The Power of Questioning Fear-Based Thoughts in Eating Disorder Recovery

Shift your attention to shift your internal feeling state…

Where I choose to place my attention is reflected in a certain ‘feeling state’ in the physical body. Thoughts/perceptions influence feelings — feelings drive choices/actions/behaviour. If I believe a thought/perception generating fear, I’m guaranteed to react to it. At any point, I can consciously interrupt the thought/perception believed in with a sincere question.

“I’m not good enough”

“I’m a failure”

“I need to lose weight”

I believed I wouldn’t be loved and accepted if I didn’t pay attention to and obey these types of thoughts. Believing these thoughts drove me to make choices that caused tremendous suffering in the past.

Maybe you can recognise you have invested in similar thoughts at some point, too?

When I was in the trenches with my Eating Disorder, I was not aware it was possible to unidentify with the insecure thoughts I was believing about myself, or detach from painful memories of past experiences that I perceived as ‘proof’ of these beliefs…

These thoughts/perceptions of self-judgement, were taken on within me as facts, creating extremely uncomfortable feelings. These feelings/emotions drove me to engage in compulsive behaviour, that I believed would alleviate or avoid that discomfort.

Enquiry shines light on what’s been hidden in the shadows…

Sincere enquiry reveals a sense of internal spaciousness and neutrality. Neutrality does not mean suppression of emotions or toleration. Neutrality allows for a greater capacity to experience emotions fully — simply removing the personal story that says “reality should show up differently”, in order for me to feel okay inside.

This behaviour would temporarily relieve some discomfort but was ultimately very destructive, or simply caused subtle suppression of my natural expression, perpetuating mistrust and shame.

Shame fuelled this cycle of investing in thoughts/perceptions based in insecurities and judgement —> avoiding uncomfortable feelings —> engaging in harmful behaviours to attempt to mitigate the discomfort from the self-judgement (round and round the cycle goes).

Thoughts and feelings are like passing clouds — you are the vast, unchanging sky…

Potent questions reveal the power to choose beyond operating from an automatic/conditioned reaction. Detaching from suffering thoughts/perceptions through questioning, allows uncomfortable feelings to be felt and observed. Witnessing everything that arises within me, come and go, confirms in my direct experience where I am already at ease.

Learning how to go beyond concepts (by embodying the skills of Self Intelligence) to consciously interrupt this cycle and retrain my attention away from these limiting beliefs, was the key to freeing myself from my Eating Disorder and transformed how I show up in every area of my life.

Self Enquiry supports me to land back into true internal stability, with clarity and openness for whatever spontaneous action feels authentic to enact, moment-to-moment.

If any of this resonates with you and you feel called to learn potent skills and processes to support you to interrupt painful cycles of behaviour that are keeping you feeling stuck, please reach out.

I’d love to connect with you and support you on your journey home to yourself.

With love,

Georgie