Introduction
Hello, hello, my strong and wonderful and mindful and intelligent and courageous warriors out there listening right now. I’m your host Victoria, and welcome to the Eating Disorder Solutions podcast, Untangled, where we’re dedicated to unraveling, decoding, and exploring growth within eating disorder and mental health recovery. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I’m so excited to dive into our topic.
Today’s Quote
As I always want to just start or end my day with a positive quote, I’m going to do the same every time I start the podcast. So, I’m going to say a quote allowing you to receive and prepare your mind and soul for the lesson on today’s episode. Here is today’s quote:
“You don’t need to be ready to recover. You only need to be willing.”
So how can you apply this quote to yourself? A great mental health strategy is to apply helpful quotes to your daily life. Really question it, think about it, and apply it to yourself. If you’re able, pause this episode and write down your thoughts.
Healing is an amazing technique to help calm anxiety and process those emotions. It’s also just really important to nourish your mind with things that uplift you rather than pull you down and surround you with negativity.
Affirmations to Inspire You
To inspire you and help renew this sense of hope and commitment to recovery, we’re also going to repeat some mantras or affirmations together. I’m going to say it and just give you some time to repeat it because the best way to believe something and the best way to basically manifest that you are going to recover—or just anything in your life that you’re wanting—is to say it out loud. Saying it out loud or writing these things down and posting them on a bathroom mirror, in a journal, or in your car is a great way to remind yourself each day that you’re here to recover and that you’re way more capable than you even know right now.
I have three really short affirmations for you, yet very powerful. So here we go:
– I am becoming the best version of myself.
– Small progress is still progress.
– I will be kind to my body today.
About the Host
As your host, I do want to begin with the fact that, again, I’m not a therapist, dietician, psychologist, et cetera, nor do I claim to have experience as one. I work with Eating Disorder Solutions as their mental health and eating disorder knowledge advocate. So, I’m not claiming that I can heal you through my words, but I can promise you that I will always try.
So as you go through eating disorder recovery, whether it’s been years or it’s just the start of your healing journey, I want you to feel my unwavering confidence in you. You are worthy of the freedom that comes with recovery. Your body is worthy of kindness and appreciation every single day.
Understanding the Eating Disorder Voice
In this episode, we’re going to be discussing a very important topic: How do you combat your eating disorder voice? And what does that even mean when I say eating disorder voice?
When you’re in the midst of an eating disorder, it can feel like your entire identity kind of revolves around it. It’s becoming all-consuming. It makes it difficult to remember who you were before it actually took hold of your life.
The voice of an eating disorder becomes your constant companion, kind of like constantly berating you, telling you that you’re not good enough or worthy enough. It shames you for eating and criticizes your body. And as your condition worsens, that voice only grows stronger.
I want you to think of it as being in a toxic relationship, kind of with an abusive partner, because honestly, that’s kind of what it’s like. But here’s the thing: we can help you separate yourself from that voice.
At Eating Disorder Solutions, we can teach you to recognize that the voice of the eating disorder is not your own voice. It’s a separate entity that you can challenge and fight. You have the power to take back control of your life because ultimately, it’s your life. It’s not the eating disorder’s.
We all have harmful thoughts and beliefs from time to time. But in the case of an eating disorder, these thoughts can become automatic and deeply ingrained over time. That’s why it’s crucial to confront and challenge the negative messages that the eating disorder voice throws at you.
That voice knows how to manipulate you using all sorts of persuasive tactics and tones. For example, it might promise you that you can have a cupcake if you spend hours at the gym, or it might try to convince you that being thinner will make you happier or make people like you more. It can even use fear and self-criticism, making you believe that you’ll become bigger if you don’t watch every calorie.
These messages can be incredibly damaging and distort your thoughts about food, nutrition, and your body. Over time, it’s really, really destructive. But you have to remember that these messages are lies. They’re the voice of your eating disorder, not the voice of reason. And they can lead you down a dangerous path where you can harm both your mental and physical well-being.
That’s why reaching out for help is crucial during those times, even when it seems like it’s the hardest.
Recognizing Negative Thought Patterns
In the recovery process, it’s important to be aware of those harmful thoughts because when you start to distance yourself from disordered eating behaviors, that eating disorder voice honestly sounds like it’s almost getting louder. It’s a sign that you’re making progress, even though it will feel uncomfortable at first.
So how can you challenge and how can you begin to change these thoughts? But first, we’re going to take a quick pause because before we’re able to actually begin changing them, we need to be aware of some of the different types of negative thought patterns that you may experience from time to time.
These are just a couple of them with very small examples, but I’ll dive deeper into these in future episodes as well.
Black and White Thinking
This is thinking in terms of all or nothing, good or bad, right or wrong. It’s a yes or it’s a no. So basically, a gray area and a middle ground do not exist for you. As a result, you’re not able to see what’s going on around you objectively.
For example, say you go to a friend’s house, but in the back of your mind, you’re stuck on the fact that only organic foods are healthy for you. When your friend offers you a food that’s not organic, you decide not to eat because of black or white thinking: if I don’t have this particular thing, then I can’t have anything at all.
Overgeneralization
This means drawing conclusions based on one singular moment or one piece of evidence. You don’t have a lot of things to make your assumptions from, so you try to predict the future relying only on past events and experiences.
When it happens once, you assume it’s going to happen again and again. If you’re always using words like “always,” “never,” or “every,” sometimes that can mean you’re overgeneralizing.
For example: “I binged last night, so I’m never going to recover from my eating disorder.” This is overgeneralizing because just because it happened once or twice, you’re now continuously thinking this, making yourself believe it. In fact, you can absolutely recover no matter how many times you might have purged or binged before.
