Eating Disorder Recovery Is An Additive Process, Not Restrictive

I often share with my clients that they don’t need to stop any of their eating disorder behaviours. For many people who have experienced traditional treatment this can be surprising.

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For many of us the eating disorder has been the number one thing in our toolbox to get through life, so if we take it away it can feel like the world will crumble.

When we add other resourcing tools that have sustainability, longevity, and that can support our overall well-being in the long-run, the eating disorder doesn’t have to work so hard because we have other tools to support ourselves.

We can sit side-by-side with the eating disorder, whilst adding new support structures and tools at the same time. This means that when other tools can begin to support us more and more, the eating disorder doesn’t have to do all of the work, and we can naturally grow out of the eating disorder.

It lets go of us - rather than us trying to let it go or get rid of it.

This approach is additive rather than restrictive.

We want the approach the eating disorder recovery process with an attitude of adding in rather than taking out and restricting.

This means that rather than taking away the eating disorder (and all of its strategies and coping mechanisms), we resource and add other resources and skills to the pot.

Recovery is not about stopping the disordered eating patterns in one go. This almost always ends up in feelings of chaos and terror. If someone is told that they can no longer engage in the one coping strategy that they know and that undoubtedly helped them survive and get to this point, it results in gripping on even tighter to the eating disorder.

An additive approach recovery from an eating disorder, disordered eating, or diet culture can look more like this:

We add more awareness when engaging in the eating disorder behaviours.

We become present to the eating disorder strategies of restricting, ignoring hunger pangs, purging, binging etc. These behaviours are numbing at their core, so this is the first step: to stay present when engaging in a numbing pattern.

We add more awareness before and after the disordered eating pattern has occurred, noticing triggers and habits and changes in emotion.

We start to track what activates us during the day, and the accumulation of stress and somatic triggers, and how that build-up eventually leads to an eating disorder behaviours manifesting.

We want to start painting a clearer image of what keeps an eating disorder going and looping and driving.

We also want to track what happens after engaging in food or body strategy. What emotions arise, what activities do you do, what physical sensations are present?

We want to develop an understanding of how we feel afterwards, as this also keep the cycle going.

We add more resources, tools and recovery skills to the toolbox so that we don’t have to solely rely on the eating disorder to survive.

This includes developing body awareness and nervous system regulation in order to be with discomfort, charged energy, unknowns, and one’s emotions in a grounded, present, connected way. We learn how to thrive.

We want to add more resources so that we have greater capacity to turn towards the vulnerable parts and feelings that lie underneath the eating disorder behaviours.

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Indeed, underneath all of the food behaviors, underneath the disordered eating patterns or the eating disorder behaviors, is something so delicate and tender.

Underneath the rigid food patterns, underneath the over-exercising, underneath the binging, underneath the purging, is something so young and small.

Underneath all of that harshness, shame, guilt underneath, control, domination, and persecution is something so soft, and something so vulnerable.

This is why it’s so important to approach eating disorder recovery with a lot of softness and support, rather than fear tactics or punishment. The body is already in a fearful protected state and so the treatment of eating disorders should be very kind, compassionate, and full of grounding resources.

When we can connect to those deepest, most hidden aspects of ourselves with compassion, we start to reintegrate the fragmented parts back into wholeness.

By calling back home the parts that we have ostracized, ignored, or pushed away, we begin to experience greater self-acceptance, self-compassion, a sense of belonging.

We invite all parts to sit around the fire, each one welcomed, nor matter how much shame, dirtiness, guilt, badness, grief, or burdens they may carry. No longer rejecting aspects of our history, our experience, ourselves, we can weave the lost and forgotten threads back into the fabric of the wholeness of who we are.

Eating disorder recovery is adding more foundation, more connection, and more resources that establishes a sustainable inner core that gives us the capacity to turn within and to look at these vulnerable parts from a centered place.

As such, it is no longer engaging in the eating disorder or restricting oneself from utilizing the food and body coping mechanisms, but rather, recovery is additive process whereby we develop more embodied presence, body awareness, and sustainable resources.

This is how we build a foundation alongside the eating disorder, so that the eating disordercan naturally let go of us.

Photo by Avrora Bch on Unsplash