Eating Disorder Recovery Is A Journey Into The Unknown
Eating disorder recovery is not about stopping or getting rid of disordered eating behaviours. It’s about meeting whatever lies underneath these behaviours, patterns and rituals.
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By working safely and curiously with the nervous system and supported through psychedelics, there is more capacity to step into the unknowns of recovery - and life as a whole.
We first need to understand that the eating disorder behaviours are here because they are protecting something very vulnerable.
These behaviours are working hard to keep whatever is painful, shameful, or scary away. These vulnerable things are often related to aspects of undigested sensations, feelings, or memories from past trauma (usually early developmental trauma).
If we take away the eating disorder, we will come face-to-face with this undigested material. And this can be confronting and terrifying - just like the trauma event itself.
As such, it is paramount to develop resources and skills to meet what is underneath before just trying to take the eating disorder away from someone.
Remember, no one chooses an eating disorder. It filters in and roots into someone’s life because it is the only way the body knows how to communicate about its state of embodiment.
Indeed, the body is often communicating that it is in a state of protection and fear. Eating disorders are an indication that someone’s nervous system is in a state of dysregulation and is holding an accumulation of stored up fight, flight and freeze energies.
Developing sustainable resources *alongside* the eating disorder, builds capacity in an integrated way, without frightening or threatening the eating disorder that is working hard to protect the individual from experiencing the scary undigested energies from the past.
It’s about adding support alongside it so that we can gradually face the vulnerabilities that lie beneath the eating disorder in bite-sized ways.
This is a multi-layered journey that is non-linear and requires curiosity, practice and compassion.
It is not about taking the eating disorder away.
Over time, as the past slowly digests, and the fragmented parts integrate back to wholeness, the eating disorder behaviours can naturally soften.
This is what results in long-last recovery where new sustainable skills are built and capacity to be with the present moment, embodied, are established.
This is a journey into the unknown. Walking the eating disorder recovery road in this way requires a letting go to any outcome. What the body communicates about its experience, and how it communicates, can never be controlled.
Reconnecting to the fragmented parts of ourselves is a surrendering into the unknown.
As we reach out a hand into the dark places within, and connect with those hidden, forgotten, or shunned parts, we will meet new edges and territories that are revealed one step at a time.
Eating disorder recovery is learning how to be with change and the unknown.
This can be tricky since the eating disorder likes to control things so that the outcome can be planned for and where things can be measured. Think calorie counting, diet plans, exercise regimes, weight checking, not eating in social situations, eating at the same time etc etc etc.
Wanting to know is very common in eating disorders.
This is because eating disorder patterns often stem from experiences where something happened where there no choice, that felt out of one’s control and disorienting and fracturing, and where safety couldn’t be found.
The deficiency in finding safety is what causes an eating disorder not the trauma event itself.
Rigid, repetitive and ritualized behaviours that are seen in disordered eating indicate that something happened in someone’s life that was overwhelming, uncontainable, uncontrollable - and ultimately unsupported - resulting in the belief that life cannot be trusted.
The eating disorder is the body’s way of communicating to us that it’s still in protection mode and is ultimately yearning for safe connection.
This is why identifying sustainable resources and anchor points during times of transition, change, and recovery are key as they bring a felt sense of safety to the nervous system.
The body can then move from survival to safety - and in a state of safety, the eating disorder naturally softens (without us having to fight it off or push it away). When working directly with the nervous system and resourcing it to anchor into present moment safety, the eating disorder can naturally loosen its grip.
When the body feels safe enough, there is more capacity to trust the unknown.
There is a sense of “I’ve got this” because we have more regulation on board and adaptable resources added to our toolkit.
And we aren’t meant to do it alone. We need trusted others, community and support alongside us so that we can safely dip our toes into the yet-to-be-known.
Over time, we can practice being with and trusting the fundamental nature of life, which is that it is always unknown.
Recovery is the journey from the known to the unknown - which I think to be quite psychedelic, right?!
Indeed, psychedelics and plant medicine break down rigid loops so that new associations and perspectives can arise.
In an altered state with the support of plant medicine, brain networks communicate with one another that don’t connect in normal waking life.
This results in new neural connections leading to refreshing insights that can literally shift one’s reality.
Eating disorders are often characterized with rigid thinking or cognitive inflexibility and perseverative behaviour around food and body – which describes a behaviour that loops or is stuck, almost as if it’s involuntary.
Through breaking down the holding pattern upheld by the eating disorder part, and thus creating space for new associations and connection to emerge, plant medicine has the potential to alleviate these characteristics that relate to eating disorders.
As the eating disorder voice quietens and the hard protective edges softens, a new embodiment can arise.
By plant medicines increasing cognitive flexibility and bringing the nervous system into a more parasympathetic state, there is a break from the pattern that the ordinary mind is looping in and a loosening of the belief systems that the eating disorder is so rigidly held by.
This can result in a quietening of the critic and the repetitive disordered eating loops, which includes the behaviours, thought patterns, emotional states, and beliefs that go along with it.
The temporary dissolution (or softening) of the eating disorder voice means that there is space for another perspective to arise.
From this new perspective where the hard and rigid eating disorder walls have softened or dissolved, one can embody a state of being that is a more aligned way of being and a clarification of what one truly values on a soul level.
It is a deep journey into the unknown.
It is a deep journey of discovery.
It is a deep journey of integrating all aspects of oneself into wholeness.
Authenticity arises.
Truth cracks through.
Acceptance melts and warms.
Vitality is felt.
Freedom from the inside out is anchored.
Inner balance is restored.
The taste of liberation.
Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash