354: Appeasement and Eating Disorders

Chris Sandel: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

On today’s show, we’re going to be talking about appeasement and eating disorders. What prompted this was I was listening to a podcast interview with Elizabeth Smart. She is someone who was kidnapped as a teenager, or maybe she was 11 or 12 when it happened. There’s a Netflix documentary about this as well; I haven’t actually watched that, but I did listen to this podcast interview with her, and as part of that conversation, the topic of Stockholm syndrome came up.

Stockholm syndrome is where people who are kidnapped or held hostage can develop an attachment or an alignment with their captors. She made a comment that this isn’t a flaw, this isn’t a moral failing; it’s a survival strategy, because the nervous system doesn’t ask what is right or wrong about a situation. It asks what keeps us alive, what is most important for us to survive as part of this, and often, the answer to that is compliance or appeasement or with bonding with the source of danger.

It then got me reflecting on eating disorders and the way that this relationship is, because I’ve often talked about that eating disorders are like being in an abusive relationship. It’s like being held hostage from someone, and there can be a lot of appeasement that starts to happen as part of this. It also got me thinking about polyvagal theory and the nervous system and that there is appeasement as part of this.

And I’ve never really talked about this; I’ve read about it, listened to it in podcasts, but I haven’t really gone into it any detail. So that’s what I want to go through as part of this one: looking at appeasement as a nervous system state, how it shows up in eating disorders, why recovery can feel so unsafe even when it is clearly the right thing to do, and how to make your way through this, how there can be appeasement and yet you can then get out of that state. So that’s what this one’s about.

Before we go any further with this, I just want to mention that I’m currently taking on new clients. If this episode resonates with you, if what I’m sharing helps you see, “Hey, this is a place that I’m stuck in and I could really use some help”, then I would love for you to reach out. I help people to fully recover, and I know that can sound like this very distant thing or like an impossible thing, but I truly believe that anyone can fully recover. So if this is what you would like help with, you can either send an email to info@seven-health.com and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, or you can send me a DM. It’s @sevenhealthcompany on Instagram. Send a DM and I can then send over the details.

00:03:17

Brief overview of polyvagal theory

To get started with this, I’m going to give a very basic overview on polyvagal theory. I’m not going to go into this in a huge amount of detail; I’ve done that on other podcasts. I will put those in the show notes, so if this is the first time you’re hearing about this and you want more detail on it, then definitely go and listen to those.

Polyvagal theory is looking at how our nervous system reacts, our autonomic nervous system – looking at our environment, looking at our internal environment, and making decisions about “Is this safe? Is this a threat?” and then making changes based on that.

There are different states that one can be in that then have an impact on the kinds of thoughts, the kinds of feelings, the kinds of sensations, the kinds of beliefs, the perceptions, etc., that then come up.

Within polyvagal theory, there are three primary states. First is ventral vagal, or safe and social. This is when we’re connected, we’re curious, we’re flexible. It’s where we feel most safe being around other people. And look, we all have our tolerance around this; some people are more extroverts, some people are more introverts. There can be high sensitivity that can have an impact on all of these things. But this is the state in which you are most able to be engaged with yourself and with other people, and you’re much more highly attuned to cues of safety as opposed to cues of danger.

You then come down to the next state, which is sympathetic, or fight or flight. As I go through this, they talk about polyvagal theory as being like the polyvagal ladder, and the reason that they talk about it in this way is that when you go down to a state at the bottom, to get back up to a state at the top, you actually have to come back through the rungs on the ladder. So you can’t just jump from the bottom state right up to the top state. That’s why they use this ladder analogy as part of it.

The next one down is fight or flight, and this is where our nervous system is now more cued to signs of danger. The proverbial lion has just come into view, and you’re now looking around and noticing, “What’s going on in my environment?” Your vision starts to change, your blood pressure starts to change. Your body’s moving more of its blood to your bigger muscles and it’s preparing you to either run or to fight.

With all of these states, there’s subtlety to it. I use the example of seeing the lion, but you can have that exact same response because of an email or a text message, because of the way your partner looks at you. It is not about the actual absolute danger of a situation; it is how your nervous system is interpreting in that moment.

