There’s no doubt that in any sort of recovery that there will be times when it all becomes too much. You will feel overwhelmed by an abundance of negative and often confusing emotions. It’s one of the hardest things I have had to deal with, and some days I just want to sit down, pull the duvet over my head and give up completely.
That’s okay. It’s perfectly normal and even expected for us to be swallowed by our fears and anxieties, so long as we know how to draw ourselves away from them when they become too intense.
Learning to develop a healthy relationship with food and our emotions is very difficult, and I compare it to flexing muscles that you haven’t used in a long time. The first meal will be okay, maybe even the second one, but the more you eat and the bigger those meals become the louder that voice will shout. It’ll begin to get harder to cope with, physically, emotionally and mentally. It’ll begin to feel like you are stripping away everything you have known for months, maybe years, and you won’t really know how to handle it.
At least that’s how it’s feeling, or has felt, for me.
What is self-soothing and how does it help?
Until recently I’d never known the art of self-soothing. To me looking after myself was coming home from work, showering and going to bed. Little did I know this wasn’t helping at all. Crawling under the covers just aided me in avoiding what I was really feeling or experiencing. It was sort of a buddy to the anorexia and depression which I indulged because I thought it was just me; I’m just lazy.
The truth was I was exhausted and what I thought was helping was just enabling the darkness to manifest even further.
In order to avoid or reduce the overwhelming emotions and situations that we can come across on a daily basis, it’s fundamental that we practice positive self-soothing and self-care. Without it, a success in recovery will be short-lived because the tools you need to distract from those negative thoughts aren’t in place, so they’ll get louder until you have to listen, and that is where relapse happens.
Self-soothing is what you do when your deepest wounds need healing. It’s what you do when the discomfort and frustration of recovery begin to overwhelm. It’s how you distract yourself from the negative thoughts that might draw us into unhealthy coping.
It comes in many forms for many different people. I’m apart of a few different eating disorder recovery groups on Facebook and in almost all of them, I see people asking for distractions. What they mean is that they want others to post funny memes, to chat, to discuss anything that might draw them away from the difficult emotions surrounding their situation. Often it’s about escaping the thoughts surrounding food.
Learning to self-sooth takes you to learn about yourself. No two people are alike and what works for you might not work for others but it is essential to recovery that you create and stick to a self-soothing routine. As I mentioned it is fundamental for recovery maintenance; You can’t just fix the car once and never get it serviced!
A self-soothing plan or a self-care box (whatever you want to call it) should always accompany a new meal plan so that you can help yourself deviate away from the distressing thoughts.
What can I do to self soothe?
In January I started to journal, I started to knit, I started to practice with crystals again, I started to read and I started to create like I always used to. My soul was missing that creativeness that I held onto as a child because I was so busy filling it with career, money, love, house, etc. I was so busy pushing through that I forgot to stop, breathe and remember who I am.
I am a creative person. A person who once wanted to be a writer or an artist. Someone who wanted to help other people by becoming a counselor and volunteering with Samaritans and animal shelters. A person who would listen to instrumentals, burn sage, play with tarot cards, and collect crystals. When did I lose her?!
I don’t know but I’m starting to find her again.
Self-soothing can be many different things to different people, and some people find it helpful to have a self-care box ready in waiting for when needed. I’m not saying that you go out and buy a box right now and get all your supplies immediately in waiting for the nuclear winter. It takes time to find what helps you and to gather up the necessary components, just make sure to have at least one way of self-soothing when you start the initial recovery. When we stop unhealthy habits we need to create healthy habits to replace them in order to deal with the leftover emotions, otherwise, it’s easy to slip. It’s like removing a plaster from an open wound and not replacing the dressing (or cleaning it out), the flesh will fester and might get infected which could land you in a whole other world of pain. So make sure that at the beginning you have at least some guided meditation, or a colouring book, or a friend on hand ready to catch you when the feelings become too much.
Most importantly; DON’T replace unhealthy with more unhealthy. This is so easy to fall into, so just be aware of yourself and what you are doing to release the unwanted emotion.
For anyone in recovery from an eating disorder, there are *four key areas of concern;
Under each of these areas, there is any number of things that could work for you. For example, I use aromatherapy, scented candles, meditation, salt lamps, colouring books, my journal, this blog, my best friend Alex (he’s under the sound category if you’re wondering) & heat to soothe myself.
* Self-soothing also involves taste, however, due to the nature of an eating disorder I have left this out.
Below is another more detailed and complex self-care wheel;
Remember; Be patient with yourself during this process. It takes times to find the things that work for you and it also takes practice to make certain elements of the self-care wheel work (i.e meditation, breathing, etc). Don’t expect to get everything right the first time.
Be kind to yourself. We are all in the same boat and we will all reach the shore eventually.
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