If you are curious to explore the landscapes of your heart, I invite you to join my next Eating Disorder Recovery Support Group.

Over the course of five weeks, we will invite our bodies and hearts to be heard, witnessed, and celebrated within the potent context of community support. If you would like more information on this nourishing container, head here.

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

The Power of Community for Eating Disorder Recovery Support

I remember the first time I walked into an in-patient treatment facility for eating disorders. It was back in 2009. I had just made it through high school and was on the brink of needing some serious help.

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I didn't want to go this treatment facility.
I didn't think I needed to go either.
But - it ended up saving my life. 

More than what we did or what kinds of treatments we received; it was being with a group of people who understood what it meant to navigate an eating disorder that helped me most.

I felt like I had arrived in a space where I felt seen, heard, and supported in ways I had been missing for so long.

It was a relief to be with people who understood the complexities and nuances of navigating disordered eating. Each person was at different stages on their healing journey, and so it was a rich environment for me to gain clarity, perspective, direction for my own growth.

I felt at home. 

I didn't have to explain or put a disclaimer on what I was going to say. I knew I would be understood and accepted (even through the really, really challenging parts), and through that, I began to feel more of a sense of home within my own self.

I have heard from many people navigating eating disorder recovery that it is an isolating journey. Often there are additional layers of shame, judgement, and fear that make it hard to be out in the world. 

Not only does the eating disorder cut us off from friends and family, but also from our feelings, values, priorities, and purpose - as well as our bodies. 

This is because when there has been trauma and a history of eating disorders, the parts of the brain involved with integrating and interpreting one's sense of self changes. When the body and the brain don't communicate smoothly, we feel emotionally detached, shutdown, disconnected, or no-body.

Only by getting in touch with the body, and connecting to it on a visceral level, do we regain a sense of self, reconnect with what we care about, and feel safe in our body-home, grounded in the present moment.

Sometime later into my recovery, I realised the campfire of connection that the in-patient clinic gave me all of those years ago was still burning and yearning to be fanned. 

I knew in my heart that I couldn't do this work alone.

This insight both excited and terrified me at the same time.

Since my eating disorder tried to keep me protected from painful intimacy, hidden, and unseen in the darkness, reaching out to connect with others felt like a threat to my eating disorder.

Indeed, repairing relational woundings are often what is needed in recovery. And this then requires us to slowly start connecting with others who can support us in the process of developing safe, trusting, loving, understanding, supportive relationships. 

So, in my own recovery, I knew that in order to truly feel at home within myself, and at home on this Earth, opening up to be seen by another, held by another, and acknowledged in all of my contradictions and emotions by another, would be the journey back home.

This, for me, is the heart of eating disorder recovery.

I invite you to consider how you have experienced deeper connection (whether it's with people, the Earth, or your body) in your own eating disorder recovery.
When have you felt more heart?
When have you felt more at home, in your own skin?

Who or what are you with? What are you doing? How do you feel?

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In the spirit of connection, you can now join the next cohort for the next Eating Disorder Recovery Support Group. This group will run from May to June 2023. There will be a total of five group sessions over the container, with email follow-ups throughout. If you can’t make this group, there will many more hosted throughout the year. Sign up to my newsletter to stay updated with new group dates!

If you are looking for a community space to authentically express your recovery journey, to be compassionately witnessed, and to be held openly, I invite to you join us in the next group.

Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash

What Is Eating Disorder Recovery?

There are many hallmarks that make eating disorder recovery. One of them that I have been returning to and that psychedelic journeys almost always circle back to, is learning how to be with the unknown.

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The eating disorder likes to control things in such a way so that things seem like they are known, where the outcome is planned, where there is very little room for spontaneity, and feelings can be well-managed.

Behaviours like calorie counting, over-exercise, restricting food groups, eating at specific mealtimes, not letting anyone else cook meals, eating the same things, body checking, or avoiding social situations that involve food are all attempts to reduce the possibilities of being swallowed by the tidal waves of the unknown.

Sticking to rigid food and body behaviours feels safe, known, measured and manageable.

So, the question is then, why is there such a need to predict, manage, or control?

This is because eating disorder patterns often stem from places of trauma. And trauma is something where there was no choice (it happened and the individual couldn’t avoid), that felt out of one’s control, and left deep imprints of hurt, fracturing the psyche in some way.

