The Emotional Thaw in Eating Disorder Recovery

A very necessary aspect of recovery is when our bodies begin to come alive again - and with that, so do our emotions. I often refer to this as the emotional thaw. During the eating disorder, emotional numbness often serves a purpose, even if that purpose is ultimately harmful. As the disorder loosens its grip, that numbness starts to unwind, and many people experience a period of heightened emotional intensity.

Emotions can feel chaotic, out of proportion to what’s happening, or swing dramatically from one moment to the next. This is a normal part of recalibrating to a feeling experience, perhaps for the first time or for the first time in a long while.

In my experience as an eating disorder therapist, this “thaw” can occur early in recovery or years later. Everyone’s process is unique.

One analogy I often use is being out in the cold: your hands go so numb you can barely feel them. When you come back inside and they begin to thaw, they hurt - sometimes intensely - before sensation returns to normal. Emotionally, this phase can feel similar: painful intensity as you and your body remembers the capacity to feel and process again.

My biggest recommendation during this time is to allow emotions to move as much as feels possible, even if they feel “too much,” sudden, or unclear in origin. Emotional expression is often what helps restore regulation, not the other way around. Although I’m not a hormone expert, there is often a great deal happening hormonally during this stage as well.

This period does not last forever. And as uncomfortable as it may be, suppressing emotions tends to prolong the process rather than relieve it.

A Shift Toward Self-Recovery

I often think about healing as a form of birth - something I’ve quietly been fascinated by for as long as I can remember. And viewing it through this lens can help us move away from a pathologizing perspective. It’s a transformation, we don’t go back to who we were prior to, we become new, still us (the essence never changes), but woven with experience and wisdom.

Recovery is not about becoming who you once were, it is about reclaiming your Self with more truth, more aliveness, and more agency than before.

Resources for the Emotional Thaw

These are not tools to stop or fix emotional intensity.
They are ways to support your system so emotions can move, even just a bit more each time - until the process completes. Resourcing, not suppressing.

• Breath + Exhale with a Sound
  Take a deep inhale through your nose, and let the exhale carry a sound:
  “ahhh,” “oooo,” a grunt, a sigh - even a yell (maybe give anyone you share a home with a heads up first). There’s no wrong sound.

• Look to the natural world. We hear it all the time, and it is no less potent. As much as we’ve created so much separation, we are nature. We are animals. This is why there is a settling in our systems when we spend time in nature because it helps us remember the truth of who we are. This isn’t to make modern life wrong, but we become unhealthy when we disconnect and disregard the natural, primal, part of us. Walk in the forest, really take in your surroundings as you do, sit with an animal, visit a local farm, garden, put your hands into the dirt.

• Elemental Support
  Choose based on what your body resonates with in the moment:
  Earth
  Lay on the ground
  Walk barefoot outside
  Lean into a tree or sit with a rock
  Spend time in a forest
  Water
  Warm or cool water splashed on your face
  Shower or bath
  Lake, ocean, or creek dips
  (If you want to explore deeper: Masaru Emoto & Veda Austin’s work with water)
  Air
  Breath patterns
  Example for physical/emotional intensity: 2-2-4-2
  (inhale 2, hold 2, exhale 4, hold 2)
  Fire
  A candle gaze
  Warmth (like a heating pad on the chest or back)
  Sunlight on skin
  If you live somewhere with space for this: a little campfire

The purpose isn’t to calm emotions; it’s to support you so the emotions can keep flowing through. Again, I think about the process of (re)birth: the question isn’t how to get out of it, but what can carry me through it.