We are susceptible creatures. Doctors tell us that we are what we eat. Now, psychologists are telling us that we have the propensity to become what we read as well. Recently, the local paper in my town ran an article reporting that people who read diet articles when they are young have a higher incidence of adopting dieting behaviors later on in life.
I was tempted to write back to the author of that fine cutting-edge journalistic masterpiece with one word…. “Duh.”
We know these things. That is not what makes us susceptible. What makes us susceptible is when we IGNORE what we know.
Last month I led a seminar for a multi-generational gathering of women on the subject of what I like to call ‘whole-woman beauty’. I love this concept…so much that I thought other women might like it too, and that is how I began leading these workshops. Post-recovery, my mind has become intrigued by evidence of the very real existence of a source of beauty that does not rely on an inaccurately crafted aluminum-coated pane of glass. My body has begun to thrill to the idea that beauty can be experienced – felt – and not merely seen. And my heart has steadily warmed to the knowledge that the rest of me is not just extraneous window-dressing, forever trapped and unappreciated beneath the all-enveloping surface of my skin.
Furthermore, my spirit has for some time now perceived that human beings – myself included – are multi-dimensional beings. Whether we realize it or not, whether we choose to accept it or not, we do in fact exist on the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual planes simultaneously. What happens in our mind does not necessarily have to affect us on physical, emotional and spiritual levels too. It can if we let it, but we can also learn to constrain our experience of ourselves on one level and keep it from affecting our experience of ourselves on other levels as well.
For instance, even while we are engaged in practicing eating disordered behaviors, a separate, highly intuitive part of us remains alert and aware of the damage we are doing, and cries out for change. I remember the very first time I attempted to purge. Right after I finished, I called my then-mentor, sobbing. I knew what I had done cut deeply across the vein of everything my body, heart and spirit knew to be right. Only my mind was confused enough to try something deadly and different.
Conversely, I still remember the first time I told someone I had a “problem with food”. My body, heart and spirit were just SO relieved, as if the weight of a thousand lifetimes had just been lifted off my shoulders. Again, only my mind was confused and worried that something I had said or done might be “wrong”.
What I have learned since then is that, if we want to achieve sustained recovery, we need to remember where the confusion first began, and where it must end….in the mind. The resulting carnage from an active or lingering eating disorder is displayed in the physical realm, yes. But the place where the eating disorder truly dwells – and the battlefield upon which the fight for our lives takes place – is in the mind.
It really all boils down to this: 1) Our minds are not nearly as smart as we give them credit for, and 2) WE are NOT our minds.
So, to recover, we must first learn to train what takes place in the mind to stay in the mind. Next, we must convince the mind to look elsewhere for what it seeks….and lead it towards what is worth seeking and recovering for.
We must begin to slowly, steadily, introduce our minds not to ever more tips and tricks and hints for better dieting procedures, but to a concept of beauty that far surpasses the whims and whiles of our eating disorder, or the limitations of a body that is dependent on what we give it, and will inevitably age, as all bodies do. We must thrill our minds, instead, with the thoughts of an experience of beauty that will never age, never fade, but instead grow more brilliant and expansive over the years….a “whole-woman beauty” that is my birthright, and yours too.
And THAT achievement, my friends, would be worth writing and reading about in our local papers.
Shannon