Then from fight or flight, you come down to dorsal vagal or shutdown. This is where, again, if we’re using the more extreme version of this, if an animal in the wild recognises that it can’t run, it can’t fight because it’s a bigger animal, it can then go into this playing dead. It just completely shuts down and goes completely limp. There’s collapse, there’s numbness, there’s withdrawal. Again, in more everyday situations, this is where you can feel “I’m a little more withdrawn, I’m a little more depressed, I’m feeling a little bit more disconnected from myself or the situation.”

So those are the original primary states. And then as part of this, there are mixed states. These mixed states are a combination of these primary states.

For a mixed state of ventral vagal (or safe and social) and fight or flight, we have play. If we think about you’re playing a game of football or you’re playing a game of chess, you’re able to engage both of these systems and you get the best bits of both of them. In terms of the safe and social, you can understand that this is just a game, that it is fun; you can notice people’s eye contact, you can notice the subtleties in terms of their face. You’re able to be socially engaged and you’re able to follow along with the rules and you can understand why the rules are in place.

But you also have the best bits of the fight or flight. Fight or flight can also be talked about as ‘mobilised’, so there’s more energy coming in, and it’s channelling it in a very specific way. There’s a little bit more of a narrowness in terms of focus. So if I’m playing a game of football or I’m playing a game of chess, I’m able to really put that focus into what I’m playing in that moment.

Sometimes they talk about people who aren’t very good at play and that’s because there can be a situation where they’re not able to keep that safe engagement system there, and that’s when they do get more into anger or losing their temper and it’s harder to stay in that state.

The next one is a combination of safe and social and dorsal vagal, or shutdown. We think about this as stillness. If you’re doing meditation, if you’re lying in a hammock just daydreaming and following your breath – even something like reading and just sitting there and being in the moment – you’re in a state where you’re shut down, but it’s not in a bad way. You’re able to be in that state and it be enjoyable or it be pleasant or there’s no fear or anxiety or anything that is there.

Stillness, especially with eating disorders, can be a very difficult thing for many people to be in, because “When I’m starting to be still, there’s all this threat that then starts to come up connected to this.” We get much more into those defensive states, the states at the bottom end, so you’re getting more into the shutdown piece and the things that come up as part of that.

And then the final mixed state in terms of the way that we frame this is freeze. Freeze is a combination of fight or flight and shutdown. We’ll often talk about having a panic attack is like being in freeze, because you’re in this shutdown, immobilised state, but there’s all this energy that is going on in you; it’s just you can’t act on it in the way that you would like to. It’s not shutdown, where everything just goes numb and you’re completely withdrawn; there’s all this energy going on underneath the surface, you’re just still in this more shut-down place.

Again, there can be lots of variations of this. Panic attack is the more extreme version, or what happens when someone is experiencing physical violence or sexual violence or trauma, etc. They can go into this real freeze situation. But again, it can also happen in everyday life because of a particular conversation you’re having that then brings something up for you.

So that is the overview of polyvagal theory in terms of the primary states and the mixed states.

What’s happened is that more recently, clinicians have started to notice and name some additional states. Not really additional states in terms of being brand new states, but patterns that then can happen within these states. What I’m going to talk about today is a different pattern that can happen within one of these mixed states.

Because what they’ve recognised is that social behaviour being present doesn’t automatically mean safety. The question then is, is this connection being used because the system feels safe, or is it being used because it feels threatened? That then leads on to appeasement. This is a common state that I see, and it’s one that I’m now recognising more and more of how much of this is connected to the nervous system.

00:11:56

The polyvagal state of appeasement

If we look at appeasement, appeasement and play are both mixed states, and they’re both mixed states that use the same system. There’s the social engagement system and then there’s the mobilisation or the fight or flight or sympathetic system that’s being used there. And even though they’re the same in terms of they’re both a mix of these, they’re being organised in a very different way.

If we look at appeasement, yes, it is this hybrid state, but the social engagement part of it, the social behaviour, is driven by threat and not safety. Appeasement is, in a sense, what happens when the nervous system uses niceness instead of fight or flight or freeze.

