Reading quality novels can help your mind and spirit grow beyond the mental and spiritual chokehold of an eating disorder.

Reading quality novels can be particularly helpful in eating disorder recovery for the following reasons:

1.   Emotional Connection:

Novels often provide rich and nuanced portrayals of characters and their experiences. By immersing themselves in a well-written novel, individuals in recovery can form emotional connections with the characters

Relapse after Recovery

A thirty-three year old man told me he had been a binge eater most of his life and now was fully recovered. Food has been a non issue for two years.

His statement inspired me to think about what the term recovery means to many people. 

Healing questions to find your authentic center. 

Healing Question: Are you using your eating disorder as your center?

You developed an eating disorder to hold your emotional and psychological life together. Something interfered with your developing a solid self core that could sustain you through the trials and challenges of living. Developing an eating disorder is a creative act. You created a core center that you can support by controlling how you eat (or don’t eat), how you exercise, how you isolate and how you limit your life to specific habits and routines.

Yes, the benefits of losing friends become clear as you move into more health and personal power.

Benefits of Losing Friends

 

 

“Want to go to a bar tonight, drink and pick up guys?” She hasn’t gotten that invitation in a long time. She hasn’t gotten a call or seen that person for a long time.

When a person is seriously ill with her eating disorder, many people are attracted to her and maintain a relationship with her as she lives and responds in life with her eating disorder intact. They are attracted to the needy, people-pleasing, high-risk-taking person who rarely says no. She's fun. She doesn't show her secret pain. She goes along to get along.

Being in recovery and in harmony with her true self attracts more healthy relationships and sends a wave of user repellent into the crowd around her.

Your feelings map is in your hands.

Pushing Feelings Away

A common coping mechanism when confronted with challenging emotions is the tendency to push them away. This is often seen as a defense mechanism, a way to avoid discomfort. However, it's essential to realize that suppressing your feelings does not make them disappear.

Instead, they tend to fester beneath the surface, causing more significant pain over time. It’s possible to behave harshly without appreciating why because what sets you off are denied feelings. You can push feelings out of your awareness but not out of your psyche.

Overcoming eating disorders includes love, smiles and encouragement.

Smiles of encouragement are essential in building self-respect, self-worth and self-confidence. Eating disorder thinking sets up a cascade of self-doubts, insecurities and anxieties. You feel worthless despite what others may say to support you.

You know in your heart that you have tricked others into believing you are competent, confident and have value. You need compliments, so you know your false facade of worth is intact while you feel worthless to yourself.

Anxiety is challenged by calm, wisdom, strength and focus.

Anxiety, whether it comes rarely, or is ever-present or seems to loom on the edge of your experience ready to strike, is a full body and emotional experience. When you are In it you want out of it. That desire to get immediate relief can leave people in a desperate situation where they will reach for food, alcohol, drugs, isolate at home and under the covers, emotional venting on others and even violence.

In my psychotherapy practice, my first goal is to gain trust so that the individual can have an anxiety attack in my presence. Knowing I can bear it helps the person know it’s bearable. She knows she can talk through it, think while it’s happening, and not act out. The first requirement in coping with anxiety and then relieving it is to be able to bear it while it’s happening.

Once that is achieved, we can unravel causes and triggers. We can develop the insight, strength and stamina to face and resolve the issues that cause our anxiety reaction.

Psychotherapy benefits include a powerful journey towards healing and mental wellness. Seeking help and support from this process is a sign of strength, not weakness. The benefits of psychotherapy can be yours at any age as long as you are willing and capable of doing the work.

Here I explore with you the transformative power of psychotherapy, highlighting its potential to provide relief from spiraling thought processes, negative self-talk, and deep-rooted issues like eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

Understanding Psychotherapy

Effective psychotherapy is a collaborative process between an empathic psychotherapist therapist and an individual seeking help. Its aim is to provide a safe and supportive environment for individuals to explore their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Through this exploration, individuals can gain insight, develop coping strategies, and improve their mental and emotional well-being.