Concentric Counselling
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welcome to the concentric journal

 
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Fat Bubble: Bethany Rutter
Fat Bubble: Bethany Rutter
Why Bingeing is Only Half the Story
Why Bingeing is Only Half the Story

When people come to Concentric Counselling with a history of bingeing, they are often surprised that one of the first things I ask them is how often they restrict their food intake. To them, they are coming because the issue is bingeing. But what continues to reveal itself in the therapy room is that for many people that struggle with bingeing these episodes punctuate long periods of restriction.

The Heart of Body Collaboration - Intentions and Inspirations
The Heart of Body Collaboration - Intentions and Inspirations

Let me share with you some more details of the exciting model that I’ve been developing. Called Body Collaboration, it has emerged from my practice over the last ten years, a compassionate response to clients sharing a persistent issue - ‘I’m trying to hate myself into being ok with myself’. Body Collaboration is a pushback to a kyriarchal culture that teaches us to admonish ourselves rather than accept ourselves. It’s a radical practice of gathering in the most abandoned parts of ourselves, and offering them healing. And it’s a lovesong to what I think is the most powerful thing on Earth – partnership, collaboration, working together for the good of the all.

Sitting in the corridor - why it's a necessary part of recovery
Sitting in the corridor - why it's a necessary part of recovery

I often meet clients when they're in a particular spot... they’ve turned their back on intentional weight loss, knowing that going back into that way of life will only cause harm and open them up to risk. At the same time, they don't know how to transition into a space of body acceptance, knowing that there will also be loss in that decision.

From apology to entitlement - battling body assumptions
From apology to entitlement - battling body assumptions

In my corner of the world, we talk a lot about anti-fat bias or fatphobia and, more broadly, how it is to live in a body that is marginalised by dominant culture – through race, gender and sex, body size or shape, or disability.

Sometimes our conversations about anti-fat bias can take on a very theoretical and abstract form – as a systemic issue, of course we often look at it through a wide-angle lens. More recently, though, I’ve been thinking more and more of the individual impact of anti-fat bias – what it really means to live in a fatphobic culture.

Sensory Five - safety at your fingertips
Sensory Five - safety at your fingertips

Overwhelm and burnout don’t just happen in Covid times – these are themes I’ve been working for since the very beginning of my counselling career. It’s when our nervous system becomes overloaded, and we really struggle to regulate ourselves; feeling either anxious and agitated, or zoned out and flat.

Introducing A Modern Practice - Let Me Tell You More
Introducing A Modern Practice - Let Me Tell You More

For those of you who follow me on Instagram or subscribe to my mailing list you will know that I have been building towards a space for therapists to come together and connect. I’m so happy today to be able to outline this a little more, and introduce this idea to you.

Lessons from the ebb - how to get through when life draws back
Lessons from the ebb - how to get through when life draws back

We're in an ebb season, collectively, I think. And we're not encouraged to think about this at all. The effects of the pandemic, here in the UK, have been upon us for eleven months. And what’s been so surprising is how little accommodation we will often make for this. We’re living in a global tragedy – a collective trauma. Life has, necessarily, had to recede. We have had to lean hard on our internal resources – our patience, our hope, our tenacity. Understandably, we’re feeling a little depleted.

Embracing a non-diet new year - setting body positive resolutions 
Embracing a non-diet new year - setting body positive resolutions 

The relentless treadmill of diet resolutions is about to crank itself up again, at the start of the new year. After all the festive food adverts, Boxing Day onwards will see the focus shift instead to weight loss programmes, diet foods and new ‘healthy eating’ cookbooks, sold to you by slim people. It is a predictable, exhausting cycle, which perpetuates unhealthy ‘all or nothing’ thinking, and punishing and unsustainable restriction.

A beginner’s guide to developing body acceptance
A beginner’s guide to developing body acceptance

And so begins December, the month where dominant culture tends to deep-slide into a clarion call for ‘indulgence’ before, as regular as clockwork, the adverts and articles that promise ‘new year, new you’. Christmas is an exaggerated example of the pendulum swing that diet culture encourages; ricocheting between too much and not enough – all governed by a deep fear that we ourselves are not enough.

What recovery restores... time

Disordered eating is a time consuming business; in an effort to shrink appetite, so often it becomes that it can take up the entire day. The experience of an eating disorder makes us entirely preoccupied with food and body, with controlling and/or restricting ourselves and our food intake, until we can think of nothing else.

When I meet people struggling with a disordered relationship with food, whether or not they think are ‘sick enough’ to consider they have an eating disorder, one unifying issue is just how much time they have to devote to their relationship with food. Obsession and intrusive, persistent thoughts can take up hours, days and months of life, until it becomes hard to focus on anything else.

Food decisions, hampered by rules and rigidity, take a lengthy amount of time. Excessive exercise, often a part of a disordered relationship with food and body, requires time commitment. Endless internal food calculations slow down our decisions, until they are far from intuitive and firmly in obsession. Plans go on hold, relationships can be neglected, ambitions and dreams are postponed, to free up time for the processes and pursuit of food control.

evolution

The irony is, that when we attempt to control our food intake through disordered eating, our body and brain attempts to self-right; that is, to find balance. When faced with scarcity and unreliable food sources, the whole system devotes itself to the constant consideration of food; a smart evolutionary technique designed to focus us on food foraging, for survival, and a technique that remains firmly lodged in the depths of our brain. When we send our body into restriction through disordered eating, the system responds with food obsession - constantly thinking of food, and hunger.

future

Life gets put on hold when disordered eating takes over. Recovery restores time, freed from food obsession, to invest in the things that can create a deep and satisfying experience of life. No longer required to spend all day preoccupied with food and hunger, you are able to focus on all the other things that makes us human - fun, community, relationship, work, studies, travel, development, celebration, Life can be so much more than food and hunger, and recovery restores the time to live it.

This article isn't a substitute for counselling, although I do hope it helps. If this article has resonated with you, consider seeking professional support. You can work with me in London, Kent or online, by contacting me at hello@concentriccounselling.com or 07419 190930.

#edaw20, Atypical eating disorders, Diet culture recovery, Disordered eating, Eating Disorder Awareness Week, Eating disorder recovery, Food, Health At Every Size, Intuitive EatingVicky Bellmanatypical eating disorders, eating disorders, eating, chronic dieting, body positivity, body image, disordered eating, diet culture recovery, diet culture, edaw20, food, Intuitive EatingComment