Let me contrast these so that you can understand this better. If we look at play, play is very ventral vagal-led or very social engagement-led or safe and social-led, and then there is this sympathetic that is laid on top of it. In a sense, it’s laid on top of it because it actually helps in those situations. To be playful, it helps to have the mobilisation energy there that then changes how our mind thinks, and our vision and our body and all of these things are changed to then make the most of that playfulness. It’s very much organised around safety. In a sense, “I’m safe enough to have this extra energy. I’m safe enough to be more mobilised.” That energy is then used for curiosity and exploration and creativity and connection.

If we then look at appeasement as a contrast, it is very much threat-led. The social engagement piece is recruited to manage the danger. It’s organised around avoidance. In a sense, it’s fight or flight or sympathetic with the social engagement laid on top, but laid on top because this is a strategy for “How do I stay safe?” In a sense, it’s “I’m not safe, so I need to stay acceptable.” The energy that is then used from that mobilised energy is about “How do I properly inhibit myself? How can I be monitoring myself? How can I prevent a rupture in this relationship? How can I keep someone happy? How can I shrink?”

I very much think of the person who would come home and they didn’t know if their mum and dad were going to be drinking or they didn’t know if they were going to be angry, so they then have to put on this performance of “I’m really walking on eggshells, I’m trying to read the room, I’m trying to make sense of what’s going on.” And in some ways they may look safe and happy, but they’re doing this as a performance because it’s very much being driven by the potential threat that can come up.

If we think about the differences here, even though they’re the same mixed state, play uses energy because you already feel safe, and appeasement uses energy because it doesn’t feel safe.

On the surface, they can look similar in terms of there can be politeness, there can be sociability, there can be engagement, there can be the appearance of regulation. But internally, for how it’s experienced as the individual, play is much more about lightness and spontaneity and flexible attention. There can be easy laughter where it’s genuine, safe laughter. Time playing can pass really quickly. Whereas if we look at appeasement, it’s much more three’s tension underneath the calm. There’s vigilance that’s being masked as politeness. There’s an inhibition of impulses. There can be real fatigue after the interaction. You’re using an extraordinary amount of energy to try and keep up this facade.

And there can then be real relief when the interaction ends, whereas with play, it’s like “Oh my God, that was so much fun.” Even if I’m tired at the end of it and I’m very happy that the game has ended, it’s like “I’m so glad that I got to do that” versus with appeasement, it’s much more about “I’m so glad that that is over and I’m not looking forward to the next time I have to do that again.”

If we look at some of the other traits that are connected to the appeasement piece, there can be a lot of people-pleasing. There can be a lot of over-functioning. There can be a lot of being easy, being low maintenance, being uncomplicated. In terms of the emotions that are coming up that are then being suppressed, there can be anger or sadness or desire or hunger.

There’s this real hyper attunement to other people’s needs or other people’s emotions or what other people may do in a particular moment. There’s this real fear of being a burden or fear of setting someone off or saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing. And if this is just an ongoing thing, there’s this identity that then gets built around being good or being disciplined or being helpful. In a sense, it’s “I stay safe by not taking up space.”

Again, if we contrast this to play, when we look at the traits of play, boundaries are alive, but they’re really flexible. Yes and no are both acceptable answers. Needs can be expressed during the play. There can be some ruptures in that, but there can also then be repair, and it feels really safe to know, “Okay, maybe there will be a little bit of an altercation in this moment and then we can very easily come back together.” Whereas that doesn’t happen in terms of appeasement. Boundaries are suppressed. ‘No’ feels dangerous to say. Needs are hidden or delayed. If there’s a rupture, it leads to fear and shame and collapse. It’s not the same energy connected to these.

In a sense, it makes sense why appeasement can be so easily missed because often, it does look like, “Oh, this person is using social engagement. They seem calm, they seem polite, they seem high-functioning.” There’s no obvious panic or collapse in those moments. But if we were to look internally at what’s going on, there’s a huge amount of stress hormones that are going on, and they’re remaining elevated. The body never truly returns back to that baseline. So again, it looks like they’re fine, but really, that’s not true.

00:19:05

Eating disorders and appeasement

So then how do we connect this to eating disorders? As I’m talking about all this, it seems very obvious how this connects with eating disorders, and you may be feeling the same as you listen to this.

