MINDFULNESS AND COMPASSION

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I honour the courage it took to bring yourself here.

Compassionate approaches can help where other interventions have failed for you. Or where they have seemed to help for a while, and then haven’t. 

Compassion focused therapy for eating disorders and specific compassionate mindfulness techniques help break free from the pain, stresses and traumatic experience both from the eating disorder itself and from past lived experience. 

In mindfulness, we cultivate awareness, reducing reactivity to distressing thoughts and emotions, promoting balance and care for self. With the practice of compassionate mindfulness, we begin to foster a more attuned relationship with food, mind and body, we let go of judgement and allow space to observe urges, thoughts and emotions with less desire to act impulsively, honouring our body’s cues and being less reactive to emotional triggers and strict food rules. 

Specific mindfulness techniques develop deep capacity for self-compassion which lessens the destructive, often overwhelming sense of shame.  

Shame is always present in disordered eating where there is a strong inner critique and overwhelming feelings of guilt, disgust, fear and sadness. It is often masked by traits such as perfectionism.

In time, with the combination of approaches, we notice that eating recovery is truly happening; emotional regulation, less food noise, mindful and enjoyable eating, improved body image, reduced eating disordered behaviours, positive internal experience and strengthened mind-body connection.