Applying The Power of Now to Eating Disorder Recovery (Part One)

Happy Saturday, loves! I hope that everyone is having a happy start to Spring. We don't really have any big festivals here where I live to honor the arrival of this season, but I like imagining the celebrations taking place around the world because it makes life feel more colorful. And Spring is a really good excuse for weaving flowers into my hair, which is something that I have never done but have always secretly wanted to do. Because being a faerie would be fun, right?

I'm continuing to read A New Earth and The Power of Now, and I have to say that these books have had a profound impact on how I perceive the whole "eating disorder recovery" process. Because of this, I'm going to be posting a little series of reflections on the principles of The Power of Now and how they relate to the healing journey.

(I'm going to pause really quickly here so that the words "healing journey" can sit with you for a moment. Rather than thinking of eating disorder recovery as loss of identity/major change/etc., think of it as what it is: recovery from an illness. You're healing your body. You're not "losing your fitness" or anything, okay? Making this shift from victim to warrior is incredibly empowering. I mean, right now we have the opportunity to change our lives for the better! An eating disorder is not a choice, but recovery is. It's healing. We're healing. Yay!)

I rediscovered The Power of Now while staring in desperation at the titles in my mum's medicine pantry. Many of the books there were collected by her and by my grandmum over a period of decades. They're coffee-stained and have broken spines and smell like cinnamon, and they remind me of a childhood spent rescuing earthworms from flooded streets and listening to my mum and grandmum read aloud from the works of Beatrix Potter, Marianne Williamson, and C.S. Lewis.

When I saw the faded binding of The Power of Now, I remembered the audio book version that my grandmum used to play during long car trips, and upon opening the book's cover, I discovered the words "best heart" scrawled in my five year-old handwriting. My grandmum used to always tell me to love with my "best heart," and seeing those words again was like a wake-up call. My "best heart" would in no way approve of an eating disorder. And neither would my grandmum.

Between school assignments and work, I've only gotten about a quarter of the way through The Power of Now, but the sections that I've read are already full of underlining and annotations. The concept of the "pain-body" has been particularly meaningful for me because Tolle's description of the pain-body is so applicable to eating disorders. The pain-body seeks to perpetuate itself by feeding on the sadness, anxiety, and fear that it creates.

"The pain-body wants to survive, just like every other entity in existence, and it can only survive if it gets you to unconsciously identify with it. It can then rise up, take you over, 'become you,' and live through you."

WOW. Reading this, all my disordered eating patterns started to make sense. When I start digging a hole for myself--relapsing, getting absorbed in fear, etc.--it's really hard to pull myself out of that hole. The pain-body "feed[s] on any experience that resonates with its own kind of energy," so the more anxious I become, the more power the pain-body gets. And then, because the pain-body convinces me that it's who I am, I just dig my hole deeper, not realizing that my eating disorder is trying to perpetuate itself. This all sounds pretty abstract and metaphysical, I know, but it's been incredibly eye-opening for me. I've finally started to take a step back and realize that my eating disorder is an illness. It's pain seeking pain, and I have the power to put an end to it.

"The pain-body . . . is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness." 

Next time, I'm going to write a bit about consciousness and awareness vs. unconsciousness and thinking. I hope that these posts will resonate with some of you, too, and I'm sending #kittyzen wishes.

<3 <3 <3

Identity and Playing Small

After work today, I was feeding my cats and listening to Oprah and Eckhart Tolle Chapter 7 of A New Earth when I heard their conversation shift to eating disorders. A caller phoned in asking for advice on how to release her attachment to her "eating disorder identity," and her words sounded just like some of the ones that so often go through my mind. Once we've consciously acknowledged that we need to recover, how do we take the leap and let go of the false "safety" that an eating disorder provides?

In the podcast, Oprah and Eckhart explained that the answer can be found in becoming more present and embodied. That makes a lot of sense given that the whole premise of A New Earth is presence = awakening, but they took this idea further by saying that, when we're caught in the eating disorder identity, we're refusing to see ourselves as "bigger" than our eating disorder selves.  Oprah's advice was particularly powerful. She said that the eating disorder is "as big as you know yourself to be right now. And when you know yourself to be something more, you will choose to be the something more and not this 'little me' that has an eating disorder."

WOW. Eating disorders may feel safe and easy, but they aren't who we are, and even if we feel like they're "working" for us sometimes, they aren't. All eating disorders can do is hurt us, our relationships, and our lives, and we need to stop "playing small" so that we can recognize the awesomeness and potential that exist beyond the eating disorder world.

<3 <3 <3

A New Earth

Hi, friends! I realize that I neglected to write anything during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (February 25th to March 3rd), but midterm exams, transfer applications, and work somehow managed to absorb all my time. March 1st was a big deadline for me, my mum, and my brother, and the days leading up to it felt unusually foreboding. But I'm incredibly grateful to be getting a brief respite period now because it's Saturday morning and the imminence of my other work deadlines hasn't quite hit me yet.

The weather here lately has been a bit crazy--balmy one day and then snowy the next. I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by climate change. Flowers blooming much too early and frog eggs frozen in ice break my heart, and I'm overwhelmed by all that is happening in the world. I've recently applied to study Spanish and ESL Education because I hope to work with refugees, and it's clear from climate predictions that global warming is going to lead to the displacement of thousands because certain areas of the planet will become impossible to live in due to rising sea levels and temperatures. This will be very tragic for animals and plants, too. :(

But I don't mean to morbid or pessimistic here. While I clean, I often listen to podcasts, and Oprah's series with Eckhart Tolle about A New Earth has given me hope for things getting better. Right now, so many of us--often at no fault of our own--feel "separate" from those around us. It's difficult to recognize that we're really all very connected, but the awareness of our unity is what's required for us to make lasting changes. We need to acknowledge the fact that we're all in this together. We're all Earthlings together. We're all part of the incredible, frightening, and perplexing complexity that is life.  Hate, fear, anxiety . . . these are all just symptoms of disconnection. We need more hugs.

 

I try to remind myself of this whenever I'm entering the "Upside Down" (Stranger Things reference). That's the place my mind sometimes goes to when I let Bellatrix or Gollum go all "my precious" on disordered eating habits. When I step outside of myself and realize that I'm this little blip on a sphere floating in an endless universe, I remember that what's really important isn't whether or not I eat meals x hours apart. What's really important is that I recognize that we're all connected to each other and that the world needs more love in it. Love for ourselves, love for those around us . . . .

Love is healing.

<3 <3 <3