The eating disorder patterns are coping mechanisms that try to manage the unresolved stress survival energies (fight, flight, freeze) that are still stuck in the physiology and in the nervous system from the trauma.

Eating disorder behaviours indicate that something happened in someone’s life that was so overwhelming, uncontainable and uncontrollable, resulting in an all-encompassing belief that life cannot be trusted. At the core, eating disorders indicate nervous system dysregulation.

The eating disorder is trying to bring in feelings of order, control, and power to a psyche where one’s integrity, agency, autonomy, trust, and safety was taken away in the moment of the trauma. An eating disorder is actually trying to bring balance back into one’s life and body.

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One of the aspects of recovery (and there are many), is develop a baseline of safety and containment and trust so that over time, an individual can begin to practice being with the fundamental nature of life - which is unknown.

Recovery does eventually ask us to be with the unknown, to try new things, to be courageous to trust in the yet-to-be-known.

Just like a psychedelic journey, eating disorder recovery is a journey from the known to the unknown.

There is no agenda, or needing to find a solution, or to perfect something, but rather to practice being present in your body to what comes up.

This is an opportunity to notice the fears that come up, the limbo states, and what thoughts and emotions come up what when you find yourself in uncharted territory.

We grow our capacity to embrace newness by going slowly and titrating the process, and pausing to integrate and harvest what information is coming through.

As we start to open up to being with the yet-to-be-known and change, implementing supportive and sustainable resources that help us ground, calibrate, and maintain a curious perspective, we will be faced with all new kinds of layers within our recovery.

Indeed, the layers that eating disorder recovery reveals are infinite and come in a variety of forms.

To open up to the feelings we have avoided.
To open up to support from others.
To open up to to trusting that support.
To open up to subtle cues from the body such as hunger and fullness.
To open up to joy.
To open up to believing in that we are deserving of joy.
To open up to the possibility of pleasure.
To open up to rigid patterns around food and body that have become habitual and automatic.
To open up to trying a new food or eating out with friends.
To open up to tuning into your authentic impulses, your yes and your no.
To open up to setting in boundaries; sometimes saying no is an opening up.
To open up taking up space.
To open up to taking space to rest.
To open up to the idea of not having to do this alone.
To open up to the inevitable ebbs and flows of life.
To open up to your capacity to navigate these changes.
To open up to going slow, remembering that this work needs patience and gentleness in order to integrate.
To open up perspective; that this healing work is intrinsically linked to the collective and your lineage.

To open up to trusting in your core self.

Opening up and expanding into the unknown on the eating disorder recovery path requires developing nervous system regulation, inner and outer stability, support from others, and moments of rest (aka integration). There are so many layers to this journey that reveal themselves in strange, relentless and magical ways.

Over time, as one works with releasing the stress survival energies from the past traumas (through somatic practices and by connecting with the body), and developing and adding other life-supportive, healthy resources, individuals can rely less and less on the needing to know, to control, to manage, to contain, or to grip tightly.

The eating disorder patterns slowly dissolve into the background.

New ways to navigate change, challenge, ebbs and flows are established.

Confidence, capacity, compassion, adaptability, and understanding develop.

No longer living from the past, in nervous system dysregulation, one is able to live embodied, in the present moment, grounded, clear, connected.

Photo by Nicholas Sampson on Unsplash

Online Eating Disorder Recovery Support Group

I am excited to once again be hosting eating disorder recovery support groups in 2023.

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Every month during 2022, I hosted an online support group that invited anyone from anywhere in the world, regardless of where they were in their eating disorder recovery journey.

From Guatemala, to New York, to Cape Town, to Finland, each individual brought courageous vulnerability, sensitive wisdom, and compassionate support, that allowed for trust, safety, and transparency to weave together in an organic way.

I feel inspired to continue these online support groups, with some new changes that I believe enhance what groups are possible in achieving within the realm of eating disorder recovery.

If you feel called to join the group or want to read more about it, head here.

When I first attended support groups for my own eating disorder recovery, two key aspects stood out to me: the group met regularly, and the group was open to a core group of people.

