Embracing your eating disorders as “friends” doesn’t sit right with everyone. Especially for anyone still struggling.
Some podcast guests are clear that they would never describe their eating disorder as a “friend.” I can hear the disbelief in their voices.
Are you crazy? It was the worst time in my life!
But what happens if we replace the word friend with teacher?
My eating disorders have been my best teachers. Because I had to unpick them to find myself. I’ve been in the darkest of corners and found the light. I know my flaws, my imperfections and the bits that make me throw up my hands in horror.
Was that really me? Did I behave like that? Yep, fraid so!
I know the differences between my public and private self. What’s authentic and what is not.
In One More Try (George Michael 1987) sings,
“Cause teacher
There are things I don’t want to learn
And the last one I had
Made me cry.
So I don’t want to learn to ….”
But in the final verse he sings,
“And teacher
There are things
That I still have to learn..”
We are human beings having a spiritual experience.
An eating disorder is a very human experience; a physical experience fuelled by conflict within our mental and emotional realms.
We come to this planet to experience what it is to be alive in a physical body and live on this physical third dimensional planet, don’t we?
Therefore an eating disorder might just be another one of those experiences.
No more, no less and ours for the taking. This puts us in a position of empowerment, not victimhood.
But we can’t live ‘out there, somewhere’ we have to live in our body - and eating disorders or disordered eating are serious issues that ruin lives - not least because we feel and experience life in our physical bodies. We don’t feel life in our brains. Life is visceral, not just experiential, and life isn’t created in the mind like an intellectual pursuit.
Life is a journey of emotion.
That’s why eating disorders are so hard to unravel. The emotional and physical, mental and spiritual get tangled up in one messy heap. But unpick them we must if we want to be free.
In the early days of recovery when you’re just trying to stay upright this whole teacher/friend thing might seem far away but later when the dust has settled and we’re more robust we can hold our stuff up to the light and say:
I wonder what it looks like this way?
Below are some questions I asked my teachers.
What is it I need to learn?
What is it you’re trying to teach me?
What am I so attached to?
What do I find it difficult to let go of and why?
Why have I cast myself in the role of a victim? Why am I waiting for someone else to rescue me? How can I rescue myself?
Why am I destroying myself?
If I were to write my teacher(s) a letter what would I say?
And then write it!