Eating Disorder Recovery Is An Initiation Into One's Intuition

The process of eating disorder recovery is an initiation into one’s gut-given gift: intuition.

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Most people struggling with an eating disorder are actually highly sensitive, intuitive souls who feel and sense deeply.

The reason why these sensitive people land up struggling with eating disorders or disordered eating is because their expression may have not been understood or attuned to when they were younger.

Maybe there wasn’t enough emotional attunement from their caregivers.

Maybe their thinly-weaved somatic architecture meant that they saw and related to the world differently and thus felt misunderstood.

Maybe their perceptive nature and empathy were scoffed at or simply not nurtured.

For folks who are sensitive in these ways, to not be supported in some way or another to authentically express and be, hurts.

And when something hurts, the soma goes into protection mode.

An eating disorder often shows up as a protective strategy as a way to hide their sensitivity and intuitive gifts. An eating disorder is an attempt to turn away from one’s own authentic nature because the world didn’t accept it.

Additionally, for people with eating disorders, the world often feels energetically overwhelming. This may be because the primary caregivers didn’t have the permission within themselves to emit and emote their own emotions and inner world (which is learnt and passed down generationally), and thus were unable to sufficiently help establish good nervous system regulation through co-regulation.

When the nervous system is in a state of dysregulation and when there hasn’t been adequate role modelling of how to be in one’s body in the world, an eating disorder may develop as a way to make sense of this overwhelming information coming from the inside and the outside worlds.

By shutting down or numbing out through disordered eating behaviours, being in the big world can feel smaller and more manageable.

Part of eating disorder recovery is growing our capacity to hold, feel and sense more of ourselves and the world, from a regulated, grounded and clear space.

As we grow our capacity to attune and listen to our bodies and the world around us, we deepen our regulation. And the more nervous system regulation we have on board, the clearer the signals from the body.

This nervous system regulation impacts all of the systems that it governs, including the digestive system. This means that when the digestion is in a place of flow, balance and regulation, the place from which intuition speaks from - the gut - can be heard with greater clarity.

We can hear, trust and follow our inner cues.
We can listen to the little internal nudges that guide us in curious ways.
We develop interoception, sensing the world from the inside-out.
We feel safe enough to connect with the body, allowing it to speak and guide us towards safety and with what is alignment for us in ways that seem serendipitous and guided by something greater.

This feeling of greater connection is simply us embodying more of our authentic, intuitive selves which is always connected to something greater.

As we engage with the recovery path more and more, we literally become more intuitive at this entire human level.

To connect with this innate gift (that we all have) requires us to connect with the body, with the viscera, and with the senses.

Intuition isn’t something ethereal - it happens in the body.

By connecting to the body, establishing inner safety, following its impulses, listening to its cues, and trusting where it wants to go in gradual, bite-sized ways our superpower of intuition emerges.

This is a practice of trust, of releasing the outcome, and surrendering before the unknown.

It is possible that on this recovery road, that there will be resistance. Indeed, the act of surrendering is something that the eating disorder will fight against.

This is because an eating disorder is a way to keep the world away, because at some point, the world hurt. Usually that hurt occurred in relational attachments, and so the eating disorder is a protection against others from hurting again.

This means that the road of recovery requires us to slowly soften the external defences (aka the eating disorder behaviours) and develop an internal sense of strength and ground, so that we can rebuild trust with the world around us.

This is scary.

It is scary to soften the defences. It is scary for the eating disorder to have a looser grip. It is scary to not have a protective armour between us and the world.

It is scary to be vulnerable.

This is because the state of vulnerability is to be unprotected.

With the walls down, we are in our unprotected selves, vulnerable, authentic. Raw and naked.

As such, what is important for those who are in eating disorder recovery is to learn that we can be vulnerable and be safe.

We can learn to exist in the world with the walls down and develop inner resources and awareness that keeps us safe. We develop interoceptive awareness of what resonates and is safe to move towards, and what doesn’t resonate and should be moved away from. This is our intuition speaking.

The thing is, because the eating disorder keeps the world at bay, it also keeps goodness away.

And recovery is the process of being less armoured towards all of life and rather more discerning.

And of course, protection is sometimes needed and is vital for our survival when there is real threat. However, when we are out of the danger, but the eating disorder is still continuing to protect, it is time to practice putting down the defenses that we use to hold our inner world and the outer world at bay so that we can take in the goodness of life.

The goodness that I am talking about is the goodness that is experienced in serendipitous encounters, and too-good-to-be-true unplanned moments, that remind us that this world is mysterious, creative, exciting, magical, and at play with something greater that we are a vital part of.

Recovery reminds us that this is the goodness of life that we all deserve to drink in and are worthy to express and share with those around us.

May your armour melt so that you can reach out beyond the defensive walls and connect with yourself and the world through your intuitive, gut knowing, leading to life that feels resonate, safe, and authentic to you.

The path of eating disorder recovery is an initiatory doorway into one’s intuition. This is a superpower that we all have access to.

The door is open. Please do enter.

Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash