How To Recover From An Eating Disorder
Eating disorder recovery is a process of learning and developing certain skills.
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Eating disorder recovery doesn’t just happen out of the blue. It takes practice - we are practicing a different way of being with our bodies and being with the world.
By definition, eating disorders (which can be considered as a form of addiction) include the cycle of relapse-recovery; recovery is thus a process of learning how to manage and live without the eating disorder behaviours. Relapses, setbacks and challenges are expected, and it is through these moments of relapses (aka opportunities for growth) that we get to look at our recovery with more awareness and understanding.
It's a series of conscious and committed efforts that requires patience and perseverance. It takes time to develop any kind of skill, and recovery asks us to upgrade and develop ourselves to become the person whereby the eating disorder is unable to exist in our reality.
There is a major misconception to recovery that says that one plant medicine or psychedelic journey or a trip to a treatment facility will grant us freedom. Whilst these external supports can be catalysts, supports, and offer structure, they can't cure us. And the only way out of the eating disorder is through all of the entanglements that got us there in the first place. And so it requires a person to be open and willing to look within and develop oneself beyond the eating disorder.
Looking within is one of the most important pieces, and is a key skill to develop for recovery. Looking within is a skill. We can get better at it with practice. Accessing liberation is through this practice of self reflection, that is looking at ourselves honestly, and to see the truth behind our own psychology.
Honesty is also an important skill to develop in disordered eating recovery, because an eating disorder can be very sneaky, living in the shadows. When gripped by the eating disorder, people often lie, cover up, hide, and pretend all ok. But being honest with where we are at is a hallmark of recovery and a skill that we can develop.
When choose to journey with psychedelics, we are often faced with the honest truth of where we are at as they take off all the masks, veils, and fake layers, shining light on all the shadows we were hiding from. Psychedelics us prepare a new, fertile soil and plant seeds of change within. Plant medicine, like Ayahuasca, psilocybin (including microdosing), Iboga, or Changa supports the repatterning process, providing us with opportunities to let go of old ways of being that no longer serve, thereby making room to consciously create new beliefs, behaviours, and choices.
Working with sacred plant medicine or psychedelics requires inner courage, self-compassion, perseverance, patience, truth-telling, and trust. We learn how to lean into and inquire about the discomfort, to regulate our emotions in challenging moments, and to harness the body as an anchor and resource as we fully face ourselves.
Preparing for a plant medicine ceremony is about widening our capacity to gracefully be with the ebbs and flows that occur in a psychedelic journey - and beyond.
When we prepare for a journey, we are developing skills of the heart, mind and body for the ultimate ceremony: the ceremony of life.
Indeed, once the ceremony ends, we are required to take the necessary action to care for our inner garden and nurture the seeds. This is called integration: turning downloads into daily action and practice.
We are always practicing and developing something.
When we look at ourselves in the mirror and the thoughts and judgments around our body shoot up and out, this is what we are developing and practicing for ourselves. Versus, if we think something along the lines of “I'm beautiful”, that is also practicing and developing a way of thinking and being.
What ways of relating to yourself are you practicing and solidifying within your consciousness?
So often we think the same thoughts, feel the same feels, and do the same things. As such, we are refining and solidifying a set of beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and actions. These sets of patterns that we have developed, day in and day out, create the blueprint of our reality.
Practicing recovery (aka transformation) means that we are actually practicing something different to what we currently practice. The more we practice recovery, the more we can direct our healing trajectory, and naturally mature out of the eating disorder behaviours, into our innate healing states.
This way, when we are ready to step into recovery, we have already been training for the truth.
Developing ourselves in this way takes time, especially if the eating disorder or disordered eating tendencies have been ongoing for many years. This is often a messy process - as is learning any new skill.
Developing ourselves for recovery begins when any of us realize that something needs to change. When we realize something needs to change, there is an increase of awareness and expansion of our consciousness that points us to another way of being and another reality that exists out there. Indeed when someone is unaware of the problem, it is hard to develop oneself.
However, if the awareness that something new is out there, there is a process (with stages) of change that many of us travel through as we learn, grow, heal, and evolve.
