EATING DISORDERS & SPIRITUALITY
By Nancy Dakota Adlman, A.C.S.W., L.C.S.W.

Throughout the centuries, and in virtually every culture, spiritual leaders, "healers" and Shamans have addressed the need and desire for self-healing and self-connection. It seems that in the 90's, this search for spirituality and connection with the unknown and non-ordinary realm of reality is indeed at the forefront of many people's wish to be whole and healthy. When I refer to spirituality, I am not referring to religion per se, I am speaking about a healing process that can result in a successful integration of all parts of a person on all levels of being.

For many years now, eating disorders have been treated with medication, psychotherapy, family and group therapy, support groups, 12-step approaches, etc. Many of these methods of treatment have been successful or have aided in the progress toward recovery. However, for many clients who are actively symptomatic or whose symptomatic behavior diminished or went into remission, some eating disordered patterns of behavior may still plague the client and significantly impact the client's quality of life.

How could this be possible? Many patients who stop binging and purging or who stop starving themselves still claim that they are "binging on activity" or are obsessed with every single choice or move they make. Patients also find difficulty maintaining healthy, intimate relationships and find it impossible to function autonomously from their parents. Some also feel driven to perfection in everything they do. In addition, many eating-disordered clients complain about the endless chatter inside their heads or about an "internal tyrant" that criticizes and controls--a chronic voice of negativity and mistrust that never allows them to just be.

Many clients live primarily in their heads and cannot allow themselves to be still, to relax, or to accept thing from outside that are positive and nourishing. For clients who do allow positive elements, they only do so for a limited time until they find themselves returning to the repetitive pattern of behaviors that re-ignite the cycle of self-criticism, self-sabotage, self-abandonment and low self-esteem.

In my work with eating-disordered clients, I have discovered over and over again that I must bridge a gap which will lead to enhanced self-connection. When a person engages in eating-disordered behavior, he or she has disconnected from his or her body somewhere along the line in order to survive traumatic feelings or painful events. In fact, our bodies and our cellular memories within our bodies hold the key to our authentic selves and to all the feelings we try to get rid or run away from.

Unless we can return to the core of this organic connection in our bodies--the mental body, the emotional body, the physical body and the spiritual body--we will never be able to release the repetition of painful patterns of behavior, feelings and thoughts which maintain our suffering and our intense attachment to a false self-system.

In my work with clients, I try to integrate psychotherapy, Shamanic teachings and healing techniques to assist clients
in accessing a connection in themselves in order to create balance and a sense of grounding which many clients are unable to achieve through psychotherapy alone. The key to successful treatment is to make unconscious, habitual patterns of behaviors and beliefs about oneself come into consciousness and to facilitate the client's separation and release from these painfully "safe" and familiar modes of operating. As these patterns approach consciousness, clients find that they cannot integrate the lessons and connections they have made from this journey by staying in their heads. Successful treatment requires the full participation of every level of one's being.

Eating-disordered clients in particular have difficulty letting go and slowing down the body and mind. As an adjunct to therapy, I encourage clients to learn how to access a sacred connection through yoda, meditation, Tai Chi, massage, acupuncture, and other methods of holistic healing. Learning to access a place of stillness is essential for greater empowerment and for realigning the energies that are blocked or deadened. This allows one to achieve mental, physical and spiritual balance. When we engage in reactionary forms of behavior, we leak our power and we block our feelings and energy centers that should otherwise remain open and flowing in order to feel more centered and authentic.

In addition to psychotherapy and psycho-dynamic work with clients, I work intensively to restore personal power that was lost over the years and to help facilitate retrieval of parts that have remained invisible and disconnected. In my work, I rely heavily on Native American spiritual teachings, which help the client reclaim power and shift to a new belief system through a connection with nature, animals, plants, stones, the moon, seasons, etc. Certain Shamanic techniques, such as rattling, drumming or smudging can be utilized to initiate the opening of a formerly blocked energetic pathway. I also encourage clients to do Shamanic journey work, to meditate or to keep a dream journal to assist them in this process.

Transpersonal experiences, alternative healing techniques and spirituality can give people direct access to new information about oneself and one's connection to other forms of energy that were not possible to realize on an intellectual or cognitive level. By cultivating this opening in a safe, healing environment, clients can transcend the boundaries of the psychological realm and of their own internal limitations into a place they never thought possible. Those who have been suffering with eating disorders must work particularly hard to cross the bridge to a world that is more unknown when the map changes with great frequency. However, the more connected people become with their organic, authentic selves, the more they can be freed of the attachments to the old, familiar patterns of behavior and beliefs that disempowered them and kept them spinning around in the same unbalanced vision for years.

The drive to become healthy is an excruciating and joyous road all at once. Coming back into consciousness, into awakening, can be quite shocking and arduous. If clients are willing to allow a radical shift in trust in themselves and in those people that are supporting them on their "medicine wheel", the outcome of healing and self-connection and self-care is crucial to a true recovery from not only eating-disordered symptomatology but also from an eating-disordered way of life.

ARTICLE PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN THE AABA NEWSLETTER FALL/1997
ARTICLE PUBLISHED WITH FULL PERMISSION OF AUTHOR