Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Shift From Protection to Connection
Eating disorders indicate that the body has been recruited to protect rather than connect.
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Eating disorders are strategies of survival (they are not dysfunctional or disordered). They represent a body that is in a state of fear and protection.
An eating disorder is the body communicating in its own language about its state of embodiment. It is communicating if it’s embodying safety, fear, protection or connection.
Eating disorders also represent what has been passed through generations and societies, and as such, they represent how the bodies of other people around us growing up modeled their relationship of connecting with (reaching out) and protecting from (recoiling) the world.
Why is the eating disorder the body’s way of communicating that it is a state of protection? An eating disorder is the body saying it’s scared. And it’s scared because the body hasn’t been able to connect to something safe.
There is a difference between feeling protected and feeling safe. When you see these two words - protected and safe - what do these two words draw out of you? What might you notice in your body? How do you feel when you are protecting yourself? How do you feel when you know you are safe?
An eating disorder or disordered eating develops not because of the trauma itself but when there is a deficiency of safety To Digest the traumatic experience.
Safety comes from being with a connected other, with someone we can trust and co-regulate with. When we feel safe in the presence of another, the armour can drop, and the defenses can melt. No longer alone in the world, we can finally rest in the stability of other and be held, seen and witnessed in the initiation that a traumatic experience brings. With another resonate other person, we can start to make meaning, expand our understanding of what happened, and have our feelings and experiences validated. Co-regulation provides orientation.
We need the nourishment of connection to feel safe enough to release the stress survival energies that may have been able to be released at the time of the traumatic event. Through this processing, releasing and digesting, we have more capactiy and space to soften the protective layers that the eating disorder had built.
Connection is the nourishment The Soul needs to thrive.
Even if we cognitively don’t remember safe connection, the body remembers in its own way. The body can sense resonant connection and will find ways to orient to it and find it. The term for this in Polyvagal Theory is “neuroception” (aka the nervous system’s automatic way of perceiving what is dangerous and what is safe).
Recognize that place deep within you that inherently knows the sweet taste of connection.
Nurture that flame. Gently feed it. Let it grow.
Indeed, connection with others is a primary form of nourishment for us as mammals.
When we came into the world, the first thing we need and instinctively seek is safe connection with our primary caregivers. We rely on those around us to love us, hold us, see us, listen to us, and feed us.
The quality of how others connected with us growing up established our beliefs and rules around what we deem is acceptable or ok to attach to and connect with as nourishment - whether that nourishment is love or food.
How we show up in our relationships will show up in our relationship with food.
Our relationship with food is a representation of how we have learnt to be in relationship with others.
The ways in which we were brought up, how we watched people around us interact, and the rules we absorbed around what is an acceptable way to relate with the world around us all impact how we connect with food.
The process of taking in food is a complex one; and the process of forming relationships is also complex.
Here are the steps of how we establish relationships and how they mirror our relationship with food:
Establish Clarity. First, I need to establish a clear sense of self in relationship to another by noticing where I begin and end by having the space to push into the environment to feel that sense of clear beginning and ending of my somatic container. This helps to clarify my own boundaries, energetic and physical, through interoceptive awareness and this helps me discern what is mine and what is not mine. This clear sense of self helps me hear when I’m hungry or full and what nutrients I might need.
Effective Reach. Second, I need to know that’s safe to reach out to whomever I feel connected with, that my needs and desires are supported so that I can effectively reach for what I want. This helps me reach for the food that I want to eat without shame, and that I can prepare and arrange my food in a way that suits my needs.
Allowing for Satisfaction. Third, once I have connected with the other person with whom I feel safe and connected with, I can share authentically and vulnerably (aka unprotected). I can pull them into my orbit and let them into my world. This brings a sense of nourishment as I can be open and real, and be met and accepted for who I am. This supports my ability to take in food and be nourished by it, to find pleasure and joy in it, and feel satisfied.
Resting and Digesting. Finally, I take time to return to my own energy field where I digest the connective experience, allowing whatever arose to either assimilate into my being or be released if not needed. In this state of integrating, resting and yielding, I return to my inherent belonging and enoughness. This supports the restful parasympathetic process of digesting, where the body takes the time to pause and yield, repair and rejuvenate.
It is from this state of stillness, that clarity emerges guiding me towards discerning action of what is mine and what is mine to do. And so continues the cycle.
A huge thank you to Rachel Lewis-Marlow and Paula Scatoloni of the Embodied Recovery Institute who created this map.
It is same movements (push, reach, grasp/pull and yield) that we use to connect with others are the same that we need to take in food.
If we find it hard to reach out to those who we desire to connect with, we may it hard to reach out for the food that we authentically desire to consume, and instead eat foods that an external diet plan instructs.
If we learnt that our deepest vulnerabilities were not welcomed, we may over-exercise or purge after eating to get rid of the feeling of fullness because the sensation of food sitting inside of the body is an intimate feeling, akin to feeling the depths of what we hold inside.
Eating disorder recovery is not just healing our relationship with food but healing how we nourish ourselves with the relationships around us others, and ultimately how we nourish ourselves.
Nourishing ourselves with loving connection is fundamental in how we nourish our bodies with food and vice versa.
Photo by Anderson Rian on Unsplash