Meditation for Bulimia

Living with bulimia can impact every aspect of your life. Your physical health is likely to suffer, it can be difficult to socialise (especially in settings involving food) and thoughts about food and gaining weight can be all-consuming. 

People with bulimia often report feelings of worthlessness and the experience of this illness can further damage self-esteem. 

Like all such conditions, it becomes compounded by stress. Stress activates the branch of the autonomic nervous system which is the storehouse of all of our negative tendencies. It distorts our cognitive abilities, and it activates the amygdala, the seat of all of our anxious tendencies.

Meditation balances our mood by restoring our hormonal production and has anti-depressant qualities. 

Simultaneous to this, we become much calmer and less anxious due to the more balanced activity of the amygdala (the engine of our anxiety response), and we become much less compulsive due to the increased activity in our cortex. 

Additionally, meditation not only restores our cognitive functioning back to normal levels, it actually enhances it to higher levels.

By developing all of our physical and mental capabilities, meditation builds our confidence, acceptance (of ourselves and our surroundings) and enables us to feel comfortable in our own skin.

It gives us a much greater sense of self-esteem. It is as if we realise deep within that we have no need to conform to any rigid ideas about what defines us.

The result of all this is that it become easier to engage with other therapies and we are much more likely to recover, lessening the need to battle with ourselves using our conscious mind.