Jed Shlackman, LMHC, provides services to clients in the Miami and South Florida area who are seeking to address a wide spectrum of mental health concerns. This includes challenges with eating disorders, which normally co-occur with other psychological issues and which are in a sense symptoms of underlying psychological distress. Eating disorders come in many forms, from self-starvation (anorexia nervosa) to binging and purging (bulimia), as well as fears about food consumption that go beyond a healthy or realistic concern about weight, health, or nutrition.
Eating disorders include anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, purging, and other compulsive or restrictive patterns of interaction with food that reflect a dysfunctional relationship with food and eating or one's own body and self-image. In a sense, these patterns are reflections of unresolved emotions and ways of coping with psychological distress, usually stemming from past traumas and dysfunctional family environments. The imbalance in one's relationship with food and nourishment reflects an imbalance in one's relationship with life and oneself. In addition to psychoeducation and cognitive processing therapies to help a person reshape eating habits it is vital to address the underlying psychological issues that are at the core of the compulsions, emotions, and distorted sense of self. This can involve therapies to reprocess and resolve trauma, address family systems and constellations, balance one's energy system, and reintegrate one's personality toward a healthier state of development. The eating disorder is merely a symptom of a deeper disturbance, and resolution involves addressing the deeper disturbances rather than focusing on the eating behaviors. Attempting to consciously change the eating patterns will be a struggle without addressing the underlying psychosocial and spiritual issues.
From an energetic perspective, these issues often relate to the lower chakras, primarily the sacral and solar plexus. The sacral chakra is the energy center that concerns one's creativity and sexuality. A person's feelings about the body and one's sexuality can lead to disturbed eating habits. A history of sexual abuse or harassment (or guilt or shame associated with one's sexuality) can also fuel this unhealthy relationship with one's own body. The solar plexus chakra is the center relating to one's self-confidence and self-expression, to one's personal power and control. A person who feels insecure and lacking power over their social environment or who is unable to process (digest) experiences they are encountering in life may develop obsessions and compulsions related to food that are subconsciously reflecting those issues with personal power and how the individual is taking in life experiences.
As an example of how an eating disorder can reflect these deep subconscious issues, here is a quote describing a few common patterns and themes associated with anorexia, taken from the pioneering psychologist Michael J. Lincoln, Ph.D. in his book Messages From The Body:
"Anorexia (Self-Starvation)"I'm awful" They are suffering from extreme fear, self-revulsion, and self-rejection. They feel incapable of meeting the demands made upon them, they feel it is completely unsafe to be themselves, and they feel totally unable to please their mother in their head. They feel nagged at, crowded in upon, and disallowed their own identity.
They have a desperate need for emotional nourishment, unconditional acceptance, and loving affection that is creating a severe emptiness inside that is demanding satisfaction. They are attempting to "starve the emptiness," in the hope that it will go away and demand less.
They have episodes of intense desires to die, due to their utter self-disgust, severe emotional deprivation, and emotional starvation. Their emotional needs are experienced as just being too great to live with.
Their mother made it crystal clear that any form of neediness or self-commitment, self-development, and self-empowerment would lead to ultimate and lethal abandonment. They are therefore trying to prevent sexual maturity and growing up, and they demand exaggerated control of events.
They are trying to be "pure," non-physical, strictly mental, and ethereally spiritual, in a systematic refusal to grow up. They are attempting to remain a "genderless child" as an act of appeasement to their mother. They systematically deny themselves that right to life in so doing"
In order to resolve these or other issues it would be vital to access those parts of the subconscious mind that are stuck playing out these coping mechanisms. Integrating those aspects of the self and helping them receive healing resources from the present self and a wise, grounded spiritual intelligence can foster a shift and release of the old patterns and a new path of embodying empowerment.
Jed has worked with many people of all ages to help them shift their mental and emotional patterns and transform their lives. If you are struggling with an eating disorder there is definitely hope for you to become free of it. Imbalanced relationships with food are actually common in the human experience - while a majority of the population may display mild or moderate dysfunctional patterns there are some people whose lives become taken over by obsessions or compulsions related to food. Ideally, one can recognize and begin to heal such a pattern before it consumes the person's life. Yet, even if it seems that things are out of control you can still turn things around and find a new direction and purpose in your life. Believe it, and you will achieve it!
Eating Disorder Education And Healing References And Resources
Article: The Spiritual Dimensions Of Recovering From An Eating Disorder
Spiritual teacher and intuitive healer Teal Swan discusses anorexia and eating disorders
Teal shares about how to overcome anorexia
The Naturopathic Approach To Treatment of Eating Disorders
Eating Disorder Referrals: Holistic Treatment Centers
National Eating Disorders Association
Monte Nido & Affiliates: Eating Disorder Treatment Programs and Centers