In order to achieve a goal, or get unstuck from an old place, we will likely move through these stages of change, as outlined by researchers, Prochaska and DeClemente, and Noel Burch. It is much easier to move through the stages of change when we know what they are:
The first stage is precontemplation. This is a stage where we are unaware or in denial of problems. In this phase, we are not ready to make change, and we are not ready to develop ourselves for recovery. A person is unaware that recovery is possible, nor are they are aware that there are skills necessary for recovery. Another term to call this is unconscious incompetence.
The second stage is contemplation. In this phase, we are aware of the problem, and we are able to consider change. A person becomes aware that recovery is possible but they feel unsure how to achieve and sustain recovery. This is termed as conscious incompetence.
The third is preparation. This is when we are ready and motivated to change. There is desire and curiosity. This is a ripe time to make a plan to develop ourselves for change. A person chooses to learn and gain recovery skills through practice so that they can achieve and sustain their recovery. This is also known as conscious competence.
The fourth stage is action, whereby we make changes, integrate insights, and see results. There is courage, commitment, humility, and self-reflection. There is patience in this process where we try and practice, again and again.
The fifth and final stage is maintenance. And this is living consciously to maintain the results, and to continue evolving out of the eating disorder. This is the integration and the ongoing showing up that recovery asks of us. A person has mastered the skills to live a life free from their eating disorder so much so that it becomes the automatic embodiment of living. This is called unconscious competence.
Through this process of change, we are learning a new way of being and developing ourselves into the authentic embodiment of our unique expression that is built on freedom and trust.
We can stay in these stages for any length of time as this healing process is certainly not linear. We can be at different stages for different behaviours at the same time, and repeat stages as well. As such, it takes showing up with consistency and commitment, and having the right support and resources to help smooth out the process.
We are not meant to undergo this process alone.
Included in developing ourselves for eating disorder recovery is the motivation to change. When we feel motivated to practice change, we believe that there are enough positive reasons to outweigh the negative ones. We thus need to desire change and believe in ourselves that recovery is worth it. When we believe this is something worth pursuing, there is an increased sense in one’s ability to walk the road of recovery.
The term self-efficacy speaks to a person's belief in their innate ability to handle situations and to achieve the vision of their healing that they wish to see in their lives. We usually only stretch ourselves as far as we believe we can go. And recovery almost always asks us to stretch a little bit further into the unknown, and it can feel uncomfortable.
Having a sense of self-efficacy supports the confidence and the integrity within ourselves to maintain healthy daily routines, and helps us keep on the recovery path, despite the hardships and triggers. As long as a person lacks self-assurance, they there are at risk for relapse.
a big part of developing skills for eating disorder recovery is also shifting the beliefs we hold around our own capabilities, as well as how we value ourselves.
Recovery leads to change within one’s belief structures, perceptions and frame of reference, thoughts, feelings and emotions, and other conditioned patterns of the mind.
Ask yourself, Am I worthy of change? Do I deserve this change? Have I been held back or judged in the past when I tried to evolve?
Can I recover? Do I believe that even a small ripple of change is enough for my overall healing trajectory?
Do I believe that every action I take, no matter how big, towards my healing has impact on the greater collective?
Part of our healing results in a social awakening to how our behaviour impacts others and the world.
So let us just take a pause, because this work is not easy. It means uprooting the truth about what ruptured our relationship with our bodies, reckoning with the process of reclamation, and choosing to live a life where we do not participate in a culture that was/is harmful to ourselves and others; a culture that is filled with anti-fat bias, racism, ableism, homophobia, ageism, and patriarchy. This process asks us work at the edges of our comfort zones, to unlearn old ways, and to learn new skills and ways of being that are often in opposition to the dominant culture. Recovery is a courageous act!
the process of change
Part of developing skills for recovery includes paying attention to what happens in our body.
Bringing reconnection back to the body, acknowledging its existence, accepting that it is here, accepting that is with us, and has information to share with us, is the process of embodiment.
When we have been living in such disconnection from the body, it takes the conscious competence - aka conscious, mindful practice of tuning into the body - to pause, listen, and feel. We have to unlearn the skill of not tuning in and learn how to attune to our bodies for a new way of relating with ourselves, our intuition, and our environment to emerge.
