Cultivating Healing: Creating the Conditions for Eating Disorder Recovery
A gardener knows that growth cannot be forced. Pulling on a stem will not make it taller. Asking a seedling to withstand wind before its roots have taken hold will not make it stronger. Growth depends on conditions. Light, water, temperature, nourishment, and time each have their role, and when one is missing, the plant…
Eating Disorders, Cravings, and the Ecosystem of Appetite
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from fighting your own body. It is the depletion of a person at war with the signals their physical self sends. It is not without help that these signals became something people learned to distrust. The estrangement from our appetite is learned, passed down through families,…
Emotional Eating Isn’t What You Think It Is
Emotional eating has become a kind of confession. People say it with their eyes down, the way you admit to something you’ve been caught doing: “I’m an emotional eater.” As though reaching for food when you’re grieving, anxious, lonely, or overwhelmed is evidence of weakness, or the first sign that something has gone clinically wrong….