There are many people who deal with eating disorders. Some of them can reach a point where they cause serious health issues or are even life-threatening. Eating disorders can impact individuals of all ages and economic backgrounds.
Food-related disorders like bulimia and ARFID are only too common these days. Those who are living them may need to seek out help from doctors, therapists, or both. If you’re recovering from an eating disorder, though, you have a secret weapon that can help you, and it’s self-compassion.
We’ll discuss that right now. With it, you stand a much better chance of getting past an eating disorder and living a healthier life. Without it, you will likely find the road to recovery a lot more difficult.
How Do Eating Disorders Develop?
There are several reasons why someone might develop an eating disorder. Many times, it happens because they are dissatisfied with their personal appearance. They may have an idealized version in their heads of what they should look like, and they are willing to submit to harmful eating habits to try and reach that point.
Other times, someone will develop an eating disorder because of how they were raised. If a child learns to eat as a way of tamping down negative thoughts or emotions they’re experiencing, this cycle can continue into their later years.
No matter what causes an eating disorder, though, it’s crucial that you find a way past it. That’s why self-compassion matters so much.
What is Self-Compassion?
Simply put, self-compassion means loving and accepting yourself just as you are. It means cherishing yourself, even if you don’t measure up to an idealized version of how you want to appear or how you think the world wants you to be.
It might sound like an easy thing to bestow upon yourself, but often, that’s not the case at all.
Self-compassion and self-love can be exceedingly difficult to give yourself if you have long made a habit of putting yourself down and feeling you are less than perfect. If there has been someone in your life who has been putting you down as well, particularly if it’s someone who you look up to, that can make having compassion for yourself even harder.
How Can Self-Compassion Help You When You Have an Eating Disorder?
If you can develop self-compassion and even self-love, any therapist will tell you that it can make it so much easier for you to get out of any harmful cycle. That is true for eating disorders but also drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and other kinds of self-harm.
If you can learn to feel compassionate about yourself, you can start to feel more comfortable in your own skin. Often, it is this mental adjustment that can lead to the changes in behavior you’d like to see related to your eating disorder.
Coming back from an eating disorder can take a lifetime of work, but it’s not impossible. Being more accepting and compassionate of yourself can make a huge difference.