We prepare the nervous system to hold the embodiment of the change that we wish to see in our life as part of recovery. We practice embodying and energetically holding the higher frequency of this healed embodiment.
We can practice small amounts of pausing and sitting with the body on a day-to-day basis, to start building capacity to hold more emotions and sensations, rather than being overwhelmed by the present moment. There is a opportunity to notice the habitual responses of our nervous systems, the habitual flight, fight, freeze energetic signatures that often have been developed and established as a result of trauma.
When we see the map of our nervous system and how it came to be developed, we become aware of our patterns. With this greater awareness, we can move in and out of these patterns with more intentionality. The more we practice this kind of awareness, which is called interoception (sensing the internal states of the body), we have increased ability to respond to challenging or triggering situations with more clarity and perspective.
Recovery is being able to ride the challenging moments, whilst staying anchored in the body rather than running away from them through engaging in eating disorder strategies like restricting, purging, overeating, or over-exercising.
As we are develop ourselves for recovery, it is important to nourish our conditions to make the whole process a bit easier to navigate. This means getting good rest and sleep, eating well for the gut and brain, hanging out with people who feel safe and supportive, living in a clean environment, getting time outside in nature, throwing away anything in the physical home that feels stagnant, moving mindfully, meditating, and aligning with our higher intentions, standards, ethics, and values.
Thus, there is the hardware and the software that needs to be swept through and tended to so that the new upgrades can be integrated into our system.
What are some things you can do to shift or upgrade your life to support the development of your recovery skills?
Below are some skills we can all practice and develop for our eating disorder/disordered eating recovery wherever we are on the path:
Acknowledge. Own your experience of the eating disorder, accept it happened, and take responsibility for the next steps.
Reclaim. Open up to your empowered, true self. Recognise your power and your medicine. Go within and find a reason to evolve beyond the current circumstances. Recovery is in your hands.
Observe. See yourself and your reality from an objective, wide perspective. Identify how things impact each other (the cause-effect in all relationships). With neutrality, observe your patterns to escape, numb, or suppress. Set the intention to be with them, to be open, and to learn.
Honest. Be authentic and truthful with yourself with where you are and what you are needing.
Discern. Recognise what is important to you. Identify what stays and what goes. Listen deeply.
Tolerance. Build emotional resilience and regulation. Learn to sit with discomfort.
Vulnerable. Face the fear. Express your emotions. Surrender, let go of the resistance, and put down the armour.
Soothe. Learn how to recalibrate, calm, and rebalance your nervous system without the eating disorder tactics.
Mindful. Stay alert to truth, challenges, and opportunities. Maintain an open perspective. Listen to feedback from others, the environment, and your body.
Compassion. Befriend yourself. Practice non-judgement towards yourself and others (including diet culture). Remember all that you have overcome and celebrate who you are today.
Trust. Allow room for ambivalence. Trust in your innate healing capacities. Trust in the medicine. Trust that you have the power to heal yourself and .your innate healing capacities Trust it is all going to be ok. Trust the journey you are on, that you are in the right place at the right time, learning the right thing.
Openness. Recovery means meeting your growth edge, confronting your limiting beliefs and old narratives with an open heart and mind. Facing discomfort and fears require courage, resilience, perseverance, and self-compassion.
Connection. Connecting with something greater than yourself, and dedicating yourself to a higher purpose, keeps you in recovery. Recovery is not just about and for you - it ripples out into the collective, contributing to the evolution of humanity, impacting past, present and future timelines. Your healing ripples out into communities, giving them permission to thrive, flourish, and heal. It is about coming into right relationship with the interconnected web of all existence. This is not an individual process. Healing is sacred reciprocity.
Healing occurs when you consciously reconnect with your true self - the wise, loving, creative essence you are at the core.
What are some other skills and characteristics you can develop that haven’t been mentioned above. Feel free to share them in the comments.
All of these skills can be practiced in titrated, manageable bite-sized ways so that the nervous system can slowly integrate these new pieces in a way that that makes sense.
Rather than surprising the nervous system with too much change too quickly, we want the healing process to be slow and steady so there is enough time to integrate.
May we continue aligning with this path of recovery and with the greater intention of healing for ourselves and for the world, and practice and develop the inspired skills, and take the empowered actions required to become the authentic embodiment that we seek.