Sitting in the body when it’s difficult- for those with Eating Disorders
Too often we live in a world that assumes it should be easy to sit down and meditate. With all the buzz going around about the benefits of mindfulness and yoga, it seems that everyone is wanting to try to tap into this goodness. I mean, what’s so difficult about sitting down for 5 minutes and “doing nothing”. If that means better health then why not?
And so you pull up your cozy cushion to sit on, close your eyes, cross your legs and sit. In stillness. All of sudden you feel incredibly uncomfortable. It’s like your skin is itching and you need to scratch it but you are telling yourself not to. You shoot open your eyes, stand up, and say to yourself, “I’ll just try again tomorrow.”
Amy Grabowski, fellow IFS therapist has described it once like this. “Imagine you are a passenger in a rickety old bus and you are in the back of a packed bus. People are everywhere, kids are screaming. You are surrounded by people. The bus is driving at night in a thunderstorm and it’s raining and lightning outside. You look forward and notice there is no driver on the bus. You see the bus about to hit a curb and you are not sure that you are going to make it and you grab onto something, ANYTHING that you think you can save you.” That’s what it can feel like when you live in a body that struggles with anxiety, eating difficulties, body image, day to day.
That’s an eating disorder. The thing you think can save you in the chaos. Eating disorders are a coping tool for the anxiety felt within the body when there hasn’t been permission that it is safe to exist and be in your body.
Anxiety, trauma, eating disorders, body shame all lead to chaos felt in the body, just like the bus without a driver. So then imagine asking that body, those experiences to halt and stop. That is what mindfulness can try to do. No wonder it’s impossible. That body can’t all of a sudden get rid of the chaos and be expected to stop. There is no driver on the bus. There is too much going on and it’s a thunderstorm outside. So expecting it to stop in fact can lead to more chaos if there is a sense of failure.
So what can you do instead?
Slow down life in order to become mindful to help get the driver back on the bus
Getting the feeling that “I am in charge”. Take control of life from the driver’s seat and a sense of self. An example of this can be through trauma-sensitive yoga, having choices for how you want to move your body in the moment, noticing/sensing what you need, etc.
Begin to work with building a healthy relationship with your inner psyche. Examples of unhealthy parts (bully/trouble-makers/exile) to healthy parts (mentor/advocate/kid). What do the unhealthy parts need in order to help move them towards healthy ways of being?
Notice when a part takes over and says I’m in charge now. The other parts know this part doesn’t know what it's doing and might create more chaos within (bully in the person, critical, etc.). Begin to support more cohesion and find a therapist that can help support you in doing so.
All of the parts EAT, not just 1 part that eats and 1 part that restricts. Mentor part will eat for health and nutrition, kid part will eat for fun, advocate part will help balance the two (most self affirming). In extreme the kid part eats for comfort to soothe, the bully part eats to punish saying you are going to regret eating those cookies, the trouble-maker parts use food to numb or rebel against the bullies. All of the parts eat for different reasons. The SELF keeps the parts calm so they can eat in a positive healthy way.
Bully part can be perfectionist and punitive. Get it to talk and see what it is trying to do for you and help it feel heard. Self wisdom can tell the bully how that makes the kid part feel when it does that. What does the bully part need in order to not talk to the kid part that way? Help the bully to slide into the mentor role.
Exile parts feel worthless. They hold the core beliefs of the negative messages they have heard. Heal those messages. “If I was a good girl I would not get punished, etc.”. Heal the child parts to calm them down so the other parts don’t feel so extreme. The other parts are protecting the kid parts/exiles from being hurt.
Trouble-makers parts are afraid often that you will go crazy or something bad will happen. Help them get into advocate roles. Ways to support- Visualize Self holding this child, supporting and comforting this child, example bring a pillow towards themselves. Switch parts and be the child getting the comfort from Self.
Get to know Self = voice of wisdom or wise one within
Develop a sense of self: kind, benevolent, warm, compassionate, wise, unconditional positive regard, into their bodies (gut wisdom). Calm of strength within.
Tap into that strength within to hear the answers for whatever they are dealing with
Trust the body signals for hunger, fullness, rest, movement. Eat mindfully from this sense of self to enjoy the food and feel satisfied by the food. Fear social engagements because of eating in public with others. Learn and listen to our body for these signals then food because food, a way to fuel our body.
Create awareness around your relationship to your phone and social media. We live in a world that focuses on outer appearance as a sense of self worth. Dove recently put out a video that shows the silent impact of social media on the inner psyche and it’s relationship to eating disorders. *trigger warning before watching
Dove video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3qc6QjfJyc
Lastly, too often mindfulness tools are taught as a way to control the mind. By observing one thoughts, it can focus only on the experience of thoughts and leave out other channels of being in one's body. I wonder if the purpose in that is to continue the colonized burden belief that there is a separation of the mind and body. That if we continue to teach a way to control the mind, the focus continues to be "you don't have a body" and don't dare try to exist in one.
What if instead we look at the term "heartfulness". No word is perfect but if we open the concept to be more than the "mind", the heart is a space within the body that connects us to all our organs, including yes the mind. If I find practices that connect me to my heart that give me a sense of ease, stillness, being able to exist in my body without inner conflict, then isn't that the same experience that "mindfulness" is trying to offer? And in a way for those who struggle to connect to our thoughts in a supportive way, does the experience of being with our heart space allow more ideas of practices that allow our body to "be still", without trying to manage or control our thoughts?
Question to consider:
What does my heart say when I practice mindfulness?
Would it like some other ways of being seen and heard and if so how would it like to connect with you?
May you be well on your journey, and as always feel free to reach out if you need support. You don’t have to do this alone.
