Self-empowerment is critical to overcome an eating disorder and succeed at building a free life. But what does this even mean?
Well, self-empowerment involves taking control of the process to overcome the eating diosrder and gaining confidence in your abilities to do so, no matter what others around you do, say or think (or what your brain perceives others to be saying or thinking!!).
I've written a lot about the importance of self-empowerment in my blogs and books but realised that I haven't written a post on this topic alone. That's a failure on my part when I spend a lot of time telling people that finding their own empowerment for their recovery will make or break their chances of success.
In my first book, Addicted to Energy Deficit, I wrote an entire chapter on the topic of self-empowerment and how critical it is because of how strongly I feel that it overarches everything for a successful recovery. This blog post is an abridged version of that chapter of the book. If you want to read the entire chapter and the rest of the book, then please seek out a copy!
What is Self-Empowerment?
Self-empowerment involves developing a mindset in which you believe in your own abilities and can take charge.
You need to develop trust that you can override the eating disorder’s urges, stop the behaviours and eat more.
You need to gain belief that you can cope with changes to your body shape and weight.
Finding the right steps forwards and taking them is key, as is seeking the type of support that will make it easier for you to make the necessary changes.
It’s also crucial that as you go through the difficult process of overcoming the eating disorder, you begin to develop a sense of identity beyond it.
Self-empowerment is not being told what to do and only doing it because someone else says you should.
It’s not seeking permission to eat, rest or gain weight.
It’s not blaming others when things don’t go as you hoped.
It’s recognising that this process is hard and emotionally challenging, and so lapses can be inevitable. It’s learning from the lapses when they occur, taking responsibility without being self-critical and carrying on.
True self-empowerment allows you to take control of the eating disorder and problem-solve the necessary but challenging steps to overcome it. When you become self-empowered, you take your control back from the eating disorder. It’s liberating and it can give you a sense of achievement, self-pride, confidence and self-worth.
Why Do People with Eating Disorders Often Lack Self-Empowerment Skills?
People with eating disorders often lack the factors needed to be self-empowered. This can be due to having had an eating disorder for years, previously unsuccessful recovery attempts and, for some, prescriptive treatment that has removed their self-trust and independence. Some people have even been told that their ability to ever overcome the eating disorder is minimal at best.
I too lacked any sense of self-empowerment to overcome the eating disorder for years. Despite my inner desperation to recover, after a few short years of having an eating disorder, I was given the prognosis that my poor quality of life was the best I could ever hope for.
This left me defeated, submissive and distrusting of myself.
I'd seek the permission of others rather than make decisions for myself about how I could make the necessary changes to find the free future I craved.
Only after years of living like this did I come to accept that the treatment approach I had tried over and again was never going to work. I knew I had to find another way forward.
It was then that I finally took charge of my recovery for myself. I decided that not only was I going to overcome the eating disorder but I was going to do it my way. Only then did things ultimately change.
The traditional treatment that I cycled through for years could make me gain weight, but nothing ever changed at a brain-based level, and so the eating disorder and all the addictive behaviours remained.
Change only happened when I decided that I was going to break the restrictive eating, stop the behaviours and put myself through the emotional processes on a path that I owned.
I was determined to do it no matter how tough it got, how much weight I gained or how quickly.
I had to stop seeking permission to make changes or looking for excessive reassurance.
A professional, family member or coach telling me exactly what to eat and when would never work. They could support me when things got tough and help me process my thoughts, emotions and next steps, but I had to make the changes, take the steps and do it.
This was my life, and I knew I couldn’t live with the eating disorder for the rest of my days. I had to find out if my life could be different, and to do that, I had to take back my control. It was only then that mentally things shifted in ways they hadn't before. I felt more liberated than I had in years and finally believed that perhaps I could have a future without an eating disorder.
Self-Empowerment Involves Self-Belief, Identity & Future Vision
To feel self-empowered means to have trust in yourself. This is something people with eating disorders, perhaps understandably, often lack.
Following repeated failed attempts to recover, you can lose trust in your own ability to say no to the eating disorder behaviours.
If time and again you have been determined that tomorrow I will eat more, but when tomorrow comes you eat all the same restrictive foods, self-trust in your abilities quickly drops.
The other factor that impacts your trust in yourself is dopamine, which relates to the urgent and powerful drive to get that energy deficit fix. Pursuing energy deficit creates an instantly calming, soothing effect that makes life feel a bit more possible. This dopamine release pushes you to pursue more of it and delay the pain for another day.
Your self-identity will also impact your sense of empowerment in relation to overcoming the eating disorder.
To find the strength and willpower to go through the processes necessary to overcome an eating disorder and resist the frequent and strong urges, you need to believe in a future self who is not someone with an eating disorder.
You need to trust that it will be worth the pain to get there.
When you have lived life in a numb eating disorder bubble for any length of time, your identity becomes entwined in it. It’s then hard to envision, let alone trust, in a future without the eating disorder forming part of your identity.
