11/22/2023
What are you looking forward to this holiday season?
Thanksgiving used to be my favorite. In retrospect, it was all about the food. That was during my disordered eating days. Now it’s about spending time with family and friends, especially the ones you don’t get to see often, and the food.
What are you not looking forward to?
Do you dread certain parts of the upcoming holidays? Like people talking about their diets being ruined, how they need to exercise after the Thanksgiving meal or skip breakfast, your parents making comments about your food and/or body, the diet ads that’ll be in full force and so on?
Here are some suggestions that I hope make some of the parts you dread easier for you, this year and years to come:
First, plan. Think about past holiday celebrations and what came up for you. Now you have a place to start. Think about how you would like to handle those situations.
This might include not attending these celebrations or minimizing the time spent at them. If you do go, try to have a support person there for you. Have a conversation about the support you need prior to the celebration. If you don’t have a support person, when you arrive, pick out a “safe person” in your head. If you start to feel unbalanced, focus on your “safe person.”
Have an escape or fallback plan.
Call ahead and have a conversation with the person you know will be disrespectful or not respect your boundaries before the celebration. You can let them know, “it’s not ok to comment on my food,” “it’s not OK to comment on my body,” etc. You are not obligated to explain why. From my experience working with my clients, most of the time there will be push back. If you want, you’re not obligated to, you can let them know that you’re recovering from disordered eating or that you’re working on your relationship with food or your body, etc. and that you need them to support and respect you by not saying those things. You know this person best, you might need to add the caveat that if they do you’ll need to leave, they’ll need to leave, etc. Again my experience with my clients is that if this has been going on for years, they are likely to over-step the boundary you set, so be prepared to follow through with the repercussion and express that because of their behavior you are leaving or doing xyz.
Practice the following in advance:
If someone makes a direct comment to you, know that you do not deserve that. Their comment is based in their own belief system and affects them. It’s their stuff; let them own it, not you. If you have the energy, you can let them know you don’t subscribe to that belief or, if you’re comfortable enough, you can let them know that you’re recovering from disordered eating and it would be helpful for you if they didn’t talk about weight/dieting/exercise in front of you. If you do not have the energy for this, that is okay! There will be times you do and times you don’t and it might be easier to say this one on one but not in front of many people if that’s the case. If you don’t say it out loud, say it to yourself to sooth the sting of what they’ve said. You might find it helpful to talk this out with a confidant or to journal about it in writing or verbally. You deserve respect, and others talking to you about your body, food, or movement without your consent isn’t respectful.
If someone makes a comment about others’ bodies, food, or movement feel free to change the conversation, leave the room, or even say that you don’t think it’s nice/healthy/appropriate to be talking about others’ bodies/food/movement. Or again, as above, you can let them know that you’re recovering from disordered eating and it would be helpful for you if they didn’t talk about weight, dieting, or exercise in front of you.
The FIRST TIME is the HARDEST! It gets so much easier from there😉
You’ve got this!
