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Wisdom Quotes that Support Eating Disorder Recovery
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- Category: Self-Help
Well chosen words can bring peace to a troubled heart, open a darkened mind and destroy perceived barriers with a glimpse of wondrous vistas. Here are a few that may be needed gifts to your heart and soul. Please add your own favorites that inspire and support your recovery work."Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future."
Gail Lumet Buckley
*pix
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"If you're with a person or in a place where there's a sense of joy,
a sense of harmony that makes you feel happy,
then you have arrived at your own particular sacred place,
at least for the moment."
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.
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"I found that I needed a lot less money than I thought I needed,
as long as I was spending my time on the right things.
The more time I spent taking care of myself, the better things did around me.
There was no discrepancy between taking care of myself and my success.
In fact, there was a positive correlation."
Carol Orsborn
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"I stopped believing in Santa Claus at age six when my mother took me to see him in a store
and he asked for my autograph."
Shirley Temple Black
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"The first step is to find out what you love - and don't be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible.
I've seen what happens to people when they get to do what they love. The light up. They glow. They have a kind of energy that's wonderful."
Barbara Sher
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"If I had influence withthe good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life."
Rachel Carson
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"I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back."
Zsa Zsa Gabor.
This is actually something to meditate on. What do you think?
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"Your biggest problems and your worst obsessions contain the seeds of your own growth and development."
Sara Halprin
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"The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don't always dream your dream."
Linda Ronstadt
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"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity....
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."
Melody Beattie
To me these wisdom quotes relate to recovery issues in eating disorder work. A well chosen quote can be uplifting for people in eating disorder treatment. You may already know how the right wisdom quote can support and inspire you. In my Los Angeles private practice my clients and I incorporate favorite quotes to make thorny issues more clear and offer strength to persevere.
Which seem meaningful to you?
How do they relate to your life and your situation?
Please share a quote that is meaningful to you.
* pix Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis x cultivar), in a garden, France.
By JLPC (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Comments
When you feel a sense of wonder in the world around you, you are seeing the good, the magical. You see potential. It is something children do well, because they are naive about life. They haven't seen a lot of negatives. They don't see the bigger picture clouded by disappointments, trauma. Being able to hold onto this sense of wonder throughout ones life would be a precious gift. It would require a person to move past the negatives that they have experienced and be able to have hope that things can be better. It would be a wonderful gift. I think it doesn't have to be something one can only wish for. While I don't think it's possible or even wise to negate life experiences, I think it IS possible and even wise to give oneself a break from all of the hurts in life to experience something beautiful and wonderous.
I like taking walks with my little daughter. She marvels over mushrooms growing outside her bedroom window. She says they look like beach umbrellas for barbies. We have a little frog that hangs out near a water spout by our front door. We have named him Fred the Frog. He seems to like us. We take our time finding the smoothest rock out of the pile down by the lake. We wonder how they got so soft. She is amazed that rocks can write like chalk on the sidewalk. She asks safe questions. She asks hard questions. She wants to know if "Mr. Paul" can see us from heaven.
Despite my early abuse, I feel that I was able to still maintain the innocense of childhood that goes along with such experiences that my own child is lucky enough to enjoy. I think that despite my abuse, and everything that was going on at the time, and all of the confusion, I was young enough to feel that the world could still be good, as a whole.
It wasn't until I became older and began to see how this abuse affected many areas of my life that my world became jaded. When my eating disorder started as a young teen, I was depressed and stressed over myself and who I was, but I didn't view the whole world as bad at that time. I only viewd myself as bad. When I became an adult I started viewing the world as bad, feeling that I was owed something for everything I had been through. That all men were bad, that everyone was out to get me, that my parents didn't "save" me from the monster of my grandfather.
I have started trying to rework this sense of wonder into my life. I have been working on ways to lighten my work load and spend more time with my children ~ the very people who are able to remind me what it's like to use imagination. What it's like to have dreams and wishes that you truly believe are possible.
I know that I'm not usually one to dwell on things that give me the feeling of wonder, or my accomplishments or good things that have happened or how I am loved by others. In fact I often feel like something bad will happen if I do, so I notice and then quickly move on. I also often wonder why I'm always so prone to anxiety and thinking about when the "other shoe" will drop. So, the workshop gave me some scientific reasons to try to be more mindful of the positive and not just of the negative.
Apparently it only takes an extra 10-20 seconds of "marinating" to make the positive experience "stick" more. I think that's really cool because it seems really doable to notice that I'm happy and try to hang on to it for the count of 20
Tracy and Laura, I love both of your responses!
Tracy you reminded me that I had planned to spend a bit more time getting 'back to nature', and that I had viewed it as something the whole family enjoys, but I have let it slip a little over the last week ot two, as I have had such a huge workload... but I must get back to it
And Laura, I like that idea of holding on to happy moments for just a count of 20 longer than you usually would, to try to bring a more positive outlook to your way of being.
I am a great believer in trying to embrace both positive and negative experiences that come into our lives, as it is the negative ones that always seem to bring with them the greatest opportunities for personal growth and self-development, and a contrast that helps us to appreciate the positive things.
Just as we need day and night, sunshine and rain, we need positive and negative experiences, we need to live the whole spectrum from one end to the other, and take from it everything we can to nourish and enrich our lives.
Will just leave you with a little phrase I saw on a friend's FB wall...
"if you always follow in other peoples footsteps, how will you ever make any footsteps of your own?"
Here's another I just discovered and think it belongs in the top treasures.
"You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it."
-Margaret Thatcher
Here is another:
"we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are"
~Anais Nin
I think Anais Nin might've "borrowed" that one from Immanuel Kant - I do think it's very true though
I'm a bit emotional today, and listening to old songs...I really like these lyrics from Simon & Garfukel's, 'The Boxer':
In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains