Trusting your gut in eating disorder recovery

Fena Arts via Etsy.com

Our goal at The Victorian is to get our clients to distinguish between “eating disorder thinking” and “wise thinking.”  From there we counsel the clients in how to act on wise thinking. Many come in with hard set patterns of acting out in their eating disorder thinking. Changing these patterns is difficult, but worth watching the clients start to trust themselves. Years of mistakes and poor choices make the clients uneasy trusting themselves; often we refer to “Trusing your gut.” We ask the clients, “What does your gut say the answer is?”

According to Antoine Bechara, PhD, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Iowa, “People treat intuition like it’s a dirty word, but it’s actually one of the body’s survival mechanisms. It’s a means of taking you away from danger and steering you toward what is good for you.”

Gradually, the science of intuition is shaking off its woo-woo connotations as experts become more sophisticated in understanding where it comes from and how to measure it. They’re also increasingly confident that most of us have substantial talent for intuition, and that it influences us more than we realize. “Assuming everything your emotional world is stable,” says Oliver Turnbull, PhD, a professor of psychology and researcher at the University of Wales Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in the United Kingdom, “you shouldn’t have to force yourself to ‘listen’ to your intuition. It’s already there.” Yet many of ignore this tool – or worse, respond to urges of a misguided imagination. Fine-tuning your intuition will help you make better decisions whether you’re buying a car, making new acquaintances, or solving problems at work. It could even save your life.

Happy Recovery,

Irvina