I was raised in a family where, as a child, there is no room for my emotions. My sensitivity is not understood.
From a very young age I lose contact with myself. I become alienated from my core, from the essence of who I am.
Regularly I withdraw and fill up the emotional “hole” that arose with sweets and cookies. I discover that eating sweets gives me a kind of “high”.
Already at a young age being popular seems to become more important to me than everything else. The impression I make on others is more imporant than how I feel, what I want or don't want.

During my eighteenth year the eating disorder developed itself.
I learn to concentrate on my desirability instead of on my desires. Thus, I fall for the myth that my sexuality comes from being ‘beautiful', in stead of realising that my beauty comes forth from my sexuality.
I try to achieve the impossible: becoming skinnier than nature had intended, without realising that when a woman becomes unnaturally skinny, she renounces her sexual desires and her love for the most feminine part of her being.
I become more and more obsessed by food, so I don't have to feel my emotional pain.
I feel like a round plug trying desperately to fit into a square hole in order to survive and thrive. Completely estranged from my inner nature, I leave the family that doesn't seem to understand me. Soon after, the time comes where, like a fly in a spider's web, I am totally caught up by my obsession for food.

I feel ashamed for my body and try to give my body a more angular shape. A shape that doesn't hold an ounce of fat to round off the corners. Because I have dismissed the essence of my femininity, I live in a constant state of mental hunger. With the vicious, destructive cycle of stuffing myself, throwing up and fasting, I deny my most powerful emotions. I silence the voice of my intuition.
This continues for years. Even the beautiful Divine gift of pregnancy and motherhood, is drowned by this enormous, insatiable emotional hunger that I frenetically try to suppress with food.

There are times when the fits of stuffing and throwing up are alternated with an excessive use of alcohol.
With this I go from one addiction to another. Not realising that I cannot free myself from the addiction process as long as I don't acknowledge the real hunger, my real desire. The addiction and the compulsive thoughts about food keep me away from the realities I find unbearable. I cannot bear to be in my own body. 
My obsession for food (later alternated with alcohol) brings me into a state of non-consciousness. I often live in a trance-like state where I don't have to feel, where I don't have to know about my pain, confusion and struggles.
Because being in touch with my body means being in touch with my feelings and that is too confusing and painful.
I “live” in my head, because thoughts at least can be ordered and somewhat controlled
.Emotions can't be.
A frantic effort to control the stream of life.

In stead of being connected with life, I withdraw in obsessive thoughts about eating, vomiting and dieting. I occupy myself with my obsession to not want to have an ounce of body fat.
These thoughts keep me away from the present moment and prevent me from taking in and receiving what is right in front of me that can really nourish me – like the smile of my own child…
Blind to my children's needs and blind to my own needs …
The hunger stays and the emptiness grows.
I fill my stomach but not my heart and spirit.
I have learned to neglect and distrust the most intimate way of communicating the body has - the language of emotions.

Then I discover that I am hungry and the food I really want is not material food. I discover I don't suffer from physical hunger but from emotional hunger.
What I am really hungry for, is love. What I yearn for is attention and acceptance. What I desire is to express my creativity. What I passionately crave for is to feel a spiritual connection.

I come to realise that I have replaced the language of my emotions with the language of the eating disorder. With this realisation, slowly the insights start coming. Painful insights.
I see it's not the feelings themselves that cause the stuffing and throwing up, the obsessive eating, the starvation, the obsession for food and fat. It is my attempt to not feel the feelings. At first I'm afraid of my feelings. Afraid I cannot handle my pain, that it will crush me. I feel fear that if I allow myself to feel my loneliness, it will last for ever. Also I am afraid that if I fully experience my anger, I will start doing destructive things.  

Then comes the insight that all these fears and feelings I frantically try to evade are old. That my obsession for food is a survival mechanism, because I'm afraid for who I really am.
I have been living in an old reality and because of that I rejected my body and with it myself during all those years. I denied my real needs. And fear is the underlying motor that has kept the eating disorder going. 

What I may learn is to accept the uniqueness of my being and to let go of what I should be according to others.
And with this starts the search for my real self.  

The only thing I can do is go inside, to explore the hidden places of my being and to discover why I do what I do with food.
At first I am afraid I will be destroyed by some kind of evil aspect of myself that seems to me to lie deep inside me, invisible, hidden…

On my journey to wholeness, in the deepest and darkest parts of myself, I encounter the pain and the sadness that I have tried to deny for years: the pain of abandonment and isolation, of finding myself unworthy and feeling awkward, of dreams that haven't been realised and chances I've missed, of emotional abuse and the pain of my inability around my own children.

I learn to allow my pain with compassion for myself. I learn to integrate the pain that comes forth from the deep dark alcoves of the past with my mature consciousness of the here and now.
And I realise that if I possess the power of (self)destruction, I also possess the power of transformation and renewal.
I discover what lessons need to be learned and what truths I may start to realise.
Receiving inner wisdom that allows me to find a whole new way of dealing with food, with others and with myself. 

