The BodyKind Project
Calm&Reset
This section offers simple tools to help you pause, regulate your emotions, and return to a sense of calm. Through guided audios, breathing exercises, and gentle grounding practices, you can support your mind and body during moments of stress or overwhelm.
These tools are here whenever you need a moment to reset and reconnect with yourself.
Mindfulness Practices
Meditations
WHEN YOU FEEL...
Anxiety is a natural emotional response to uncertainty. It often appears as persistent worry, nervousness, or a sense that something needs to be fixed, solved, or controlled right away.
Now, instead of trying to eliminate it, try to bring your attention from the overwhelming imagination back to your surrounding. Maybe focus on the feeling of your feet touching the ground, or pay attention to your breathing without trying to change it.
Also ask yourself a couple of questions including: What am I worried might happen? What is one thing you know to be true? What is one small step I can take right now?
The feeling of being out of control often emerges because something needs attention and is often associated with high stress, uncertainty, and burnouts. "Feeling out of control" does not necessarily reflect that you are actually out of control or are incapable of managing them. In order to compensate for the uncertainty, you might have tried to search the sense of "control" on more concrete aspects of your life such as eating and food, which is totally okay, and can be addressed!
The first step is to take a deep breath and slow down your urge trying to fix everything. Once you feel more relaxed, try to reflect on what you may change and what you may not change. Ask yourself and identify what you are searching and trying to fix for. Remember, practicing flexibility instead of perfect control is the right way to go.
Guilt is the uncomfortable feeling that arises when we believe we have done something wrong, hurt someone, violated our values, or failed to meet our own expectations. Rather then making you a bad person, guilt actually signals that something matters to us. You are not along: feeling guilty after eating is a really common thing that people experience nowadays, and this is why you are here!
Start by reevaluating the "rule" or "belief" that you have broke. Is it one hundred percent accurate? For instance when the "rule" was to not eat the dessert, is the rule based of fear or fact? Also try to identify the source of this "rule", is it your own belief or have you inherited it?
Remember that eating is more than nutrition, it also incorporates enjoyment, connection, and comfort!
Feeling numb does not mean you are incapable of feeling. Often, it is a warning that your mind and body have been carrying more than they can comfortably process to protect you from deeper harm. Due to the experience with overly intensified emotions, our system have been turned onto a "low power mode" and that is why you barely feels anymore.
Don't start by forcing yourself to feel differently, focus on your bodily sensations through doing light works, such as taking a cold shower, go on a short walk, and hold a warm drink to bring yourself back to the present while noticing the physical sensations around you. Bring your attention on small things by asking yourself about where am I right now, what is the weather like today, and even since when did I feel myself disconnected?
**Always check out the 'Move' section to regain the sense of embodiement with your body!!
Before anything else, always keep in mind that you are good the way you are, and there is definitely no need to change. The set in of this feeling is also normal, as we humans naturally tend to seek for belonging, recognition, and encouragement from others which is not a problem at all. However, once believing that all of your worth depends on the way you look, the tendency starts doing more harm to yourself before realizing.
A critical question to ask that helps to break the triggering belief might be "Are there any evidence that proves your worth depends on your appearance?" Even if there are, firmly believe that it is an invalid evidence since we are all unique and shaped by our personality, thoughts, actions, relationships, values and all other qualities that are impossible to capture in a single list. Your worth should be determined by you, not others.