Is Emotional Anorexia keeping you trapped?

Now when we conjure up the word of anorexia, we have this image of a woman, sometimes men with an eating disorder. Where they obsessively refuse food in a bid to control their lives and bodies which leads to self-starvation; Emotional anorexia operates on the plane. It’s defined as the compulsive avoidance of giving or receiving emotional care or nourishment this is according to SLAA UK (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) till the point that you are self-starved of affection, connection and intimacy.

We are living in a world where we deny feelings, affections and desires when it comes to us, we spend time feeding others in our world but when it comes to us we totally refuse to feed ourselves emotionally while walking around with a permanent smile slapped on yet we feel totally empty.

Emotional anorexia is like living your life as though you are at the most glorious banquet with all the yummy, delicious, pleasurable foods laid out on this amazing table; yet you chose to only pick the crumbs and leftovers to eat. Now, no one ever grew big and strong from just eating crumbs, so how are you going to be emotionally fed and nourished if you are only accepting or giving yourself emotional crumbs?

Emotional anorexia is a symptom of feeding the gremlins in our lives, you know! Those pesky little voices that tap into the negative feelings and self-talk that is buried in the back of your mind. These gremlins form a committee and decide who they think you are and project it and you in turn project into your reality, the gremlin of perfectionism, fear of being your authentic self, fear of being vulnerable and the fear of truly being intimate with yourself or others but that is another story in itself and finally the giganteus fear of being hurt again. So you lock yourself behind a huge glass wall, which helps with the masquerade of you being willing to receive the emotions and affections from others as well as ourselves.

Now in my emotional anorexic phase I decided to lock myself behind not just the huge glass wall, I planned out a courtyard, then a great hall and before you knew it I had a castle that I had constructed with a fully working moat complete with dragons and man-eating clown fishes to keep out the emotions I did not want to feel. The only problem was that my wall was not a smart wall it could not distinguish between a sucky feeling and the exhilaration of happiness, joy pleasure or even the soul expanding feeling of love. So I spent a long time withholding from myself the things I wanted most.

I do hope you forgive me here I’m not making light of the condition of anorexia but highlighting the condition that most of us are living with and not being aware of. Emotional anorexia is something we need to be aware of as the definition stands; “it is the compulsive avoidance of giving or receiving emotional care or nourishment”. This leaves us hungry and starved of the joy, love, pleasure and desires that we want in our world because we are afraid of the sucky feelings that could follow. So we walk around holding an empty bag and trying to love others or ourselves from that emptiness. And that simply cannot work because when you try to give on empty you are doing them a disservice and dishonouring yourself to believe that people will only want the crumbs and you only deserve to eat the crumbs……..

It’s time to take your place at that banquet of life and be ready to eat from everything it has to offer and take a nail to the glass wall, watch it shatter around you. Discover the joy, love, desire, sensually pleasurable world that you have shielded yourself from. Being emotionally nourished is your birth right.

Don’t let your gremlin committee win. Like any anorexic will tell you this is not a single action it’s a lifelong journey that you need support and guidance to take the first step and keep going. Do you want to learn how to love your gremlins into silence? How about discovering how to get back in touch with the yummy delicious full woman that you are? Be the one free from emotional anorexia and know that your own happiness should feature as your top priority. It’s time to move away from the nonsense and stories we have been told in the past. Contact me Lillian Ogbogoh; The Goddess Creator to find out more