In the end it is the empathy, the ability to welcome myself, my feelings and my needs with understanding and acceptance that comes to my rescue.
It is the ability to “go into” the pain that helps me to experience the pain calmly, so that healing can take place.
Thanks to this empathy I am capable of distinguishing the connection between my upbringing and my disturbed eating behaviour, without blaming myself or others for the state I'm in and without denying my wounds.
Only when I listen to the little girl inside me with compassion and understanding, I can receive the true nourishment I need in my own life.  

By accepting the darkness that comes before renewal, I succeed in overcoming my disturbed eating behaviour.
Slowly I recover all the parts of myself that I had lost or denied and I learn to integrate them in my adult consciousness.
It is this wholeness that gives me strength and holds the promise of renewal and change.

My next task is then to find my way out again and to intertwine this new feeling of myself with a new way of being.
This part of the journey feels like a path with many turns and hairpin bends.
Sometimes I have the feeling I'm slipping back, that things are becoming worse instead of better.Sometimes feelings of disappointment overwhelm me and I feel irritated and ashamed because I'm not getting “better” as fast as I thought I would.
Still, I persevere.
During my journey I find the support of a good therapist, support I need to accept my feelings, to accept and express them.Slowly but surely I learn how to react to my feelings in a different way. My obsessive voracity and longing to be skinny disappear.
During this part of my process I learn to see that learning to react in a different way to emotions takes time and practice.

Stumbling on I try to find my way and more than ever this is a time for friendliness and compassion towards myself.
Once I have laid the foundation by understanding the causes of my disturbed eating behaviour and developing the skills that I need to deal with the tensions life can bring, I now handle food in a different way.Because I allow myself to grow into myself slowly, my body also has the time to adjust.
I learn better and better how to recognise, accept and express my feelings.
My body tells me when I feel a need and what it is I need. A language I learn to understand better and better. And I learn that an important part of healing eating disorders is to let go of judging feelings. I develop the insight that there are no right feelings or wrong feelings. Feelings are just there.  

What I have noticed is that feelings can lead to problems if I don't acknowledge or accept them. In stead of letting my feelings flow through me, I had blocked up my feelings for years. Until my body was completely rigid, as if made from stone…
Only now that I allow myself to fully submerge myself in my feelings, I experience something magical… Feelings also pass, like a wave of energy. I let them flow through me until they disappear. With this I finally feel the freedom to carry on, without feeling hampered or overburdened.
Now that I am more and more capable of making peace with my feelings, I discover they can be allies and guides on my journey of life. They can take me to a place of deep insight into who I really am and what I really want.

In this way I become aware that the healing of eating disorders depends on creating a friendly alliance with my feelings. By reacting to them with curiosity and not with judgement. And my body is an important tool for me in doing this.
In order to be freed from disturbed eating behaviour, it is necessary to gain insight in the different feelings I experience and to pay attention to where I feel them in my body. This helps distinguish one feeling from another.
Learning that the feeling of anger differs from the feeling of frustration, tiredness or irritation.
For me it's important to gain insight in the different physical sensations that the different feelings can give.
Often this is done by doing nothing, just staying with the feeling until it passes.

 For me, in the learning process of feeling, it is important that my reaction corresponds with how I feel and that I don't react to every emotion with the same behaviour. Feeling sad? Eating and vomiting! Feeling angry? Eating and vomiting! Feeling lonely? Eating and vomiting! I learn to distinguish one feeling from the other. Accepting all my feelings without judgement. Recognising that feelings don't necessarily have to make sense. I don't have to love my feelings; I can simply learn to accept them.
Finally, it is my intention to act honestly and soundly with the sincere expression of my feelings.

Now that I accept and respect my feelings better and better, I also learn to be assertive.
And when I'm assertive, I am true to myself. To me this seems to be a very important skill, because it is the means by which I can express the essence of who I really am without being destructive to others.
By being assertive, I behave in a loving way towards myself and others. When I'm assertive, I'm also true to my feelings. I find myself on the path of the heart. A path that leads me to people and places that are nourishing and fulfilling for me and leads me away from those that are not.
By learning to say ‘no' to what I don't want I learn to establish my personal boundaries.
By allowing myself to say to others: “my needs are different, not more or less important than yours”, I make clear where I begin and end.
In turn this makes me feel faith in my ability to set boundaries, which makes me feel more comfortable with intimacy.
I no longer need to be afraid to lose myself or to be devoured by my relationships.
What I notice is that openly and directly expressing my thoughts and feelings strengthens my feelings of self-worth and self-confidence.
With this I confirm to myself that my feelings and thoughts matter. That I matter, who I am. Because my feeling of self-confidence grows, my tendency to overeat or diet diminishes.
To express my own truth becomes a way of life for me. I don't need to use food any more to mask the gnawing fear that arises from acting against my feelings, or to fill up the pit in my stomach I get when I say ‘yes' when I wanted to say ‘no'.
Because when I stay true to my own truth, I determine my own way through life.
It makes me happy I no longer need food to numb the tensions and suffering.

And with this I also give my body the freedom to find the weight that suits me.  

Sylvia de Ligny