Eating disorders are appeasement tools. Eating disorders in a lot of ways are people staying in appeasement, or spending time in appeasement. With all of the different states, we will move between them. For someone who is in a good, safe place and they’re in good relationships, they’re not living with an eating disorder, even when things on paper seem really good, they will go through all of these different states at different points throughout a day, throughout a week, and it’s very normal for that to happen. It’s not that we should never go into this state over that state and those states are ‘bad’ states. They’re all appropriate for the situation that someone’s in. You’re wanting to be in a state that is appropriate for the situation you’re in.

But if we’re looking at eating disorders and how appeasement shows up, there’s this reducing of needs. There’s a shrinking of the body or an attempted shrinking of the body. There’s a strong need for control and goodness. There’s an avoidance of inconvenience and not wanting to put someone out. There’s a real suppression of emotion. There’s a keeping everything contained. There’s this feeling of “If I don’t take up space, nothing bad will happen.”

What I want to make abundantly clear is: someone’s not sitting there consciously telling themselves these things. This is the thing with the nervous system. It takes you to that place. So when you’re in appeasement, this just naturally arises. These thoughts arise, these sensations arise, these beliefs arise, these behaviours naturally arise. It just feels automatic when you’re in this state. It’s not that someone’s sitting there thinking, “I need to be really good. I need to really control myself.” Sometimes those thoughts may come up, but it’s a symptom of the place that someone’s in. It’s not that those thoughts first come up and that’s why we start to make these behaviours.

If we look at how this can develop, there can be this context where you weren’t allowed to be angry, you weren’t allowed to get reassurance or support, you weren’t allowed to disappoint someone, you weren’t allowed to slow down. There can be a lot of “These were things that I learnt, either implicitly or explicitly, of this is how I need to be.”

This is in a lot of ways how an eating disorder can function like an abusive relationship. You start to figure out, “These are the things I need to do to keep myself safe.” If we think about it from this context, where does safety come from? Safety comes from not provoking. In essence, disobedience leads to harm, or it could lead to harm, so compliance reduces that threat.

In a lot of ways, the abuser is the eating disorder. It is the way that the brain is then starting to function and to think and the things that start to come up. It’s not that there’s someone else in one’s life who is doing the abuse, although that can also be part of this as well, but it’s more about the eating disorder being this abusive person.

What this means is “I’ll eat, but just not right now” or “I’ll eat, but just not that thing. I’ll eat later. I’ll follow the plan, but I’m going to need to do it a little bit smaller. I’ll recover, but I need to do it more quietly or in a different way.” Basically, the underlying thing that is driving all this is there’s this tension of “I want to do recovery. I can recognise the way that I’m living isn’t actually helpful here. It isn’t giving me the life that I actually want to be leading. There is a part of me that can recognise that, but there is also a part of me that is definitely afraid and really terrified of the ramifications of what will happen if I do something that goes against the eating disorder.”

So it’s this strategy of trying to “I’ll do recovery, I’ll make changes, but I need to err on the side of not making it angry, not having something come back to bite me later on because I did this thing.” And this isn’t about weakness. This is a survival strategy. There is genuine fear that “something is going to happen if I step out of line, if I do something different.”

00:24:17

Appeasement vs compliance

I want to look at the difference between appeasement and compliance. In a sense, compliance is doing what is asked, whereas appeasement is doing what is asked to stay safe. Someone can comply, and “You know what, someone asked me to do it, I’ve just done it, it’s fine, it’s not a big deal”, whereas appeasement is much more “I’m doing it because if I don’t do it, there’s going to be some ramifications. There’s going to be something that happens.”

Why this matters is that appeasing clients can often look motivated, and the way that they’re talking – because there can also be a threat when working with me or working with a coach of like, “Yes, I don’t want to disappoint the eating disorder and I don’t want to make it angry”, but this can also then extend out into other relationships. That can be relationship with a partner, it could be relationships with friends, with kids, or with a coach. So there could be someone saying, “Yes, I’m so motivated, I really want to do this”, and there’s a part of them that truly does, and then there is this abusive relationship of the eating disorder that gets in the way.

So that is going on, so someone can be wanting to be and can appear motivated, but they’re underfed, they’re minimising, they’re skipping snacks, and there’s tension between “I want recovery and I’m also deathly afraid of recovery. And me trying to assert my needs, me trying to say I’m actually going to do this and actually following through, that genuinely feels dangerous.” And that is how it’s then received within the nervous system.

