Whether you are still focusing on symptom reduction or you are working on longer term issues of relapse prevention in your eating disorder recovery, resourcing is an important part of your work. What do I mean by resourcing? When you resource, you call on experiences or tools that help you feel calmer when distressed, or more grounded and centered when overwhelmed or out–of–control. Developing confidence in your ability to know and use the resources that help you achieve these outcomes is crucial to recovery.

Resources come in two forms: external and internal. External resources are all those things outside yourself that have a calming or centering effect on you. External resources  can include people, places (your room, a park, a church, a favorite street…), pets or other animals, objects (a stuffed animal, something from nature, like a stone, Grandma’s locket… ) or activities (walking, reading, gardening, journaling, listening to music…). What serves as a resource for someone else might not help you. Or what helps you in one situation might not be the right thing for another situation. You have to be able to tune in to your own feelings and trust what you experience to discover what resources help you the most.

Internal resources are those you evoke inside your mind, using your ability to remember or imagine. Internal resources can be anything you’d use as an external resource, only you experience them inside your mind rather than in real time outside yourself. Internal resources have the valuable extra dimension of including experiences that never were and don’t have to be realistically possible to have the desired effect. Maybe that’s creating your own planet, or a made–up landscape, or feeling the presence of a nurturing person who always gets you, or being cradled or held in a way that feels just right. There are no limits to the internal resources you can develop. You only need to know you need or desire them and they are yours for the asking, anytime, anywhere.

If you’ve  lived through an eating disorder you may be surprised to find internal resourcing can be an effective way to calm, soothe or ground yourself. You may even be outright skeptical or disbelieving. After all, during your eating disorder you put all your faith in the external experiences of food or dieting as the way to achieve these ends.  A number of people who have suffered from an eating disorder feel resistant to working on developing internal resources. Besides not trusting that they can become effective in doing so, I think many people are unconsciously still waiting for the external care they may have missed in childhood to show up and make them feel better. It’s an understandable longing, but I always feel sad when I see people get stuck there since it postpones the development of real capacities that can make them feel better.

Which is better, external or internal resources? I think to be really healthy and resilient as human beings, we all need a balance of the two. Using resources is something that you just get better at with practice. And you can never have too many. Lining up an optimal array of resources is a lifetime journey for all of us. Now is a perfect time to get started!

Warmest wishes,

Susan

Next week I’m so lucky to be headed off for a week’s vacation in Rome. My head is mostly full of Bernini and biscotti. But I got to wondering what’s been happening to the Italian fashion industry’s attempts to deal with eating disorders among their models.

In 2006, after several tragic deaths among models, the industry in neighboring Spain specified that in order for models to participate in the Madrid fashion week shows, they must demonstrate a BMI (body mass index) of at least 18. This roughly means a 5’8 model must weigh at least 120 pounds. Though the BMI is controversial as a way to measure health related to weight, at least the Spanish industry—along with the Spanish government— was saying “Enough!”

The Italian industry took notice. In 2007, Italy’s Chamber of Fashion proposed a licensing procedure for models. The proposal has resulted in a “self–regulating code of ethics” for the industry that requires a BMI of 18.5 in order for a model to be allowed on the fashion week runway and bans models younger than 16 years.

That same year the nude photo of an emaciated model, Isabelle Caro, appeared on a billboard in Rome with the caption “No Anorexia”. The shocking image was intended as yet another wake–up call. Yet within three years Caro — who posed to help others — was dead from the effects of starvation.

Did Caro’s final warning have an impact her brave billboard did not? As the Italians would say, the answer is “mezza–mezza.” The 2010 Milan shows refreshingly  introduced some curvy models said to look more like normal women. Yet last month, just a year after Caro’s death, Milan fashion week attendees were posting in dismay about skin–and–bones models again on the runway.