Ultimately, you need to find ways to develop your self-trust and belief in yourself and your ability to change. You also need to create and hold on to a vision of a future that hasn’t had the colour drained from it by an eating disorder. When you develop these skills, you will feel more empowered and able to take further steps towards overcoming the eating disorder, which will then positively impacts your self-identity, confidence and feelings of self-worth.
When you begin to develop trust in yourself, you will also become more empowered.
This can drive you to take further steps toward behaviour change, and as you do, you come to trust yourself a little more, and the process continues to evolve. But, of course, to take those first steps, you need to have some initial belief in yourself.
Tell yourself that just because previous attempts haven’t worked, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it now. You are not the same person you were when you attempted to overcome the eating disorder before. You are more knowledgeable; you have more insight and perhaps more determination. Think of other hard things you have done in your life and remind yourself that you are a strong person, and you can empower yourself to overcome this eating disorder, even when the process is harder than anything you have ever faced.
Self-Empowerment Doesn't Mean Doing it Alone
Taking ownership of the process to overcome an eating disorder doesn’t mean you go through it without support or any form of treatment. Eating disorders love people to isolate themselves and thrive in sercrecy and isolation.
Overcoming an eating disorder in isolation isn’t the idea!
To be self-empowered is the opposite of going through the process alone.
If you think about anyone who accomplishes anything big in life (and overcoming an eating disorder is up there with the biggest thing anyone will do in a lifetime), they have a team behind them. Sometimes they have global-scale teams behind them!
These teams are there to help, support, guide, encourage, problem-solve and improve their overall chances of success while they remain at the centre of the process, taking responsibility for it.
Own your process to overcome the eating disorder and use all the help you can get.
Take the driver’s seat but use your team to keep you on track on the journey, to encourage and guide you, to help you overcome obstacles and to celebrate wins with you. Allow your team to make the process easier in any way they can, while you maintain control of the wheel.
Self-Empowerment Is Key for Reprogramming Your Brain
Reprogramming your brain is fundamental when it comes to overcoming an eating disorder and the addictive behaviours that go with it. As I've written about before, this involves unwiring the old brain circuits that drive the addictive habits and wiring in new circuits that will drive healthier habits to replace them. This means that you are using your brain’s neuroplasticity, which is much more effective when you are an active participant in the process—making the decision to change, problem-solving how and instigating those changes.
When learning anything new, your brain needs to understand that the new learning is important and so applying emotions to what you are doing helps.
Dig into your inner motivation, looking to what not having an eating disorder can bring you and summoning up feelings of excitement and anticipation. This motivation will also help drive you to keep going when the process gets tough.
Believe in your abilities and celebrate steps forward. Celebrating the small wins promotes the increased release of dopamine in response to behaviours you want, which can help motivate you to repeat them.
The second component of reprogramming your brain to overcome an eating disorder is that of the dopamine reset. This is when you will experience distressing withdrawal effects as you stop engaging in the eating disorder behaviours and experience the dopamine deficit created during the years of engaging in them.
Self-empowerment will help you find ways to tolerate these withdrawal symptoms rather than allowing them to trigger you back into the addictive and numbing behaviours. Understanding why you feel this way and taking control to recognise the discomfort and yet still choosing to sit through it is empowering.
You will also need to problem-solve so that you can identify what support systems will help you when the emotional or physical withdrawal symptoms are intense. You know yourself best when it comes to what support makes a difference and who that should come from.
You, more than anyone, know the key triggers that are likely to push you back into the addictive and habitual behaviours. Other people can help you identify these triggers, but no one can tell you what yours are without your input.
Choosing to be honest in the process is another thing that only you can do. This means being honest with yourself and with your support team.
All of these factors given above relate back to being sufficiently empowered and motivated.
For brain reprogramming to be as effective as it can be in overcoming an eating disorder, you need to take control of the process, choose to change, build on new behaviours each day while stopping the old ones and put in place support that will make a difference to you.
Believe that you can keep going—even when withdrawal symptoms are strong—and develop a self-identity for your future without the eating disorder. Developing your own sense of self-empowerment and taking ownership of your process are critical.
To Conclude
People who have overcome eating disorders say that two things were key to the process: empowerment to do so and self-reconciliation, which means to learn more about themselves and their self-identity.
It is possible for you to be supported in developing skills in self-empowerment, alongside skills in emotional regulation and self-control. Support and encouragement are also critical when the process of overcoming the eating disorder feels exhausting and distressing.
Meaningful change doesn’t happen through a prescription or treatment to a passive patient. You need to be active in your process because your future life is at stake.
In my experience, when people are shown what they can and need to do for themselves and then are supported through it, they very often can and will make changes, developing pride in themselves when they do. This gives them a stronger sense of self-drive, purpose and, of course, self-empowerment.
You can do this.
Don't wait to be fixed by someone else.
Choose to take control of your own recovery, doing it the way you know deep down is best for you, no matter what anyone else says.
This is your future and it's out there for you to grab and take ownership of.