This is why it then becomes hard to eat more or eat sooner or rest or gain weight or be honest, because all of these things can trigger that threat response. That can show up as louder eating disorder thoughts or stronger sensations or panic or disgust or shame or the eating disorder feeling like it’s escalating. I want to make it really clear that if all of those things are happening or any of those things are happening, this isn’t because recovery is failing; this is because you’re starting to interrupt appeasement, and when you start to do that, there are ramifications. Like with an abusive partner, there can be the anger that rises up because of that.

00:27:01

Why ‘partial recovery’ is just appeasement

What this often leads to is that it feels like partial recovery is the safest option – or not even just the safest option, the only possible option or “the most I could ever get to.” People then assume that “This is the way I’m going to be able to do recovery and the only way I can do recovery. I’ll do small increases. I’ll be careful about weight gain. I’ll keep some of the rules. I’ll still avoid certain foods because I want to feel safe and I want to feel like this is manageable.”

What unfortunately happens is that the expectation is “If I do these things, if I do it quietly and safety and everything, the eating disorder will be okay with that and I won’t be chastised for it. There won’t be ramifications.” But that’s just not actually what happens. Partial change doesn’t actually feel any safer than a bigger change. It feels like it should, it feels like “It’s only this one extra thing” or “I’m only removing this small amount of movement. It should be very easy to do”, but actually that doesn’t translate. That’s not what actually happens.

Because really, the eating disorder isn’t concerned about the size of change; it’s concerned about disobedience. Even if this thing is a small transgression, it is still a transgression. This means that someone eats a little and changes one little thing or tries this tiny thing, it gets registered as “I disobeyed” and there is this full nervous system reaction that then takes place.

This then really keeps people stuck, because you then get into the idea of “If I can’t even increase this tiny thing, how could I possibly do something much bigger?” It’s this bind of like “Hey, there’s still this fear that is here when I do this, and there is no relief that I got from doing that. It’s not like there was a little bit of fear or a lot of fear but at least I’m getting this upside; it just feels like there’s all this fear and there’s no upside here.” So you get stuck in the eating disorder remaining in charge, the fear being prolonged rather than resolved, energy staying low, safety being postponed.

You get the worst of everything and you start to come to the conclusion that “I definitely can’t change. I definitely can’t recover because look what happened when I tried to make this small change.”

What I would say with this is what is showing up is not a sign that you can’t recover or that you’re doing recovery wrong or that you’ll never be able to recover. What it is a sign of is you’re trying to still appease the eating disorder while doing recovery and those two things just don’t really work together. When you are in that appeasement mode, what you are then much more acutely aware of is those cues of danger because you’re attempting to get the best of both worlds – “I’m going to recover and I’m not going to feel any insecurities about it or have the eating disorder thoughts or feel uncomfortable. I’m trying to do this in a way that doesn’t raise any threats.”

Which, again, makes complete sense, but it just doesn’t work in that way. What needs to happen then is, how do we make changes where “I’m actually changing my approach to this. I’m not trying to do appeasement. And yes, I can recognise that that’s scary and I can be having these strong feelings about that or having these strong eating disorder thoughts coming up, but with the recognition of that’s actually what should be happening, because I’m no longer trying to appease this thing. I’m actually trying to genuinely recover.”

Again, what I want to get across as part of this section is partial recovery doesn’t feel safe, and the reason it doesn’t feel safe is because it’s just not very effective. And it’s not effective because you’re still staying in the same line of thinking and the same line of being as you’ve been with the eating disorder.

00:31:45

How to stop appeasement: What NOT to do

What then does start to work? How do you really loosen this appeasement? Let me start with what doesn’t work.

One, logic doesn’t work. Eating disorders are highly illogical with this. I think the logic that would work here would be “Hey, it makes sense that there are these reactions”, but if you’re trying to think your way out of it, like “Hey, if I can come up with a better explanation, then maybe the eating disorder’s not going to be angry with me or maybe they’ll then finally see why it’s important that I have this rest or I eat this bigger meal” – there is no argument that you’re going to be able to mount that is going to help you in that way.

