Anyone else find that they go through life rarely swearing but when it comes to eating disorder recovery or considering anything to do with an ED the language becomes less than polite?
Maybe it’s just me… but I don’t think so!
Recently I’ve turned into a person who can curse with the best of them.
If I had to pay a penny for every time I have sworn since starting this recovery -well my debt would be well beyond the means of even Richard Branson!
But you know what… sometimes swearing really helps.
Applying an expletive to this cruel illness can make me feel better & in recent days very little achieves that!
Sometimes I might swear at the illness or at what it’s doing to me or I might swear for the sake of letting off some ED generated frustration!
Sometimes I swear to shake myself into action….. “just eat the f**king food & stop being pathetic” is a bit of therapeutic self talk I’ve successfully deployed & without the F word in there, it does not have the same effect.
So, yes, I think swearing is a help in eating disorder recovery – even if not socially acceptable!
And, there is scientific grounding to the use of swearing.
Studies show that very often the use of swear words comes from a basic animal response in the deep part of the brain, not the main language centre.
Just as an animal shrieks or growls, swearing can be a basic evolutionary response to express passion, anger, fear…
The use of swearing is also thought to help us dig deeper into our feelings & act on them with more urgency.
A swear word in a sentence to another can make us more persuasive, shocking our listener into understanding the emotion behind the words.
On a physiological level too, swearing helps… it can raise adrenaline levels & subsequently cause an endorphin release (the feel good hormone).
All of these benefits to swearing that might just help in ED recovery though are really only true if you don’t have a tendency to swear a lot in everyday life.
These benefits come when the use of the expletive is at a deep emotional & animal level…
BUT I am happy to report science proves that swearing can be therapeutic and an effective weapon against an eating disorder!
RECOVERING NOMAD 