The usual assortment of bad guys can be found to explain why it’s so hard to promote health on the runway: people who can make a buck from showing clothes on starving women or just prefer a gaunt esthetic, no matter what the cost to models or the people who want to emulate them. But there are also good guys who genuinely care about the well–being of models and those they influence. My soon–to–be hosts, the Italians, offer a fine example: Elena Miroglio, on behalf of her fashion house, Elena Mirò, was awarded the insignia of Cavaliere della Repubblica (Order of Merit of the Italian Republic) in 2007 based on the group’s fashion show featuring size 14-plus women on the catwalk. The president of Italy cited Miroglio for “emancipating women from a constrictive concept of beauty.” The Miroglio Group carries several lines of “”curvy size” clothing brands. This year the group hosted the casting sessions for Ciao Magre’, the first agency in Italy to specialize in “shapely size” models. I have to say “Brava!”

Warmest wishes until I return,

Susan

If you’ve had an eating disorder, you know the fear of losing control: control of your body shape and weight, your eating, your emotions, your environment, your public image, people’s feelings toward you…The list of things you need to control is endless. The effort to control it all is exhausting. And it’s unforgiving. If you lose a little control of anything, it means you and your life are totally out–of–control (another of those all–or–nothing experiences).

How does control become such an all–consuming — you’ll pardon the term — issue to people with eating disorders? It probably won’t surprise you if I say it goes back to experiences you had growing up. Here are some of the more common scenarios that set the stage for control issues later in life:

• Authoritarian families When control is enforced from the outside rather than cultivated from within, struggles over who’s the boss of me? often take on disguised forms, like an eating disorder.
• Families that are preoccupied with issues of control When parents are anxiously focused on issues of control in their own lives, it is bound to get passed along to their kids.
• Perfectionistic families When the bar for what is acceptable is set at perfection, anything less feels being out of control.
• Chaotic families In families where no one is predictably in charge—for instance, due to alcohol or substance abuse — life really can be scary and it can feel like control is the only thing that matters.
• Early trauma, such as catastrophic loss, abuse, neglect, or peer trauma. Trauma implies being overwhelmed, lacking sufficient support to protect you from the overwhelm, and helplessness to protect yourself from it. Being in control feels like the only way to avoid the unbearable feelings of overwhelm.

Okay, let’s say you identify with one or more of these scenarios. But what does this have to do with an eating disorder? Part of the genius of an eating disorder is that it seems to help you solve life issues that otherwise threaten to get the better of you. (Notice I said “seems ”.) When it comes to control, the genius ED move is to reduce the universe of what must be controlled down to weight and eating. If you stick to your current diet, or eat little to nothing, all’s right with the world. Ditto if you stay below a certain weight. And maintaining a certain level of discipline about exercise doesn’t hurt. In other words, sticking to the standards dictated by your eating disorder provides a false sense of being in control. Of course, if you’re in recovery you’ve discovered the giant paradox that the more you are run by your eating disorder, the more out–of–control you actually are.

If the paradox of an eating disorder is that it takes you out of control in the name of being in control, the paradox of recovery is that you need to accept lack of control in order to feel more in control.

How can that be? First of all, accepting lack of control means recognizing that life is big and complex and full of surprises. This is what John Lennon famously captured when he said: “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”  Frankly, to control everything would be to take the life out of it.

So what can you do if you’re terrified of not being in control, yet lack of control is a fundamental part of living? Your ”growth edge” in recovery is to reduce feelings of threat associated with situations where you lack control and to begin to build your sense of confidence about them. Confidence comes from discovering your capacity to figure things out, to stick with it when you’re uncertain, to develop new skills where they’re needed, to ask for help or support when necessary, and so forth. It requires knowing that not knowing is not shameful and learning is always an option. When you feel safer, curiosity can replace the sense of threat. Situations where you lack control can be invitations to growth. Ruling in the world of calories becomes less important and less interesting. Of course, gaining this kind of confidence can take a long time, but the freedom you gain for the rest of your life is well worth it.

Warm regards

Susan