Resolving your eating disorder means that potentially you will be without a way a coping with difficult and challenging experiences. It is therefore important that you develop alternative coping strategies in parallel with working to resolve your eating disorder. This will feel difficult for a two reasons. Firstly, up until now you have been using your eating disorder to cope and so have not needed to explore alternatives. You will therefore needed to spend some time discovering what works best for you whilst remembering that initially nothing will be as effective as your eating disorder but that with time and practice strategies that do not undermine your well being can only enhance it. Secondly, nurturing and soothing yourself in a respectful way is likely to be a new experience that doesn't fit with your low sense of self worth, so it is something that you will again need to dedicate time and practice to. Each time you can choose to take an alternative path to your eating disorder when tackling something distressing, you allow weeds to grow across the eating disorder path making it harder to follow the next time.
An effective way of soothing yourself during times of distress is to stimulate one or more of your senses. The table below gives some examples of alternative ways of coping with distress through your senses. Select nurturing activities from lists or develop your own and practice them initially when you are feeling calm so that you can discover what you find the most soothing. When you are feeling distressed you will then quickly be able to initiate a soothing activity. Focus on one sense at a time or for increased soothing potential combine the senses.
Vision:
Focus on nature: Take a scenic walk, focus on the vibrant colours of plants/flowers around you, watch fish swimming in a tank/pond, watch birds flying, etc.
Focus on art: Watch a ballet/dance performance, go to a museum with beautiful art, light a candle and watch the flame, or decorate a room with all of your best/favourite things.
Hearing:
Listen to music, sing/hum to music, pay attention to the sounds of nature (water, birds, rainfall, leaves rustling), or talk to others.
Smell:
Burn incense, spray your favourite perfume, boil cinnamon, make fresh coffee, bake a cake, or smell flowers.
Taste:
(N.B. This can be a difficult sensation initially and so can be excluded until eating has become less emotion driven.) Have a soothing drink, suck a peppermint, chew gum, or treat yourself to food you wouldn't usually spend money on.
Touch:
Have a bath, put clean sheets on your bed, put a big warm jumper/silky blouse on, put on body lotion, wash your hair with nice smelling products, or have a massage.
Autor: Emma Corstorphine
Dr Corstorphine
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Service Coordinator, Oyster Counselling & Life Coaching
Specialist in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
http://www.oystercounselling.co.uk
Added: August 25, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
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