Smiling Is The Key For Eating Disorder Recovery
This is a picture of Rumi and I in Mexico City sharing a moment of joy :) This is his face as he gets increasingly excited! ^^
I wanted to include this picture as I am currently in a portal of expansion...
I am remembering how to expand my mouth into a smile. Yes, I’m relearning how to smile.
Let me expand ;)
From a young age, I learnt how to hide my emotions by showing very little expression on my face. It became a personal superpower.
Few people could clearly read me or know how their words or actions affected me. Armed with a blank stare, my vulnerabilities could be hidden out of sight. As I got older, some people found my “mysteriousness” alluring, until they got tired of dancing around my walls of protection.
These protective walls showed up in my body as a clamped jaw, tight lips, and a face wiped of expression.
The walls showed up as disordered food behaviours; food was no longer allowed to give me pleasure or satisfaction. And exercise had to be punishing rather than joyful or fun.
There wasn’t much room for smiling (which my eating disorder was pleased about).
Sharing a smile was something that felt dangerous. This was because sharing a smile meant that I was expanding.
Feeling a sincere smile spread across my face, I felt my face grow and expand. I felt energy rising, my heartrate increasing, my spine lengthening, and my inner fire starting to flicker.
In that moment, a knee-jerk reaction would happen.
I was unconsciously interpreting this experience as my nervous system getting ready to take action: to fight or flee. You see, there are similar mechanisms that occur in the body when the nervous system starts to increase its energy to engage in conflict or to jump with joy.
This is our sympathetic nervous system beginning to rev its engine. This part of our nervous system is needed so that we can get up in the morning, complete tasks, play with others, engage in physical activities, have sex, speak in public, debate, and fight off or run away from threat.
When we can’t discern between energy rising to protect and energy rising to connect, we will most likely not trust this energy and shut it away.
As this smile would emerge, I feared I would keep expanding and expanding, taking up space, becoming too big. And in the fear of being seen (aka in the line of fire), I would shut down the smile. And immediately, whatever was starting to warm and rise up would numbly flatten and mute.
Whenever there was a sense of something expanding, of something changing, of something evolving, of something old being disrupted, my eating disorder and other parts of me would find ways to cling onto the shores of the known, resisting, and restricting away from life, keeping me small and shut away.
Have you felt how much energy it takes to stifle a smile (or laughter)?
Resisting and restricting a smile takes an enormous amount of energy from the body.
Denying the body to experience the expansive frequencies of joy (aka healing, growth, change, evolution, and transformation) blocks flow to easefully move through the body.
This process of shutting down energetically locks us off from parts of ourselves, and over time can establish a baseline of physical pain and emotional emptiness that impacts beliefs, relationships, and how we interact with the world.
For people navigating an eating disorder or disordered eating, there is usually an inner conflict in expressing oneself, particularly allowing feelings of joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and love.
Additionally, folks with disordered eating (and a history of some kind of trauma) know the feelings of discomfort and emotional flatness all too well and know how to tolerate them too.
As such, learning that it’s safe to move away from the discomfort that one has known or has become used to - and towards the smiles and joy - is where the work lies.
Trying on a new way of being can bring up many feels! It may be hard to trust that there’s safety in the unknown.
This fear of stepping into the unknown can keep people looping in discomfort even if it’s uncomfortable.
But why do we stay in the discomfort even if sucks?
For some, discomfort may be the exact description of one’s upbringing as a child. Being uncomfortable may be the only thing one has ever known.
Expressing one’s emotions, creativity, spontaneous joy or boundless love may have been misunderstood, not attuned to, or even shamed from a young age. As such, disconnecting from these colourful feelings may have been the only way to survive.
Feelinh ok and safe in expansive emotions can be scary because there may be a fear that the goodness of the moment will be taken away, and/or discomfort is something one has come to know and expect.
The belief is that “If I stick with this discomfort, then at least I know what will happen and I won’t be hurt. If I allow myself to feel good, I will be let down and it’ll hurt even more.”
The ways in which we relate to our smiles and expansive feelings show up on our plate and with our bodies. The rules that we have learnt from a young age around how digest our emotions mirror back how we digest food.
Disordered eating behaviours are the body’s way of communicating to us about its internal state.
An eating disorder is the body’s way of letting us know that something is out of balance, and that there’s something isn’t being fully felt or expressed. An eating disorder is pointing us towards change.
An eating disorder is the body telling us that how things are right now need to shift.
Eating disorders indicate that there are undigested feelings that have been stuck inside for a long time that want to be processed and released.
When we meet and digest these feelings, the body can let them go, opening up space for something more aligned to form and shifts the nervous system from existing in the past to embodying the present.
Letting go of the familiar old feelings and the frozen, blank expressions requires great courage, trust, and support as we step off the shores of the known into the expansive - and oftentimes mysterious - unknown.
And in this moment where we have gathered our courage and commitment to curious exploration, we practice our smiles and slowly and safely open up to more joy.
It is here, where I would like end with a personal story.
I was in a plant medicine ceremony, and I could feel the conflict between sitting with the familiar blank face and the desire to lean into a smile.
I felt some resistance but remembered that all I needed was one small step. And so, I very subtly allowed a tiny inner smile to develop. If you were looking at me from the outside, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed my smile emerging. But I could feel it and that was all that mattered.
I played with this for some time, feeling how this inner smile affected my cheeks and my eyes, as well as my throat, chest, and belly. I slowly let it ripple and radiate and allowed my smile respond moments in the ceremony where something funny or beautiful occurred.
This practice of the allowing my inner smile helped me stayed socially connected to the group, and in a state of gratitude, openness, and self-compassion. It kept me in flow.
It helped me face feelings of homesickness and grief with resiliency.
My inner smile supported me staying present, adaptable and fluid in the face of every ever-changing moment.
And so, I invite you to join me on this embodied mission to remember our sacred smiles, to notice when it’s gone (and to question why when it disappears), and to continue cultivating it as an ally and resource as we stretch into the unknowns that ultimately bring the healing that we have been seeking.
Find the small crack and let the light in.
Fan that flicker of a flame.
Let it grow slowly.