I Am Ready To Heal My Heart. I Am Deserving Of This.

I am ready to heal my heart.  I am deserving of this.

With this statement we are reminded that recovery involves attention not only to taking care of our physical bodies, but also to healing our souls.  Doing the healing work for our heart is often one of the most difficult parts of recovery, but it is also essential.  As we start to work on letting go of our eating disorders, we start to notice and face the emotional pains that surface and must learn new ways of coping with them without turning to the eating disorder to help us evade or numb these painful feelings.  Essentially, when we commit to doing the work to heal what hurts our hearts, we start to move away from our eating disorders because we no longer need them as maladaptive external tools for coping with whatever has been ailing us internally.  

For me, feeling a sense of worthlessness as a person is what hurts my soul quite often.  If I don't feel I have been productive, useful, perfect then I get strong feelings of sadness, frustration, and self-hatred.  My way of coping with these feelings has been turning to my eating disorder to either numb these feelings or to give me a sense of purpose as at least I am working toward staying thin.  Now, a lot of my days revolve around trying to heal my heart by changing my perception of what makes me a good and worthwhile person.  It's definitely not easy and I still find myself in self-judgment most days, but doing this work of challenging the ideas that hurt my soul is what will ultimately help me not to turn to my eating disorder when these feelings arise in the future.

I like this affirmation because it allows us to focus on our hearts, our souls, our innermost selves, and to remember that one of the reasons to stay on the path of recovery is so that we can learn to know, love and accept ourselves; we must heal so that we can fully feel, experience and enjoy all the emotions and soulfulness that comes with being human.  These words remind us that not only can we heal our hearts, but that we deserve to, because every person deserves to know, love and accept themselves.  When we focus on healing the pain we feel inside without turning to our eating disorders, we learn to stand on our own and to love, accept and embrace ourselves as unique, beautiful souls.  Our hearts and souls are who we really are, so let's make sure we give them the time, love, gentleness and healing they deserve!

May you all connect to your hearts today,

Taylor