Somatic Healing: A Cornerstone of Recovery

On Recovering From Trauma and Eating Disorders

It was May 2014. I had just closed the books on my sophomore year at the University of Missouri. The sun was a relentless overseer in the sky, its rays a glaring reminder of the light I felt disconnected from. I stood there, squinting upwards, half-hoping for blindness, mostly yearning for some kind of disappearance.

A few yards ahead, the residential treatment center loomed large. Its double doors, those big wooden barricades, stood between me and a journey I was reluctant to start. Yet, as much as every fiber of my being screamed to turn back, to flee, my feet moved forward. Maybe I was guided by some unseen force, maybe it was my parents' presence beside me.

Those five months I first spent in treatment, and the subsequent return years later, marked the beginning of an enduring battle. If living with Ed was a war, then recovering from Ed was an odyssey — an epic that demanded not just passive acquiescence but active, relentless engagement. Ultimately, it would turn into a nine-year saga of imperfectly climbing, falling, and ascending.

Over this past decade, I've built a bank of hard-earned truths, canvassing every corner of support and struggle. Recovery, I've come to realize, is as personal as a fingerprint, yet it's strewn with universal signposts, critical markers guiding us toward healing.

In a recent conversation with a woman, the conversation turned to her attempts at recovery. I asked what hasn’t worked for her in the past, and she answered simply and succinctly, “Talk therapy.” I didn't need anything more to understand. Talk therapy, for all its merits, often dances around the very essence of healing from eating disorders. Without embracing the body's story, the battle against Ed is like fighting wind — elusive, shifting, insubstantial.

To recover is to reintegrate, to acknowledge the somatic whispers and screams that have been too long ignored. It's to stand in the sun and no longer wish for disappearance, but fiercely claim presence. It's the ongoing journey of climbing your personal mountain, not just in search of peace but in pursuit of a summit that promises a new perspective — one where every step and every stumble is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and body.

Eating disorders, or "Ed" according to my personal shorthand, are undeniably body-based experiences. To the outsider, this seems obvious. After all, the body is the canvas on which these disorders paint their complex patterns of restriction, bingeing, purging, and so much more. But this understanding barely scratches the surface of the depth and scope of what it truly means to have an eating disorder. It's not just about the body and food; it's about the capacity to live in one’s own skin and the experiences, dynamics, and relationships that have shaped it.

For two decades, Ed dictated not just my eating habits, but my entire relationship with myself. My body was both the battleground and the record keeper of a war waged deep within my psyche. The focus on food, the obsession with what I ate or didn't eat, was a mere distraction from the real issues simmering beneath the surface — the overwhelming emotions, unmet needs, and unprocessed traumas that I couldn't or wouldn't face.

Ed was like a smoke alarm in my life, ceaselessly signaling the presence of something harmful, something burning unattended. And yet, despite understanding its purpose, I was unable to extinguish the fire. Talk therapy, while beneficial in many aspects of mental health, often missed the mark in my recovery. It was like trying to douse flames with words when what I needed was a more direct form of intervention.

My turning point came when I shifted the focus of my recovery from my mind to my body, but not in the way most traditional treatments prescribed. At the onset, it wasn't about weight gain or achieving a certain body shape; it was about diving beneath my skin, into the very fascia and fibers of my being. I stopped trying to outrun or numb my experiences and began the painstaking process of uncovering the compartmentalized memories and emotions I had buried.

With each uncovered memory, with every unfelt emotion I finally allowed myself to feel, I was healing. I learned to regulate my nervous system, to discharge the energy of a lifetime of stored trauma, and to expand my capacity to be present and connected with my own body. This journey into somatic practices led me to a comprehensive revision of my trauma narrative — not solely with words, but with also the tissues of my body that had borne the brunt of my experiences.

Forgiveness became a crucial part of this journey. I forgave myself and my body for the years of pain and misunderstanding, realizing that my body was never the problem. It was the carrier of my pain, and by releasing that pain, I liberated both my body and my spirit. This liberation wasn't a sudden burst of freedom but a gradual emergence into safety and authenticity.

When I finally emerged from years of deep, somatic work, I understood something vital: the body holds both the problem and the solution. It's not just the site of our pain but also the source of our healing. It contains our deepest wounds and our greatest potential for healing. Our stories, our traumas, our joys, and our sorrows are all inscribed in our bodies, and true recovery involves not just understanding these stories cognitively but releasing and integrating them somatically.

So often in recovery, we're directed immediately to address the food or the weight — tangible, visible aspects of eating disorders. But this approach neglects the invisible, yet far more critical, emotional landscape that underlies our behaviors. The questions shouldn't just be about what we're eating or not eating; they should be about our capacity to be present and connected within our bodies. They should be about our ability to tolerate uncertainty and discomfort, to heal our shame, to establish self-trust, and to learn self-regulation.

For many of us, Ed manifests as a hyper fixation with certainty, and certainty and trust exist on opposite ends of one spectrum. Eating disorders thrive on control, rigid structures, and unyielding routines; and talk therapy can placate this part of us. Appeasing Ed’s desire to hover above the somatic realm, conversing without connecting.

However, as we cultivate trust — in our bodies, our intuition, and our capacity for self-regulation — we find that the need for control diminishes. Choosing, boldly and unwaveringly, to prioritize somatic pathways of healing builds a new model of being. One rooted in somatic literacy, intuition, and action. Ed’s voice, no longer blaring to signal danger, quiets to a hush as we learn to move into the body with equal parts courage and compassion.

This is the heart of recovery: a gentle, persistent expansion of our tolerance for life's discomfort and unpredictability. An exploration of our body’s unique landscape and language. We move toward and into radical embodiment — showing ourselves that we can create safety within our own bodies, that we can trust ourselves and our innate resilience, and that we can rewire the old patterns of thought and behavior that have kept us trapped for so long. We anchor into growing, evolving, and allowing ourselves to live fully and freely in our bodies and our lives.

When we can do this, when we can establish a baseline of trust, safety, and regulation and acknowledge our body’s stories — food becomes astonishingly easy. Weight gain becomes a natural, fluid byproduct, a physical representation of the spiritual and emotional nourishment we are offering ourselves at long last. Miraculously, peace blankets the battlefield and living within a body becomes easy.

Wherever you are in your journey, whether Ed is a familiar voice or a distant foreigner, my hope is that we learn to hold these truths close. Recovery, like life, is a journey of countless steps — some forward, some back, but all part of a greater dance of growth and transformation. At the precipice of a new year, let us carry on not just with resolutions to change our bodies or our eating habits, but with a commitment to deeper, more meaningful change. The kind that starts within and radiates outward, touching every aspect of our lives.

Here's to a year of somatic healing, growth, and profound embodiment. Here's to re-membered and revived bodies. Here's to us, living truly, deeply, and authentically.