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.

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