I Didn't Ask For This.
In the work of moving away from dieting, healing from an eating disorder, and/or doing the work of learning to trust and befriend your body, it’s typical to have moments and even seasons of fear, frustration, anger, sadness, and resistance. It doesn’t matter if you are new to this work or you have been at it for months and years. These challenging times are typical and expected.
There are many ways to navigate these tough times. Here are a few of my favorites:
Please note, this is not meant to be a step-by-step guide. Getting through a hard time can feel like trying to find your way on a winding path through a wildness. These ideas are meant as optional routes, each leading you through to safety and comfort. You have choices.
Begin with a pause
Take a moment to orient yourself.
Name and assign a number to your negative emotion using a scale of 0-10.
0 = barely noticeable, 10 = it’s smothering me and taking up all the space in my mind, body and soul
If you are >5 with a negative emotion, stop what you are doing and care for yourself. Don’t start the journey of navigating a tough time just yet. We can call this “structure safety”. Find a safe person to be near. Listen to your favorite music. Step outside and take a deep breath and be in nature. Pet your dog. Sway back and forth (in the motion of rocking a baby). Cry. Hug a friend. Wrap yourself in a cozy blanket. Do an activity that you excel at. Watch a light-hearted show. These ideas are meant to get your nervous system out of a threat response (fight/flight/freeze) and help you feel a bit more settled.
Check back in with yourself every hour or so to notice if you are moving towards 0. Keep at the supportive practices to move toward safety and comfort.
When you are <5, try the following:
Face the Feeling
Outside of helping people feed themselves, assisting folks in feeling their feelings is my favorite and one of the most important parts of my work. I’ve written extensively about it. Here is a post on how to feel a feeling (includes a recording of a short guided body scan practice). If you like improve, you may enjoy this post on how to have emotion over for a drink.
Start with Grief
A guided grieving practice:
Acknowledge the suffering, the loss, the confusion, the unknown-ness and unfairness of it all.
Sit with the discomfort in the presence of a “safe-other”. You can even coach your friend/loved-one to just sit shoulder-to-shoulder with you in silence or to occasionally say, “I see your suffering. I’m here with you.”
After a time, shift your thoughts and feelings to a known experience where you overcame something difficult or a story of someone who overcame something difficult. You might say, “I’ve been through something like this before. This is how I got through it.”
Mindfully move between spaces of known and unknown.
See if you can end the practice with a memory of navigating a difficult experience. Let go of the memory, but stay with the felt sense of having gotten through and survived.
Examine your standards.
Check in with your expectations of how you think something should go.
I should be “recovered by now.”
I should be passed needing this eating disorder behavior.
I should be able to love my body.
I should get over it.
I should be done needing help from a therapist or dietitian.
Stop “shoulding” all over yourself.
Challenge the “shoulds” by asking “who says?”
Adjust your standards while still holding true to your values. (This may require that you do some or a lot of grieving).
Reflect on what is going well and what is working.
Review the progress you’ve made so far. Find more inclusive and full-storied ways of measuring progress.
Return to your values
If goals are destinations on a map, values are the compass headings guiding your actions. Values are aspects of life that are important to you. There’s no black and white with values, only the perfect shade of your favorite color (you get to pick the color just like you get to pick your values). You never “reach” your values, you just get to live into them and move towards them.
To get to your values, you can ask yourself a set of questions.
Act on that which is within your control
Make a list of what is and what is not in your control. You will find actionable items from the “can control” list.
Here are some examples:
Can Control: caring for myself, my response, knowing my values, being curious, how I handle my feelings, reclaiming my own definition of beauty, setting boundaries, practicing acceptance and self-compassion, eating on a regular basis, moving my body in a way that brings me joy.
Cannot Control: fatphobia, cultural beauty standards, someone else’s words/actions/boundaries, my own feelings.
That “cannot control” list, may send you to the practice of grieving. That’s okay. Please take time to grieve what you do not and can never control.
Try on Self-Compassion
Self-compassion is not self-pity or self-indulgence. Self-compassion acknowledges that we all suffer and we are all worthy of kindness and respect. It clears a space for the practice of bringing a non-judgemental awareness to feelings of anger, fear, and confusion.
Try writing a letter, an email, even a text message to yourself. Take on the role of a caring, wise, self. Write a couple lines (or a full page) of encouraging words to the part of you that is suffering. Perhaps start with the line, “I see you are having a difficult time and feeling {name negative emotion here}.”
Practice Gratitude
Skipping past the material items (the what you have), turn to who you have and how things happened**.
Gratitude practice for who you have: Take a brief moment to remember people, pets, or a God who loves you unconditionally. You could take it a step further by reaching out and thanking them (with a letter, text, phone call, scratch behind the ear, or prayer of thanksgiving).
Gratitude practice for how things happened: Think of an event or circumstance for which you feel grateful and write about it. Describe how it made you feel at the time and how you feel as you think about it. Explain how the circumstance came to be – what circumstances came together to create this moment. Try to notice positive events and internal strengths that made it possible.
Being faced with a situation that feels bad, finding yourself in a position where you have to make an unexpected change, letting go of certain hopes and dreams is hard work. Finding yourself in a situation you didn’t ask for and have little control over is kind of like going on a trip and ending up in a place you never expected. Maybe you don’t know the language, the culture, the terrain. What a nightmare! But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story. This detour doesn’t have to be the end of the adventure.
Slow down. Check in with yourself. Find a friend. Get creative. Care for yourself. Don’t lose hope.
There are many paths forward. Finding a way through the suffering and chaos leads you to a more complete, wiser version of your true self. And, that’s a destination you deserve.
**Refer to the book Burnout: The Secret of Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski for the full exercise (Chapter 8: Grow Mighty, part 3). I also love this quote: “Being grateful for good things doesn’t erase the difficult things.” “Gratitude is not about ignoring problems. If anything, gratitude works by providing tools for the struggle, for further progress.”