Welcome.
I'm so glad that you're here today and that you're taking this time out for yourself.
Take a moment to sit or lie down somewhere that you will be free from all interruptions.
Find a comfortable position and gently close your eyes.
I want you to take a moment to observe your breath.
Without changing anything,
Simply note the rise and fall of your chest as you inhale and exhale.
Now I want you to breathe in deeply and then slowly exhale until every last bit of air is gone.
And then slowly inhale again,
Expanding your lungs and filling them with air.
And now gently exhale.
If you are here,
It means that your eating disorder is currently yelling at you.
Whatever you've done,
This is a sign that you've pushed yourself out of your comfort zone.
Which is awesome,
However your eating disorder is now giving you some pushback.
So I want you to take a moment and just simply note the thoughts that are coming up for you right now.
What is your eating disorder telling you in this moment?
Now focus back on my voice.
I want to remind you that just because you have a thought does not mean that it is true.
These thoughts come from your eating disorder whose only aim is to keep itself alive.
These thoughts are not the truth,
No matter how real they might seem.
Now take a moment to think about someone who you really care about.
Now I want you to pull up into your mind one of those thoughts,
Those eating disorder thoughts that you just recalled.
Now I want you to think about that person that you identified who you really care about and how you'd respond if they said to you one of the things that your eating disorder is telling you.
What would you say back to them that would be compassionate?
And despite what your eating disorder might tell you,
You're special but you are not a unicorn and these same things also apply to you.
So I want you to put your hand on your heart and now I want you to practice telling yourself what you would say to someone you care about who is struggling with similar thoughts.
So really take a moment and even if you might not fully believe it,
I want you to say to yourself what you would say to someone else you really cared about if they said those same things to you.
Okay,
So bring yourself back to my voice and I want to close out by leaving you with a few reminders because I know when you're in the midst of this emotional storm,
When your eating disorder thoughts are super loud,
It can be pretty easy to forget some things that might be helpful.
So first off,
No matter what you ate today,
Yesterday or this week,
You are safe and you are going to be okay.
One day or one week's worth of eating will not have a significant impact on your health or your weight,
Although weight gain is also not something that we need to fear despite what your eating disorder might be telling you.
When our body digests food,
Glucose looks the same.
It doesn't matter if it came from quinoa or cake.
So whatever noise your eating disorder is telling you right now about the food that you just ate or that you're about to eat,
There aren't good or bad foods and all foods can truly fit into a healthy diet.
And we really also want to think about dosage.
So anything in incredibly extreme dosages can be unhealthy,
Including the sun and water.
And so that's with anything.
So it's really about being able to enjoy all foods and to recognize that as long as we're incorporating all of them,
It's going to be okay and that no food is good or bad.
These are moral judgments that are put onto foods by diet culture and by your eating disorder.
But ultimately,
Food is just food and it doesn't have a moral value or make you a good or a bad person.
Eating disorder behaviors give short term relief with long term misery.
So really try to have compassion for yourself that your eating disorder might be trying to help you to regulate emotions or cope with anxiety or to feel what we know is a false,
But to feel a sense of control.
So your eating disorder is serving a purpose for you and having compassion for that,
But recognizing that it might deliver some of those things in the short term,
But in the long term,
It leads to increase misery,
Feeling more and more out of control as the eating disorder becomes the one running the show,
Isolation,
Depression,
And unhappiness.
You are 100% sick enough and you deserve treatment and support and don't listen to that voice in your head that says that you're not sick enough to get help because if you are struggling with a difficult relationship to food in your body,
You absolutely deserve to get treatment and support.
You can recover and I know it feels tough and recovery is so not linear,
So there might be steps back and steps forward,
But in the end when you're finally free from this,
It is going to be 100% worth it.
So please don't give up,
Even though I know sometimes it might feel impossible and draining and exhausting,
But you deserve a life that is free from the eating disorder and I believe that you can 100% get there.
So thank yourself for taking this time out and whenever you're ready,
You can gently open your eyes.
