Plant Medicine: Psychological Flexibility For Eating Disorder Recovery

People with eating disorders often have a fixed way of thinking - and psychedelics seem to help break the pattern of thinking that repeats, ruminates, and rigidly obsesses on food or the body.

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During a plant medicine journey, if fully surrendered to and not resisted, psychedelics can soften the day-to-day control and avoidance strategies of the eating disorder.

People with eating disorders get stuck in mental loops, replaying the same mental content, often with a highly negative and self-critical tone. This perpetuates worry, rumination, anxiety, and obsession over food and one’s body. These thought patterns also influence the nervous system that gets the message that there is danger, switching on heightened arousal states and stress responses.

The more stressed and in danger we are in (whether it’s real or perceived), the narrower and more rigid our focus. Eating disorder recovery is about opening up the focus and seeing the whole forest rather than fixating on the single tree. It is like we are loosening the rigid scar tissue of our psyches.

Psychedelics can massage the defenses of the the eating disorder. The usual mental loops are interrupted and when not resisted or controlled, the eating disorder and what lies underneath it are faced, felt, and processed during a plant medicine journey.

Neuroimaging research shows that psychedelics alter the activity in the default mode network, which are the brain regions that appear to be most centrally related to the sense of self, worry, and rumination.

When in an altered state, this part of the brain is reduced, meaning the ongoing mental chatter and eating disorder voice becomes less dominant for a time, leaving the person more present, and open to new possibilities.

People who experienced a psychedelic experience, describe experiencing mental freedom and clarity. They were released from mental traps, and thoughts were more free to flow and were less ruminative and repetitive. Life becomes flexible, spontaneous and full of possibilities.

Like a psychedelic journey, when we choose eating disorder recovery, we never know exactly where our path will take us.

Eating disorder recovery is a completely creative process, unique to each individual. There is no correct way to heal. There is no one way to heal. And if we can open up to the possibilities of change and healing within, we will be taken on a journey we could have never planned for or anticipated.

We have leave the shores of the known, and dive into the depths of the unknown in order to recover. We have to let go the habitual behaviours and automatic thoughts, and choose something different and new.

And it can be scary to let go of what once gave us a sense of protection, identify, and focus. But if we desire change, this is the path.

Birthing is never easy or without pain, be it a universe, a child, or a fresh start in life. Contraction precedes expansion. Darkness comes before dawn. Joy follows pain. This is the way of things. ~ John Mark Green ~

When we think about a tight muscle becoming loose, there is ultimately greater movement, flexibility, and ease. Our psyches are the same, and we can practice our flexibility through engaging in art, meditation, connecting with others, dancing, processing emotions, being in nature, and rekindling connection with something greater than ourselves.  

Psychedelics offer a burst of flexibility, however it is up to the therapeutic support thereafter to help ground and establish lasting new mental and behavioural habits. Integration is the practice of keeping up with flexibility.

It is powerful to experience an embodied felt sense of being totally free from an eating disorder, to be in the present moment, and engaged with life in a connected, intimate way.

Like plant medicine, disordered eating recovery asks us to be open to change, to wipe the slate clean and try something else.

Like plant medicine, eating disorder recovery asks us to find the ground and foundation within ourselves, despite the groundlessness of impermanence that is all around us.

Like plant medicine, disordered eating recovery reminds us it is ok to not know; but it is how we hold ourselves through these unknown spaces that matter.

Like plant medicine, eating disorder recovery asks how we can trust in our essence, our core self.

Over time, with less focusa and energy on the eating disorder, there is space to dream, to create, to envision, to redirect, to make decisions from an aligned and wide perspective. This is flexible living.

Photo by Richard Horvath on Unsplash