Today we are joined by Ashley McHan (again), a Psychotherapist and Yoga Therapist who specializes is trauma and eating disorders. We will be picking up from where we left off in our last episode and discuss trauma, how it affects us, and how this relates to disordered eating, and more.
Ashley really does a wonderful job of breaking this all down for us. I love this episode because of the way Ashley takes the time to structure the information so logically and make everything flow eloquently.
NOTES on EMDR:
The intention of EMDR is to heal trauma in all forms. What it does for us is what we so often struggle to do on our own, to see ourselves through new eyes, to see our experiences with a new lens, one that allows that compassion and understanding that we need to release the believes of ourselves that we have carried forward as a result of the experience. This then allows us to see how the experience changed us, how we attempted to cope and compensate after the experience. This is typically where we see the development of disorder eating patterns, amongst many other harmful yet well intentioned patterns of coping. This new vantage point allows people to more easily understand the role of the patterns, to see why they are compelled to act and why they feel so reliant on the disordered eating as if to survive mentally, physically or emotionally.
When it comes to the type of trauma we are discussing today, a block to healing can be that we haven’t had our experience seen or validated. We tend to look at ourselves, especially our past selves, with a great deal of judgment. I see one of the greatest struggles in teh human experience to be with self-compassion. We view ourselves differently than we view others, we hold ourselve to different (typically unreasonable) standards. When we look back on our past pains we tend to self-blame, to feel it was our fault or due to our own weakness or defectiveness. So we keep our experiences hidden, shadowed, and we suffer alone. This is especially true of experiences that ivoked shame for us.
Happy listening!
With love,
G 🌸
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