Five ways to tame your eating disorder and cope with your emotions that feed into your emotional pain.
Do you stand in the mirror and obsess about how many pounds make you desirable, successful, or loved?
Are you pulled deeper and deeper into your private food and body obsession, ashamed by it, yet compelled to keep it going?You’re trying so hard, but the mirror tells you still have so much work to do.An eating disorder isn’t about vanity.
It is far more complicated than calorie counting and bathroom scales. Despite what the mirror, media, and your own perception tells you, what you’re experiencing is not superficial or easily fixed. In fact, the key to taming your eating disorder and exterior obsession lies deep within you. To restore order take the following steps:
1. Put perfection in perspective.
You know perfection doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t stop you from wrestling with your body. You hope to get a bit closer to that impossible goal. You’ve believed that life would be better if you were perfect. But the work you put in is exhausting and the reward never comes. Perfectionism is a harsh taskmaster.
No matter how much you do, perfectionism demands more of you. Combat the overwhelming pressures of perfectionism. Try using a daily word of self-encouragement. Remind yourself that everyone around you struggles and fails at times. Tame the need to ruthlessly perfect your body. Challenge the idea that you should be anything more than who you are.
2. Show yourself some love.
Self-compassion is vital in the fight to quiet societal shaming and harsh internal self-talk. What happens every time you walk to the mirror? Are you there to affirm your body or tear down what you see? Are you there to appreciate your shape, face, or hair. Or do you repeatedly scan for flaws and imperfections? Notice your bodily response to the mirror itself. Take a stronger posture, smile at it, look in your own eyes. Practice noticing and appreciating something positive about your body, however small.
3. Monitor your media intake.
Eating disorders are often supported by a distorted societal view of what is attractive and desirable. The amount of media information bombarding you worsens your insecurities and stretches the importance of model-thin bodies, muscular physiques. You may need to reduce your exposure to movies that promote fat-shaming and the litany of television weight loss advertisements, in order to begin reshaping your ideas around body image.
4. Assemble a team to tame your eating disorder.
Please don’t attempt recovery in isolation. The healthiest approach is holistic one. By working with a nutritionist, therapist, and medical doctor you can obtain a grasp of the issues contributing to your eating disorder and impact on your health. Taming your eating disorder should include professionals who will help you reach a goal of recovery.
5. Treat the trauma.
When it comes to eating disorders, most are rooted in trauma. Research like that of Dr. Timothy Brewerton in his article The Links Between PTSD and Eating Disorders support the connection. Perhaps the way you are dealing with food and viewing your body is actually the unreleased need to survive. This might be left over from one of the most difficult times in your life. The untreated trauma keeps your body in a reactive, stressful place.
Though you try to find relief through food, exercise, or deprivation, working with a therapist who understands trauma and body awareness is safer, more productive, and extremely valuable. Now is the time to tame your eating disorder. I am here to help!
As a somatic psychotherapist, I can help you regain the ability to trust your body again. In therapy, you will learn ways to understand what your body needs to tell you and needs from you. As you do that work, you’ll be able to tame your eating disorder and make a lasting change.
If you would like some extra support and are looking for a psychotherapist, please contact for a free consultation to learn about how I can be of service.
Learn more about Eating Disorder Treatment. Serving Boulder, Longmont, Denver.
For your other needs, you can count on April Lyons Psychotherapy Group, to help you heal and grow through EMDR therapy, somatic therapy, trauma therapy, and PTSD treatment, because we believe in your strength and potential for recovery.
