You may have seen the recent emotional and moving storyline in Eastenders of Lola passing away from brain cancer.
The father of her child, Ben Mitchell, has been struggling to cope with his reality, and is living with an eating disorder.
In real life, when we go through times of grief, or stress, like Ben, it is very common for our eating to become chaotic and disordered. We may forget to eat, lose our appetite, or turn to food for comfort or as distraction from reality. We might self-sabotage or even hurt ourselves. Sometimes, we can develop behaviours and coping mechanisms which can numb our painful feelings and alter our brain chemistry in the same way drugs and alcohol, or any other addiction can.
Sometimes disordered eating can occur from unhealed past trauma, things we haven’t dealt with, or things buried within us. Sometimes we have never had a healthy relationship with food, and we would really like to learn how to be kind to ourselves and live a more fulfilling life.
At The Living Room, we offer free, time-unlimited group counselling in our Disordered Eating Group, for those who are finding their relationship with food and body image is unhealthy or addictive.
We don’t diagnose eating disorders, but instead we help clients look at how disordered eating is affecting their life and general well-being. Recovery is achievable with the correct treatment and support. Therefore, we focus on the root cause, to help understand our feelings and what is really going on underneath the behaviours.
Through belonging to a non-judgemental, loving and accepting group that enables people to learn from each other’s experiences, our help provides clients with the tools they need to deal with negative emotions and cravings. Our aim is to enable anyone living with disordered eating to develop structured eating, gain a support network for life and the tools to deal well with stress or periods of grief that may arise in the future.
Maybe this blog post, or Ben’s struggles in Eastenders have affected you? Maybe you feel that you would like our help. If you’d like to know what addictions we treat, or think our Disordered Eating Group can help you, please get in touch.