Coping Strategies: Information For Eating Disorder Sufferers

Resolving your eating disorder means that potentially you will be without a way a coping with difficult and challenging experiences. It is therefore important that you develop alte
ative coping strategies in parallel with working to resolve your eating disorder. This will feel difficult for a two reasons. Firstly, up until now you have been using your eating disorder to cope and so have not needed to explore alte
atives. You will therefore needed to spend some time discovering what works best for you whilst remembering that initially nothing will be as effective as your eating disorder but that with time and practice strategies that do not undermine your wellbeing can only enhance it. Secondly, nurturing and soothing yourself in a respectful way is likely to be a new experience that doesn’t fit with your low sense of self worth, so it is something that you will again need to dedicate time and practice to. Each time you can choose to take an alte
ative path to your eating disorder when tackling something distressing, you allow weeds to grow across the eating disorder path making it harder to follow the next time.

An effective way of soothing yourself during times of distress is to stimulate one or more of your senses. The table below gives some examples of alte
ative ways of coping with distress through your senses. Select nurturing activities from lists or develop your own and practice them initially when you are feeling calm so that you can discover what you find the most soothing. When you are feeling distressed you will then quickly be able to initiate a soothing activity. Focus on one sense at a time or for increased soothing potential combine the senses.
Vision:
Focus on nature: take a scenic walk, focus on the vibrant colours of plants/flowers around you, watch fish swimming in a tank/pond, watch birds flying etcr
Focus on art: watch a ballet/dance performance. go to a museum with beautiful artr
Light a candle and watch the flamer
Decorate a room with all of your best/favourite things

Hearing:
Listen to musicr
Sing/hum to musicr
Pay attention to the sounds of nature (water, birds, rainfall, leaves rustling)
Talk to others

Smell:
Burn incenser
Spray your favourite perfumer
Boil cinnamonr
Make fresh coffeer
Bake a caker
Smell flowers

Taste:
(N.B. This can be a difficult sensation initially and so can be excluded until eating has become less emotion driven)
Have a soothing drinkr
Stuck a peppermintr
Chew gumr
Treat yourself to food you wouldn’t usually spend money on

Touchr
Have a bathr
Put clean sheets on your bedr
Put a big warm jumper/silky blouse on
Put on body lotionr
Wash your hair with nice smelling productsr
Have a massage