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