I think a lot of things where it’s connected to being more comfortable before I make a change. So “Hey, if I get the right amount of reassurance, then it will feel fine to make a change.” Or “If I get the right amount of insight, then it will feel right to make a change.” Or “If someone can just tell me that I’m allowed to eat, then I’ll totally feel comfortable doing this.” It’s not that any of those things are inherently wrong. We can talk about all of those things. But if none of that is then paired with actual action-taking, it doesn’t really lead anywhere. You can have a moment of clarity, but as soon as you get back into the action-taking, all of that disappears. So it is then about action-taking.

00:33:23

How to stop appeasement: Predictability

If I’m looking at then what does work, one is predictability. One way of looking at this is naming that it’s going to be really normal and natural and expected that there’s going to be this spike in thoughts and feelings and sensations as you start to make a change, and reminding yourself that this is time-limited in terms of the reaction that comes up.

This is the thing that I always want to get across to people and what I work on so much with clients is you can have all these theories about what may happen, but it’s only when you then do it that you actually get to experience what actually happens. Most people then recognise, “That wasn’t exactly how I expected it to happen. I thought that I would feel guilt indefinitely because of that thing that I did, and actually I notice within an hour, two hours, three hours, it started to dissipate.” So whatever is going on, there is this time-limited amount to it.

And this is about both the individual changes that you’re making – so “I make this change and there is a certain amount of reaction, but that is time-limited”, but also the eating disorder is time-limited. If you do the things that help you recover, that then does change your nervous system. That does change your brain and your mind and the way that you think about things. And that means there is this point where it is going to be challenging and uncomfortable, and that that is not forever.

I think this is one of the disservices that people are given when they’re told that “Hey, you’re just going to have to learn to live with this. Eating disorders are a lifetime thing. They’re always going to be there. You need to just get better at managing these thoughts and these feelings.” I just totally disagree with that. It’s not that someone can’t be fully recovered and then have certain thoughts about food or certain thoughts about their body or certain worries or fears or any of those things. I think that is completely normal, because we are human beings, and we’re human beings living in the world that we do.

But those things are not dominating your life in the way that they are with an eating disorder. They’re much more sporadic, and they’re possibly connected to times of when things are a little more stressful, this is where your mind or your body goes. So reminding yourself that this is time-limited and really having some predictability about this.

And this is also why in the beginning, I will have very specific goals that people are working on. It’s not just “Hey, eat whatever you want, do whatever you want, just throw yourself into recovery.” If someone wants to go down that route and do it that way, I’m all for it.

But the reality is, that’s not what happens for most people, and when they try and do that, they find that they are unable to do it. So having predictability of “These are the two goals that we’re focusing on right now. This is where the change is going to happen, this is what you need to do in advance as part of that”, so there’s real predictability with this.

00:36:33

How to stop appeasement: External structure

The next one is external structure, and this kind of connects to what I was just saying there. It’s having this plan that was made in advance before the fear hits. It’s not that I get to my lunch and I think, “Hey, what should I have for lunch today? I should definitely have a pro-recovery meal today. What should that be?” When you’re so close to that change that you need to make, it’s very hard to then have the curiosity, to have the openness to be like “That sounds like it should be fun. Let me go with that.”

That does come, but it’s definitely not where someone starts, so having a plan in advance of “This is what I’m going to do, and I know that there are going to be thoughts and feelings and sensations that come up, and it means that I’ve already agreed this thing in advance, so when that comes up, I don’t need to go into a hostage negotiation with the eating disorder around this. I just need to know that it makes sense that those things are here; I’m going to follow through on this. And again, I can then see what actually happens when I do this. How long do those feelings last for after I’ve made this change?”

00:37:45

How to stop appeasement: Coregulation

Another thing that can help is coregulation. Coregulation is another term that comes from polyvagal theory. I mean, maybe it predates that; I know it through polyvagal theory. It is being regulated by another human being.

We hopefully have this instinctual feeling around this, as I explained. There are people in your life, and it also could be animals – it could be with a cat, with a dog, with a horse – where just being in their presence helps you to feel more calm. You notice things within them, whether it is their face, whether it is their tone of voice, whether it is stroking them, being in contact with their body, that sends cues of safety to your nervous system.