Within the context of closed, weekly container, familiarly, safety and trust developed. We could go deeper, sharing the more painful, tender and delicate matters that were in our hearts that could only be expressed when we felt a sense of belonging, understanding, safety, and acceptance.

So, with some of these early lessons from my own recovery still echoing in my system, I am excited to be offering a 2-month eating disorder recovery support group.

The aim of having a closed container gives the freedom for each meetup to progressively build, deepening the embodiment journey through somatic healing modalities, nervous system regulation tools, and group sharing and witnessing.

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The Themes and Flow of the Container

Each session has an opening connection practice, a somatic practice, topics of discussion/reflective questions, group sharing, and a closing practice.

Session 1 (30 Jan): Acknowledging the body, grounding the body into the present in relationship with the external environment, establishing foundations

Session 2 (13 Feb): Centering the body, inviting in potency and adaptability, embodied resourcing

Session 3 (27 Feb): Familiarizing with safety, allowing space through touch and breath

Session 4 (6 March): Curious patterns of protection, finding the painful and the pleasant

Session 5 (20 March): Integration, yielding, containment and connection

Sessions are informed by an embodied and somatic approach to eating disorder recovery. The container is trauma-informed and HAES-sensitive. Communication and support are offered between sessions.

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Group details

First group cohort: 30 January, 13 February, 27 February, 6 March, 20 March (5 sessions)

Time: 17:00 - 18:30 SAST (1.5 hours)

Hosted monthly on Zoom

Open to 5 people (regrettably no drop-ins)

Cost for South Africans: R1 500

Cost for people outside of South Africa: $150

To join the eating disorder recovery support group or to find out more head here.

If you are unable to join the first cohort and would like to attend later in the year, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter as this is where I share my upcoming groups, events and announcements.

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

Is An Eating Disorder A Cry For Attention?

When I was in the darker depths of my eating disorder, people would ask me whether I was using food to gain attention.

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I wasn’t trying to get attention; I was trying to get my needs met. An eating Disorder is the body’s attempt at Communicating its needs in the only ways it knows how.

The ways in which I used food and manipulated my body symbolized how afraid I was for asking for what I wanted, how I uncertain I felt for expressing needs, and how ashamed I felt for having desires. I was trying to get my needs met that I felt scared to ask for and didn’t know how to ask for directly.

As dramatic as it sounds, in my body, it felt like by expressing myself authentically = death.

 For people who are navigating an eating disorder and who relate to this, you may struggle with:

• Bingeing on foods that do not satisfy hunger or thirst because you can’t ask for what you truly want,

• Restriction because you cannot act on hunger cues,

• Asking for help,

• Expressing emotion, or

• Asking directly for what you want or need

How do you reach out?

For people who relate to this embodied perspective at understanding eating disorders, you may notice that it’s hard to physically reach out or extend out with your arms and hands, which may make it challenging to give, receive, or reach out for help or connection or intimacy.

Linked to this somatic architecture are correlating beliefs. As such, you may have this belief that it’s not ok to have fun or a feeling of not being able to give in or give up.

On the other hand, you may notice that your arms and hands flail or are very loose or disconnected from the rest of your body. Maybe you have joints that click, or your shoulder can dislocate easily. Linked to this somatic organization, are beliefs such as believing that you cannot be direct with your feelings or intentions, or that others will not support you desires.

So, is an eating disorder a cry for attention? I think in many cases, people with an eating disorder or disordered eating who resonate with these words, will say it’s not.

On the outside, on the surface, at first glance, it may look like attention-seeking but underneath, the person is trying to find a creative, secretive, indirect way of getting what they want and who also feel deeply afraid to ask for those things in a direct or honest way (because possibly when they tried to ask in the past, they were shamed or wronged, or made to feel bad).

And usually, what people with eating disorders are seeking and are trying to reach for is connection, co-regulation, safety, and support.

We have to utilize both top-down and bottom-up processing to support eating disorder recovery. Our beliefs are represented and manifest through our physical body. This means that our working with the body and the nervous system can influence our thoughts and perceptions of reality. By supporting the loosening up of beliefs, the ways in which the body moves through life and how the nervous system can handle challenge and pleasure transforms.

Rather than vilifying and demonizing eating disorders as simply a cry for attention, let’s get real. We all want attention.