Catastrophizing
This is when people tend to blow something out of proportion. You’ll notice a problem and maybe ask yourself, “What if?”
If you find yourself thinking “what if?” a lot—what if tragedy strikes? What if it happens to me?—this is catastrophizing.
For example, you’re out to dinner with friends and want a taste of what they’re eating, but before doing so, you think, “What if I can’t stop eating after I take a bite? What if I start taking bites from everyone else’s plates and I can’t stop?”
This is catastrophizing because before it’s even happened, you’re already assuming you’re going to do something you might not have done before but are fearful of.
Labeling or Mislabeling
This is overgeneralizing in its most extreme form. You make global statements about yourself and others based on situations rather than hard facts. You evaluate and judge yourself after one experience or incident.
For example, you might label yourself as “stupid” or a “loser” when you make a mistake, instead of just saying, “Oh man, I made a mistake.” Or after eating a bite of your friend’s meal, you begin to feel like you’re “overeating” or “out of control.”
Labeling yourself is only surrounding you with negative feelings rather than giving yourself a chance in that moment.
Mislabeling has really negative consequences because it reinforces negative thoughts about yourself. The more you identify with those negative descriptions, the further away you get from reclaiming your own voice.
Emotional Reasoning
This is when you interpret reality according to how you are feeling in the moment. You use that feeling as a basis for understanding or comprehension, perceiving situations based on feelings rather than facts.
Because your mood affects your perception, you can’t see clearly when using emotional reasoning.
For example, many people fear taking the leap into treatment because they don’t know what will happen. They might say, “I feel nervous and scared about going to treatment, so it must be true that it won’t work for me.”
This unhelpful thinking stops you from getting the help you need, because you’re emotionally reasoning rather than looking at facts: “I’m not okay right now, and that should be enough to allow myself to get help.”
Challenging the Eating Disorder Voice
Once you’re aware of these thoughts, you can work towards changing them.
A great technique is to externalize these thoughts and label them as “ED” (eating disorder). Instead of mislabeling or labeling yourself, label the thoughts as eating disorder thoughts as they come into your head. When you do this, you gain distance from them, which helps you challenge them more often.
For example, if you think, “I can’t eat carbs,” or “I’m going to gain weight,” try transforming the statement into an eating disorder statement: “My eating disorder is telling me not to eat carbs, not me.”
Becoming aware of automatic negative thoughts is important because these thoughts are more powerful when unconscious. When we identify with a negative thought, there’s no space or distance to create resistance, which can pull us into a negative downward spiral.
When thoughts remain unconscious, we believe they’re 100% true, even without logical basis. Until we consciously evaluate them, they continue harming us without resistance. By becoming aware of negative thoughts as they happen, we identify away from them.
This process is similar to what a therapist might guide you through in treatment, helping you take more control over your mental well-being. You’re no longer unconsciously guided by negative thoughts; you can change and reframe them, gaining more control over future thoughts and behavior.
A great way to do this is through journaling. When you’ve identified a negative thought, dig deeper to see its full form, where it’s coming from, what else it relates to, whether you actually believe it, and why it popped up in the first place.
Shedding light on unconscious context lets you sort fact from fiction and move from emotional belief to conscious and logical evaluation.
This step is best done by talking through your negative thoughts with someone else—not only thinking or journaling about it—because conversation helps dig out context and purpose behind the thought.
Talking through our thoughts can reveal how harmful those patterns are, building confidence and motivation because now you can see them and fight them. You’re not just battling a transparent entity anymore; you’re able to hear it and reframe it.
The Four-Step Process to Reframing Negative Thoughts
Once you’re hearing and reframing the eating disorder voice, you examine the cost or harm that this negative thought might have.
– Step One: Become aware of the negative thought and identify away from it.
– Step Two: This is the aha moment or epiphany where you understand the thought’s impact.
– Step Three: Establish your “escape velocity”—like a rocket launching into space—as the energy, focus, and determination it takes to liberate yourself from the negative downward spiral. This comes from deeply engaging with the uncomfortable truth and committing to change.
– Step Four: Look for fact-based, intelligent reframing opportunities. Change the narrative and break free of the negative feedback cycle.
At this stage, you create space by identifying and distancing from the negative thought, evaluate it logically, commit to change, and develop a new, reframed narrative. This starts changing future perceptions and actions.
I might be biased, but I feel like this is what makes therapy so unbelievable and amazing—because there are tactics that genuinely help people like myself who have struggled deeply and emotionally, getting stuck in these negative loops.
Summary: A Step-by-Step Guide to Begin Today
To recap, here is a simple step-by-step process to get you started:
- Become aware of your limited or negative thinking patterns.
- Reflect on why the thought is popping up. Use journaling or talk it through with someone. Why is this thought important but also distressing?
- Look for fact-based reframing opportunities. Consider alternative ways of thinking, test them, and choose the most productive one for you.
- Practice and reinforce your new thought, allowing it to replace the old negative thought.
Now, rather than feeling like you’re fighting an invisible monster, you’re able to hear it, stop it, examine it, and reframe it into something better for you. The next time it pops up, you’re ready—you’ve practiced it—and you can implement something far more beneficial.
Remember, you have the power within you to overcome those harmful thoughts and absolutely reclaim your own voice rather than listening to the eating disorder voice.
It’s not about eradicating the eating disorder voice entirely, but rather recognizing it for what it is—an abusive partner—and choosing to challenge and reframe those thoughts, while listening to your own voice: the voice that knows your worth and wants what’s best for you.
Closing Encouragement
Recovery from an eating disorder is a difficult path that requires courage, resilience, humility, and strength. But the good news is, you already have all of these qualities. Now it’s time to believe in those qualities, build on them, and use them to take back your life.
And don’t forget: life is too dang delicious to let your eating disorder take the last bite.