Again, this isn’t a logical thing where you are very specific about “I see the way that your eyes are doing that thing and that’s why I feel safe.” This is just your nervous system picking up on these things. It’s why you can feel very safe in someone’s presence and not feel safe in someone else’s presence and you’re just not entirely sure what it is.

But as part of recovery, coregulation is really important. In a sense, it’s you piggybacking off someone else’s nervous system to bring in more of that safe and social there. This could mean eating with other people. For some people that’s really challenging, and actually no matter who is in their life, it doesn’t help. But for some people, they do have those people in their life even very early in recovery where eating with them can be helpful.

Or if not eating with them, spending time with them before having a meal, or spending time with them after having a meal. Having someone who’s able to witness you, but not judge you, where you’re actually able to speak your mind and say the things that are coming up, and you feel very held by that person. You want to have this feeling through the coregulation of “I’m not alone. There are people in this world who understand me, and there is someone here who’s understanding me in this moment.”

And when I say understanding, it doesn’t mean that they understand every intricate detail, but you are not there having to explain yourself. You’re able to just feel safe in that person’s presence.

00:40:12

How to stop appeasement: Permission to feel unsafe

The next thing that can be really important with this is permission to feel unsafe. There is no way of recovering from an eating disorder without feeling unsafe. It is part of the package. We need to retrain your nervous system and your mind and your brain to think about certain things and to feel certain things differently so that your body is no longer cataloguing this thing as a threat.

The way that we get there, unfortunately, is you need to do the things, and you need to do the things repeatedly so that your body and your mind relearn that this thing isn’t actually a threat. So having permission to then feel unsafe, having permission to feel angry, having permission to feel scared I think is really important – and not just permission, but, again, if we come back to the predictability piece, the expectation that these things are going to happen for you. I’m not saying that to scare you; I’m saying that to manage expectations, because I think it’s really important.

And the reason that this thing is important is I want you to be able to recognise that “I can feel unsafe and still continue” or “I can feel scared and I can still take this action.” Just having these feelings and these thoughts and the eating disorder getting really loud doesn’t automatically mean that “I now have to bow to what it is saying that I can do.”

This is really where recovery matters, because if you can start to learn this – and when I say learn this, you learn it through action. If you can start to take more and more action, you start to recognise “Things can be uncomfortable and I can actually still do the things that I need to as part of recovery.” And learning through this that the safety actually comes after the action-taking and after doing this, not beforehand. So often, clients will then tell me, “Oh man, it was such a relief afterwards that I was able to do that.” And it might not be that they tell me that on the first time of doing it, but it can then come about.

And it can be connected to things that people are really afraid of doing, because again, there’s a part of them that wants to be able to do that. There’s a part that, yes, feels really scared about having carbohydrates with dinner or having rice with dinner or having this thing as a dessert, and there’s also a part that wants to be able to do that and wants the ability to be able to do that and wants to be able to not be scared about doing those things.

So when you’ve then been able to do it, there is some relief that comes with that, and there can be a whole mix of emotions. But recognising, one, you have permission to feel unsafe; two, that it is a very normal part of recovery; and three, that the safety will come with time as you keep doing this.

00:43:09

How to stop appeasement: Fuel

Then the final piece with this that I want to mention is just fuel – the importance of having energy come into your body. And I can say fuel; I could also say rest. Changing that energy balance with this.

One of the things that I haven’t mentioned up until this point is that our nervous system is really impacted upon by the amount of energy we have coming into our system. Because if you’re not bringing in enough energy or you’re using more energy than you’re bringing in, what the body has to do to try and survive as part of that is it has to turn on the stress response in the body. It has to turn on cortisol and adrenaline, the whole stress mechanism, because one of the things that that mechanism does is it finds energy.

If you’re going to be having to fight or run or whatever, you need a mechanism for being able to bring energy for that very explosive work because stress is meant to be short-lived. It’s meant to be “Hey, this is super expensive. We’re going to spend all the energy we have on this so that you can get away and you can be safe and then we can shake it out and we’re no longer in that situation.”

So what the body did in terms of its evolution is it developed this stress response, but it also uses it for a load of different things. So if there’s not enough energy coming in, it turns on that stress response, and when you turn on that stress response, it’s then hard to be in safe and social. Safe and social isn’t the place that you’re in when you’re feeling a lot of stress hormones that are going on.

