Hanger, calming your nervous system and creating a robust recovery mindset
I write about the psychology of eating disorders. I have personally recovered from bulimia and have worked as a therapist for 20 years. I hope to inspire, educate and improve understanding about eating disorders through my writing. Names used are fictional and stories shared are a combined insight of many client experiences. I believe that full recovery is possible for everyone.
Listen to the audio here: -
Your mindset can make or break your healing journey.
With 60,000 plus thoughts per day swirling through your mind and many being repetitive, you can see the power of your thoughts to potentially affect your mood and behaviour. Repetitive thoughts can become entrenched beliefs, which create habits, which ultimately shape your life.
As Lao Tzu aptly said: -
‘Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny’.
Your thoughts can be hugely impactful in your eating disorder recovery.
The diagram below from Cognitive Behaviour Therapy clearly illustrates the interaction between thoughts, feelings, behaviour and physical body.
An example:
Situation: Eating an unplanned biscuit at work.
Thoughts: ‘I’ve completely blown it. I’ve failed at my eating plan’.
Mood/feelings: guilty, anxious, overwhelmed, ashamed.
Behaviour: eat 10 more biscuits and then go to the vending machine to buy crisps and chocolate.
Physical reaction: bloated, over-full, sick, dissociated, skin crawling disgust.
Further thoughts: ‘I’ll never be free of this. What’s the point? I might as well eat more. The diet starts tomorrow’.
This example illustrates how the unplanned biscuit was a realistically a minor event. But the thinking about the biscuit eating was dramatic and potentially caused more harm.
The inner critic went on a destructive rampage. Fear amplified and every worst-case scenario was anticipated.
The situation felt overwhelming and unmanageable. There was a helpless ‘What’s the point anyway?’, and a slide into what felt like inevitable ways of coping.
Much of this is unconscious and automatic.
Imagine a different way of thinking: -
Situation: Eating an unplanned biscuit at work.
Thoughts: ‘I enjoyed that biscuit. It was tasty. I’m pleased to be allowing myself a range of foods without guilt, as I know this is inoculation against binge eating’.
Mood/feelings: peaceful, content, satisfied.
Behaviour: return to work. Then realise that I haven’t eaten enough today, as I’m feeling hungry. Go and seek out a snack that is satisfying, blood sugar balancing and tasty.
Physical reaction: comfortably full. Not distracted anymore by hunger.
Further thoughts: ‘I’m proud of myself for tuning in to my body and responding to meet my needs. I’m working on self-care and nourishment, rather than restriction or overeating’.
The rational thought challenging can seem straightforward, when you’re removed from the eye of the ‘biscuit storm’.
Thought challenging sounds simple but it is hard.
Your old thought patterns have strongly wired neural pathways which automatically fire at rapid speed. It takes deep awareness and conscious interruption to shift your thinking.
You will need to find ways to pause and reflect more, placing a window of opportunity for self-connection into your day.
There will be inevitable barriers to practicing this.
Hanger is a real thing
If you are overly hungry, thought challenging will be nigh impossible.
Hunger makes you anxious, fearful, irritable, rigid and illogical.
Your brain is designed to help you survive. It will demand food and sustenance first, above your more nuanced psychological needs.
But can you tell if you are genuinely hungry?
Many of my clients consider that they are emotionally eating, when in fact they are hungry, with emotions laden on top.
You need to deal with your hunger first and work to avoid falling into ferociously hungry and dysregulated states.
Now if you feel completely out of sync with your hunger cues, it doesn’t matter. In time, you will learn to connect with your body. Patience is key.
To help with this process, start to establish regular eating. This means working up to six eating occasions per day, which includes three meals and three snacks. You want to aim for a balanced plate with carbohydrates, fats, protein and fruits/vegetables, at your main meals.
This will offer you an eating scaffolding of safety and self-care. It doesn’t’ need to be rigid or inflexible.
You can have windows of time to eat your food, and you can keep it incredibly simple. You might even eat the same things for breakfast and lunch everyday (to begin with) to allow yourself to build momentum and a feeling of efficacy.
Creating some peace
Once you feel that you are creating some fuelling balance and a stable body physiology, the next change to consider is creating glimmers of calm and self-soothing in your day.
Most people with eating disorders run through life so fast that they don’t have time to catch a breath.
You’re probably spinning on the hamster wheel of life. You book yourself back-to-back appointments. You have little time for rest or reflection and you’re consequently, flooded with adrenaline and cortisol for much of the day.
You are living in fear and ready to flee the bear at any moment.
A human with a nervous system in high alert cannot access wise and rational thoughts easily. You are primed to escape from danger and survive.
So, to tune into your wisdom and supportive inner voice, you need to slow down.
You might think, ‘I don’t have time for this!’.
It doesn’t have to involve huge chunks of time or abandoning your responsibilities.
The little pause moments can add up to a big deal and ripple through your day with surprising effect.
For example:
A 5-minute break between meetings and you get a glass of water or walk around.
A 15-minute walk in nature at lunchtime.
10 minutes of mindful mundane activity such as washing dishes.
Talking to a colleague or friend for 5 minutes who uplifts your energy.
Going to the bathroom and checking in with how you are feeling.
The little moments can be impactful.
You are releasing built up pressure and tension in micro doses.
You are tuning into your needs and honouring them more.
This prevents the building of volcanic-like eruption pressure, which results from ignoring your needs for hours on end.
If you are dealing with hunger and fuelling yourself and calming your nervous system and slowing down, you are then far better equipped to deal with your thoughts and feelings.
How to shift your thinking?
Write out or imagine the CBT diagram (as above) noticing your current thoughts, feelings, behaviours and physical body.
Bring awareness to the present moment.
You might prefer to write things down in a journal or speak aloud in your car or to a friend.
How to challenge negative thoughts
Simply changing a negative thought for a positive one, often doesn’t work because you will often believe that the negative one is true.
Instead, you can challenge the thought with reasonable evidence. This helps access the rational side of the brain.
Just to reiterate, some degree of calmness first is needed to make this possible.
Thought challenging can bring awareness to your current thinking styles. You can stand back and consider how you can look at the situation in a different way.
It’s also worth remembering that thoughts are only thoughts, they are not facts.
They may feel true, but this does not mean that they are true. They are often an opinion, which has been reinforced as ‘truth’, by your confirmation bias (which we all have) in how you filter and interpret situations.
If you believe something to be true, you will unconsciously find the evidence to support this and make it true.
Questions to challenge your thinking
Does your thought ‘fit the facts’? Is it true? (It will likely feel true due to past experiences and/or interpretation of thought. However, this does not make it true).
What does this thought mean to you?
For example: - if you feel that you must be perfect this might mean that you don’t feel good enough deep down.
Does it happen every time? Is this always true?
What would you say to a friend who was thinking this?
How might you have looked at this situation, before you became ill/had your current problems?
How would you like to feel about this?
I have highlighted number 4, as I believe this is often one of the most powerful questions that you can ask yourself.
If you don’t have time for the full thought challenging exercise (although I would recommend trying it), ask yourself what you’d say to a friend.
This can immediately help shift perspective, as you are likely much kinder to your friends than yourself.
This process of thought challenging takes repetition to gain results, as you will have been thinking in the old way for a long time.
Have faith and persist. The micro cumulative shifts will bring transformation over the long term.
Your new thinking will ripple into your daily life and create new ways of being. This will have the knock on impact of shifting your beliefs, habits and ultimately your recovery destiny.
So keep going!
Do you relate to this? Do share your mindset challenges in recovery. Thank you!
To find out more about my work:-
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