Art as a Coping Tool in Eating Disorder Recovery

Art can be an important coping tool in your eating disorder recovery. Eating disorders thrive on rigidity. They tell us what to eat, what not to eat, how much to run, when we’ll starve, purge, or hide away from the world. Eating disorders are built on control and structure (Anorexia: A New Form of Control). Art can be flexible and fluid. Art can be wild, spacious, and free. Art can be what we want it to be. This is why art as a coping tool in eating disorder recovery is even more important to have on our side.

When you hear the word "art" a plethora of images may spring to mind. Maybe you think of painting, sculpting, writing, or drawing. Maybe your mind conjured images of burning man costumes with feathers and glittering limbs. Once, years ago I had a heated conversation with my acting teacher about the definition of art. I stated that art was simply whatever people or society deemed it to be. He retorted with a back and forth that left me with a simple statement – art is anything that makes you feel.

Eating Disorders Stifle Art as a Coping Tool or Otherwise

In our eating disorders, it’s common to cut ourselves off from the neck down. We essentially live from the neck up, in our cognition, while ignoring the sensations of the body and being present in our body. The neck up feels much safer because the brain can rationalize anything. The body, on the other hand, feels like a danger zone because it contains things like our heart. The body, in general, is a place we despise and don’t want to spend time being present in.

For years I lived in my head, cut off from the body that I loathed, feared, and tried to make my slave. When something got down past my neck and into my body it was often uncomfortable and scary. Sitting with feeling our feelings is the main reason we say, “Nope. Take a hike,” and compulsively engage in our eating disorder behaviors. We desperately try not to feel because if we feel one thing, what’s to stop everything from crashing in?

I had a friend in the hospital tell me once that she couldn’t let herself cry because she was afraid if she did it would never stop.

The truth is that it does stop. When we feel our feelings, when we can sit with them, they dissipate. It’s when we try to hold them at bay that they feel as though they are constantly pressing in.

How We Feel by Using Art as a Coping Tool

However, in recovery, learning to feel our feelings can be hard. This is where art can come alongside as a wonderful, therapeutic tool (Creative Coping Skill For Binge Eating Disorder: Art Therapy).

Like I said earlier, and I do believe this, art is something that makes you feel. Art gives us a way to connect to what’s inside, and place it externally in the world. Art can range from common forms like drawing, painting, or sculpting, to lucid forms like aerial silk, body painting, or dance.

Dance as Art Therapy

Community dance, such as ecstatic dance or five rhythms, is a cheap form of somatic therapy that allows you to move your body in ways that you desire (Dance and Movement Therapy for Depression). I went to one last weekend in Los Angeles where I live, and although it can feel strange to move your body in public, there’s a freedom and liberation in it.

At the end of the day, our body is our body. It’s the only body that we’ll have in this life and it’s important to use it to express, feel, and create.

Other Forms of Art Therapy for Eating Disorder Recovery

Maybe today you start writing in a journal or begin a healing short story. Maybe you take out crayons or color your sidewalk with chalk like when you were a kid. Maybe all you do is move your body a little bit in the safety of your room. Whatever art you create with your body, hands, and heart is healing.

If there’s lot of darkness that comes up at first, write all the swear words you can think of in black magic marker on butcher paper and then throw it away. The most important thing about art is that it allows what’s in us to be expressed so it doesn’t fester. Art is one pathway to healing and wholeness and it’s an important tool to have on your eating disorder recovery journey.

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