Eating Disorders: Why does it take courage to heal?

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Why does it take courage to heal and end your eating disorder?

 

When you live your life with an eating disorder, you are afraid and anxious much of the time. Courage is not an issue. You don't understand yet that it takes courage to heal. You eat or starve to feel strong instead of scared. This doesn't work. You feel strong when you reach for your binge or meticulous calorie counting. But living through the behavior only numbs you for a short time.

What you get is hope that your binge episode, grazing throughout the day, or the pain of starving yourself will end your fear and anxiety. The hope before the act may be the most positive part of your experience. Once you start eating and restricting, you feel you are in a race trying to outrun your fear.

The eating disorder is scary in itself. Every mouthful you take or deny yourself is mixed with hope, shame, and worry. Sometimes, you can binge in a frenzy, in secret, to bury yourself in a safe pit where you only stop because the physical pain is too great for you to continue. If you are bulimic, you will throw up and binge again.

So why does it take courage to heal and change this setup?

There's no courage without fear. Fear is what makes courage possible.

But we don't just reach into ourselves and pull out courage like heroines do in the movies. We are flesh and blood people with histories that led us to develop an eating disorder to protect ourselves. Our eating disorders protect us not only from the emotions in the moment but also from knowledge about our experiences that made the eating disorder necessary. And so, we focus on the emotions of the moment, soothing ourselves with our eating disorder. We never get to the cause.

But getting to the cause and realigning ourselves with energy and strength in the face of that cause is the core of stopping the eating disorder.

The problem is that the eating disorder itself will block awareness of those experiences. So, we're stuck in a never-ending cycle of suffering where we use our eating disorder to numb ourselves out of an emotionally painful experience.

In eating disorder recovery psychotherapy, we build trust first, preparing for the healing journey. You begin to rally your courage to heal. It's like preparing to climb a mountain, healing and recovery being the mountain.  You must trust that your equipment and climbing partners are strong,  trustworthy, and capable. You know you will face challenges, some of them unexpected. You want to be as ready as you can be.

Moving through the early recovery barrier involves facing and moving through fear. You can't do this all at once. We face the fear in little bits at a time. Climbing a mountain is done one step at a time. We don't take the whole mountain on in one giant leap. But even little steps require courage.

Each moment of facing increments of fear brings more self confidence. The fear remains but you stay with it a little longer each time it comes up. You postpone your acting out a tiny bit longer. You are developing your courage to heal

Too often, fear is so powerful that you believe, and many therapists think, too, that fear is the enemy that needs to be conquered for recovery to be secure.

Fear may cause you to shake and tremble. It may cause you to be dizzy and unable to concentrate. It may stimulate catastrophic thinking. But there's more involved. And you need to develop your courage to face it. Again, you face it slowly with your therapist in incremental steps.

Your eating disorder is present to keep you in line, following orders of how to be, respond, feel, and think. It governs you, so your values and behaviors, even your morals and commitments, align with an authority that is not you. Your courage to heal involves becoming a rebel.

To rebel against those orders feels dangerous and may be dangerous.

Will certain knowledge or awareness make others angry or violent? Will you lose your family or financial support? Will you be evicted from your community?

Is the fear of retaliation, real or imagined, too much to bear? Or the actual retaliation is too much to bear. Will you be criticized or cast out?

Sadly, I've had consultations with women I could not work with. these were deeply challenged women who wanted help stopping their eating disorders. They wanted a quick solution to the problem. When we explored their lives, they told me they lived a life of servitude in their marriages and their religion. They were living out The Handmaid's Tale and were dedicated and committed to it. To challenge their husbands' authority was to risk physical punishment, loss of their children, loss of financial security, and being an outcast from the community. So they remained committed to their way of life and either threw up or starved themselves as a way to make their lives livable.

Some women learned to be obedient to their fathers or mothers by turning away from their own interests, loves, passions, and goals of their souls. Living a way of thinking, feeling, and behaving tortured their sense of self. An eating disorder eased that pain, only to replace it with another.

Over time and development, some women (I have no idea of the statistics) develop the start of strength and awareness to grope their way toward a path that could lead them to their authentic selves.

Courage is required. They may part with families, marriages, jobs, hobbies, and communities that do not represent what they care about and which may be causing them harm. But they develop the strength and courage to do so as they pursue the life they know in their hearts they were designed to live.

The key to having the courage to heal is the ability to say, "No!" to what hurts your heart and soul and to say, "Yes!" to what honors your heart and soul.

How to Begin

Reading this article may be your beginning. It might have taken courage to click on the title, but you've begun.

To raise your awareness beyond knowing you are afraid, ask yourself these questions:

1.            What do I care about?

2.            What is my life's work?

3.            How will  I equip myself?

4.            Who do I want in my life?

5.            How do I want to use my time and energy?

6.            What is the source of my joy?

7.            What is the source of my sorrow?

8.            Where am I bored and compromising for someone else's benefit?

9.            Where am I exited?

10.         Where am I envious? Envy can be a clear pointer toward what you want for yourself.

11.         What are my regrets? Instead of putting yourself down with regret, use your regrets as beacons to show you the choices you want to make now and in the future.

12.         And keep creating more questions, from simple to profound. (what clothes do you prefer to wear? What movies and tv shows do you like? What games do you like to play? What people do you like to be with? What jobs do you like? What books do you like? What vacations do you like? What music do you like? Can you choose what you like, or is something or someone limiting your power to decide what you care about and value.)

As you value yourself and back up your sense of value with courage and awareness, you'll make steps toward a fulfilling life. You won't need the eating disorder to give you a hiding place. You won't need to escape from awareness. You can embrace it.

I understand that some people are in situations where they cannot break the hold of their controllers. Some countries, cultures, religions, and communities have a powerful hold over the minds and hearts of women. In such situations, more than individual effort is necessary to say "No!". But if you have an opportunity to climb the mountain to your freedom, then help is here.

Once you find your freedom, you will be able to help others. That takes courage, too, one step at a time.

Books

1.            "Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder" by Joanna Poppink

2.            "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brené Brown

3.            "Women, Food, and God" by Geneen Roth

4.            "The Body Is Not an Apology" by Sonya Renee Taylor

5.            "The Courage to Heal" by Laura Davis and Ellen Bass

6.            "Brain Over Binge" by Kathryn Hansen

Articles & Blogs

 

 

• Perfection as Safety through Restricting Food
• The Power Of Journaling And Why It Matters In Your Career
• 5 Benefits of Journaling for Mental Health
• Keeping a Dream Journal Can Speed Eating Disorder Recovery
• Increase the Recovery Value of Your Journal

YouTube Videos

     "The Power of Vulnerability" by Brené Brown

• Women with eating disorders attract narcissists. 
• How to Stop Suffering in Silence
• Recognize abuse 
•  "The Power of Vulnerability" by Brené Brown

 

 

*Image by Pexels from Pixabay