We all want to belong, to be seen, to be considered and recognized. We want to be understood.

We want to feel safe. We don’t want to feel alone. We want to engage with others in ways that feel resonate and genuine. We want to be held.

When we give the body what it has been asking for (ie. attunement and safety), the coping strategies that involve food lessen, the body becomes more flexible and resilient, and beliefs around worth, belonging, and purpose evolve.

Photo by Yash Prajapati on Unsplash

The Link Between Binge Eating and People Pleasing

What is the link between binge eating and people pleasing? How do they cycle and feed one another?

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When we have learnt to shapeshift, to attend to other’s needs before meeting our own, to keep giving even when our cup is empty, or to comply to other people’s standards or expectations, we exhaust ourselves. Binge eating is a strategy that attempts to bring some kind of relief from all of that intense, built-up energy.

It takes so much energy to be someone that we’re not. The body can only hold so much intensity. And that intense energy is stress survival energy (aka flight, fight, freeze energies).

Every time, we people please and ignore ourselves, it takes enormous effort. Instead of listening to our own needs, we become hypervigilant to the outside world, constantly scanning around us, moulding, shaping, changing ourselves for approval and validation (aka, all we are trying to do is to feel a sense of belonging). Hypervigilance comes with anxiety, defensive orienting, and urgent fixation on the external environment. This is taxing on the system.

With all of that energy in the body with nowhere to go, the action of binge eating comes in to suppress and numb that energy. The food squashes it down, out of sight, out of feeling.

Binge eating can also create an energetic wall between us and the outside world. Exhausted from trying to please others, binge eating can bring relief whereby we collapse and no longer have to engage with the world.

Binge eating can offer a moment where we no longer have to play by society’s expectations. We can flip the switch and relieve ourselves from the tight constrictions and conditionings.

Binge eating symbolizes just how much we have learnt as a society to hold it in, and how underneath all of those stiff upper lips, we are humans (aka mammals) with biological impulses, desires, and needs - and that if they cannot be met, allowed, followed, or expressed they come out in other ways which can feel out of control or unstoppable.

For those who are navigating binge eating, or an eating disorder, disordered eating, or diet culture mentality for that matter, pay attention to the times where you turn away from your authentic self and people-please instead.

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Notice the times you ignore your impulses, such as suppressing a feeling, a need to rest, or a hunger pang, and see what happens when you aim to care and attend to yourself.

This practice requires a slowing down, a tuning into your body, a commitment to be with the uncomfortable sensations and feelings (even if it’s a few moments before bingeing), and to follow an authentic impulse that your body is asking. This process rewires the nervous system and takes practice practice practice.

So, observe within yourself:

What comes up for you when you fill up your cup first?

What emerges when you give space to an emotion to express itself?

Can you offer yourself compassion and gentleness throughout this process, with its ups and downs?

What happens to your overall energy with this awareness?

Can you manage food in a different way?

What does it feel like inhabit your authentic expression?

Photo by Skyler Ewing on Unsplash

The Frequency of Eating Disorder Recovery

The process of recovery is allowing the eating disorder to let go of you. It is about getting to a place within you where there is no place for the eating disorder to hold onto anymore.

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With nothing to grip onto, the eating disorder eventually releases itself.

This work of recovery is not about needing to let go of the eating disorder or trying to push it away.

Rather, it is an expansive and additive process where you add to your toolbelt, increasing resources, support, capacity, perspective, and awareness.

Recovery is not a restrictive process.

Recovery asks us to expand what we believe, think, and feel. It's the path of moving past our edge. It is the path of embodied awakening.

Eating disorder recovery is about reaching a place in yourself that is more aligned with a deeper truth.

By living that authentic truth, free from the conditioned layers and the heavy illusions, the eating disorder has nothing to grip onto and naturally dissolves.

This takes leaning into the unknown, facing change, practicing the unfamiliar, and sitting in that that limbo space.

Through observing, unlearning, discerning, and clarifying what is the voice of the eating disorder and what is your voice, you land in knowing you are, what you care about and value, and trust in you core self.

This place within you vibrates at a frequency that is higher and beyond that of the eating disorder. There is an inevitable natural maturation of out the eating disorder whereby it lets go of you.

You don't force it away, push it aside, or shout at it to leave.

