Why Does it Have to Be so Hard? Overcoming Eating Disorders Authentically

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Jordanna Eyre, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Almost everyone I know has, or has had challenges in their relationship with food. I think it’s because I’m the queen of transparency, that I seem to be able to get people to open up about the internal battles they have; bringing a seldom discussed subject to light. I sometimes watch as people’s faces melt in relief because they are finally able to open up about what they’ve kept hidden for so long. Because it’s still taboo in our society to feel out of control with what we’re eating, and because it’s just not “sexy”, transparency is lacking. When we can’t see that others are suffering from the same thing, it’s inevitable to think we’re alone. But we’re not. Ooooh, we’re SO not.

So if a tricky relationship with food is what is causing so many of us pain and sorrow, or what’s contributing to the downward spiral that may sometimes cause us pain and sorrow, why haven’t we yet figured out a way to fix it? Not only is there no quick pill that will make it better, most forms of therapy also dismiss its gravity, or glaze over healing because therapists just aren’t sure what to do. In part it is because there isn’t one straight forward cure for people. An eating disorder is the manifestation of an individual person’s pent up pain, sadness, need for protection, fear, past trauma, etc. There isn’t an end-all-be-all cure out there, because the root of the illness is so different for each person. The pain is embedded in each of our bodies on such a cellular level, intermingled with the workings of our brain chemistry, mixed with the way our bodies take to foods (yes, even food allergies can play a role in eating disorders), strongly laced with our ability to identify and process emotions, and intertwined with our environment and our upbringing. It’s just that complicated. And thus healing from it can feel just as complicated – if not more so, because we are also having to battle the roller coaster of feeling it all as we ride the waves of being driven by a substance that we cannot simply abstain from or remove from our lives.

But the good news is that there is light for each of us. We can remove the stigma from the term “eating disorder”, and begin to see it as something more manageable in our lives. Each and every one of us has our own thumbprint-like path of what will work for us; and those that have healed can tell you that it does get better over time. With some awareness and a bit of time, with each downward spiral, we can come out of it finding ourselves in a better condition, realizing that we are healing bit by bit.