This is, one, why coregulation can be so important, because you’re in a situation where “Hey, it’s nigh impossible to actually be in safe and social because of the state your body’s in from an energy perspective, and we only get there if there’s this other dog / cat / human / whatever that I can piggyback off of.”

This is why it’s so important to bring energy in, because if you’re doing all of this work but we’re not actually bringing the energy in and not bringing enough energy in, your body’s just not able to get out of that state. So it then becomes this Groundhog Day, and then you start to think, “Well, I’m doing all of these changes. I’m making this change, I’m making that change, and I’m not actually getting more comfortable with it. I’m not feeling like it’s making a difference in terms of my symptoms and my thoughts” or whatever it may be. That then can feel like” This thing doesn’t work for me.”

Again, this is why I’m such a big proponent of, if you’re going to make changes, we want to make meaningful changes. Because we want to make changes that are going to give you enough energy and enough rest that you can actually experience a change in your nervous system and your physiology.

Undereating really keeps the appeasement online, and it also keeps the appeasement online from a “I’m doing something that is appeasing the eating disorder, I’m doing the exact thing it’s asking of me or I’m doing this tiny change because I don’t want it to get angry with me.” So there’s a psychological component in terms of how I’m approaching this, but bigger than that is there’s this physiological component that we’re not actually getting out of this state.

Nourishment isn’t optional. It is everything. If that’s not happening, every day is going to be like Groundhog Day. It is going to constantly feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill because you’re not foundationally changing the thing that is so important.

00:47:00

Importance of action-taking for recovery

The thing that I want to just say with all of these different pieces is it is about action-taking. The nervous system doesn’t need to be convinced; it needs repeated experiences of surviving disobedience, and it needs repeated experiences of getting in more energy. And when you do that again and again, that’s how you start to break out of this appeasement and that’s how you start to have moments of feeling different. And then you come back down and you’re back in it again.

It can be like a roller coaster, where finally “It feels like that feels normal and I’m good with it” and then the next day there’s this challenge with it again. But the more you’re doing these things, the more that it starts to transition so “I am feeling more time in safe and social” or “I am having more of that safe and social energy there as opposed to just being in fight or flight or freeze or appeasement.”

So that is what I wanted to talk about as part of this episode. I’ve definitely done episodes before where I’ve talked about appeasement and I’ve talked about this with different guests, but I haven’t really talked about it from a nervous system perspective. I was often talking about it almost like a strategy that someone’s trying to do when they’re doing recovery and the pitfalls of doing it that way.

What I wanted to do as part of this one was really acknowledge that this is coming from the nervous system and this is coming from the state that someone’s in, and to really just understand that early recovery isn’t going to feel safe. If it is feeling safe, you’re not really doing recovery.

And I would say that even if you’re not really doing recovery and you’re staying within the eating disorder, you’re still probably not feeling that safe. You might’ve normalised to it; you might not notice things in the way that if you were healthy, happy, and then were just dropped into that, you would really notice it. You’ve become accustomed to “That’s what it feels like when I delay my eating” or “That’s what it feels like when I have to do all of these other things first before I eat” or “I’m not allowed to sit down until this thing’s done” or whatever it may be.

You might not recognise “This feels unsafe”, or that might not be the word that you use, but there is a lot of unsafety that is there as part of the eating disorder. So it’s not like the eating disorder truly keeps you safe. It is still there, and as part of recovery, yeah, there is this point of it feeling unsafe or even more unsafe, but it’s getting you somewhere. It’s getting you somewhere where you can have a totally different quality of life.

Appeasement loosens not when the fear disappears, but when safety starts becoming something that you’re wanting to move towards and work towards where “Hey, me getting there is more important than staying in this threat.”

So that is everything from today’s episode. As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you want to reach a place of full recovery, if you feel like you are stuck in this appeasement mode and that’s how you’ve been approaching so much of your recovery – or maybe you’ve had moments of doing more than just that and then falling back into appeasement – if that’s where you find yourself and this episode resonated with you, then please reach out. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com, or you can send a DM to @sevenhealthcompany on Instagram.

Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. I will catch you again next week. Until then, take care!

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