There is an inevitable natural maturation of out the eating disorder whereby it lets go of you.

When we clearly remember the truth of our being and make the courageous choices and actions that align with that, what no longer serves can release itself from us with grace.

What is alive in your heart is worthy to be embodied and to be integrated.

Remember, recovery is a very deep unlearning and unraveling of what we have held onto (for some of us, for many, many generations) for a sense of protection, stability, control, and emotional management.

If you are reading this, I bet you have navigated your fair share of messy, challenging, and uncomfortable moments ~

~ and that you know in your heart that this wild process is bringing you closer to your aligned expression.

Recovery asks us to face our fears and hesitations, and to choose what our soul needs in order to thrive, so that we land home within ourselves.

This is about fine tuning our inner compass.

In truth.

In what matters.

In aliveness and attunement.

Integrated, proud, free, and whole.

Trusting in the undeniable core of ourselves.

Thank you for choosing to walk this path.

Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash

An Eating Disorder Is Not A Disorder

Through my personal explorations and through the support of plant medicine and nervous system healing work, I have come to understand that an eating disorder is not a disorder, but rather the body in a particular pattern attempting to communicate a need and solve a problem.

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Breaking out of the “disorder” diagnosis means that I am not defined by my “illness”, nor is there a predetermined, cookie cutter treatment plan that can “cure” me.

No longer being defined by it, the eating “disorder” is no longer part of my identity or something that I attach to as a way to feel see or validated.

Seeing it as a pattern means that I can shift and redesign the pattern. It means that the recovery process is unique to me, to my dreams and aspirations, and that it is truly a creative process. Additionally, the eating disorder is not me - it is not my identity - and rather, it is a coping strategy or survival pattern that I learnt at a young age to help me feel a sense of safety.

An eating disorder is a disorder because what it is actually responding to is a Society that is dys/dis-regulated.

We have to look at eating patterns/disorders from this higher and wider vantage point because they point us towards what we are missing as a society, and what is out of balance within institutions, communities, and families.

What we are missing within these networks are collective teachings that help us ground, self-regulate, and express emotions, healthy anger and boundaries.

We are missing moments to co-regulate and attune with others in integrity and connection, because we are overriding something within ourselves in order to keep go-go-going with a society that is extractive, dominating, and patriarchal.

We are missing trust between others and towards our own bodies as a result.

 Consider some of these statements:

“My eating disorder has been my only constant thing in my life; it’s like my best friend”.

“It helps me feel in control and it blocks out the chaos.”

“My world goes quiet and no one can reach me; I feel at peace.”

“With an eating disorder, I feel like I am achieving something – I’m not good at much else.”

“I don’t feel my body or my feelings; I am scared if I feel anything, I’ll drown.”

“I feel protected, no one can touch me.”

I have heard similar statements like the ones above from my clients, and I have lived them too. Maybe you relate to one or more of them. These are statements that are clearly telling us that as a society it’s time to do things differently. It is time to fill in the pieces of what we are missing, and to restore the fragmented, discombobulated patterns back to flow, coherence and wholeness.

As we do the healing work, we slowly shift the pattern from the rigid, defensive, scared, survival-based pattern into a pattern that is more flexible, resilient, coherent, and anchored in the present.

This is the work of neuroplasticity, which is the gradual rewiring of our system, reorganizing, changing, and growing into connections that are more supportive for our current-day reality.

 Let us remember that an eating “disorder” is not something that is wrong, and as such should be shamed. An eating disorder is a sign that someone is in a place of fear and protection, and at the core is yearning for safety and attunement.

 An eating disorder with all of its physiological hurt and emotional pain that it brings, underneath it all is a small child asking to be loved.

Rewiring the pattern to hold love, to express, offer and receive love, and authentic connection is a life-long path.

This path asks not just you to do the individual work, but is a collective undertaking, because when society agrees to offer genuine safety and attunement, this greatly impacts the wiring of our nervous system which in turn affects our ability to digest food as well as the unprocessed sensations, emotions, and memories.

Each step towards regulating, reclaiming, releasing, and remembering shifts the eating "disorder” into a more trusting, intuitive, compassionate, and grounded pattern.

This not only changes the way we eat, but how we relate to others, how to care for, listen to, and attune to those around us.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash