I Went on a Retreat and It Wrecked My Body Image
Here’s what really happened (Spoiler: It wasn't about my body)
I’d like to begin by saying, it might sound like I’m exaggerating when I say “wrecked,” but anyone who has been through body image issues knows that at that moment it feels the end of the world.
I felt like I couldn’t stand my body.
I couldn’t stand being in my body.
I couldn’t even stand just being.
But let me rewind to how I ended up there. There are a few steps in between.
The Retreat: Arriving in the Woods
In June, I was signed up to go on a retreat in the woods near the German border in the Netherlands. After weeks of having little in-person sessions and mostly working online, I was ready to be among other therapists to connect.
The first day of the retreat was about settling in. After hours of driving, I was happy that we took it easy: a meal, a few sessions only, and then sleep.
On the second day we got up early and did our morning yoga as a group. After breakfast we delved deeper into our identities as therapists and how this related to our businesses. We even had a constellation exercise where the elements of the constellations were us, our clients, and our business. It was intense. I have to say, even as a therapist, I find it hard to stay in touch with my body and move intentionally for so long.
The Letter
After a small break we had the other session during which we were instructed to write a letter from our future self to our current self.
Easy peasy, I thought. I’m usually open to such prompts and to chatting with different parts of myself, whether it’s my inner child or future self. I grabbed my pen and started writing.
By the second page, I started reaching for the snacks on the table: chocolate pralines, cookies, peanuts (not an option—allergies!), and Merci chocolate. I took a cookie, then a praline, then another.
As I reached for another Merci mindlessly, I suddenly felt an overwhelming awareness of how much I’m eating compared with the 11 women who sitting next to me in silence. I glanced over: some were scribbling, some were smiling at their paper, some were super concentrated, like cute iPad kids who have lost their spatial and temporal awareness.
Although no one was watching me, I caught myself thinking:
“Well, you need to leave some to others, don’t you?” and intentionally stopped myself from eating more.
Snacking, Scrolling, and Struggling
As I kept writing, my hand automatically grabbed my phone that lay face down on the table. Like a programmed machine, I kept opening Instagram. Each time I stared emptily at my feed and scrolled, then locked the phone, huffed and puffed with frustration.
Over and over.
“Why am I doing this? No phone until I finish the letter.”
With curiosity, the pattern became clear: I struggled to finish the letter and resorted to snacking or doomscrolling. Becoming aware of this, I made a conscious effort to stop both. (This took many tries and quite a bit of willpower, not gonna lie.)
That’s when I started feeling my belly.
My stomach rolls were folding over each other. Heavy. Very full.
I put my hand over it, almost like a body check.
“Have I gained weight?”
That one thought opened the floodgates to bad body image thoughts: You haven’t weighed yourself for a while… It will be a disaster when you do… You just ate at least 10 cookies and you’ve been sitting all day… You are going to gain weight without being aware of it and you’ll feel awful…
My Inner Critic was on a roll—commentary nonstop.
“How are you on a retreat and you are having a bad body image day as the eating disorder therapist day?”
After this sentence I snapped out of it: “Wait… What is happening? How did I get here?”
The Truth Behind the Seemingly Random Spiral
I stared at my letter. My eyes got teary. “Ah” I thought, “that’s it. It’s the letter”
The letter from my future self included some messages about my business and my personal therapy topic. Writing it brought big realizations and answered questions I’ve been asking myself for the past two years, which meant hard truths, overwhelm, and taking some action based on it.
We know from research that cognitive dissonance—the mismatch between what we know and how we act—is SO uncomfortable that we’ll do anything to reduce it. Example: You believe smoking is harmful, but you smoke. It’s hard to hold both truths, so you modify one. You tell yourself “It’s not that bad to smoke; many smokers don’t die.” then you get to keep smoking. Or you maintain the latter belief and stop smoking. But holding a belief and acting differently creates dissonance.
When it came to my business, I wasn’t ready to act, yet the letter forced the truth on me. This made me incredibly uncomfortable in my body. I felt like I couldn’t stand my body or simply be. My ‘coping parts’ kicked in: I went for food, wanting to soothe myself with different tastes. When my Wise (Observant) Self became aware of it, I stopped. But the coping parts pushed back harder:
You won’t let us eat? Then we… SCROLL!
Having observed this behaviour and intentionally stopping, I was forced feel my discomfort through bad body image. I lacked the awareness and language for it, and I started feeling it as fat on my stomach, it was a visceral experience of feeling fat all-over. Hence the thought of “Have I gained weight?” which then triggered the free-flowing bad body image thoughts.
From a distance this may look like a random trigger or a typical day for someone with an eating disorder. On inspection, I could make the connection.
Staying With the Feeling (Like a Stubborn Goat)
So how did the rest of the story go after making this connection?
It will be very anti-climactic but… I stayed with the feeling. Instead of panicking, reaching for food or Instagram, or worrying about having these thoughts, I just stopped and focused on the sensation in my body. Step two was locating it, identifying the sensations, and their intensity. I was stubborn like a goat, almost daring the discomfort and my Inner Critic: “Yes I am feeling discomfort. Yes it’s in my stomach. So what? I can feel it and be okay with it. I’m surrounded by all these people. Come at me, I’m not scared.” I looked around and grounded myself by noticing the parts of my body that touched the chair, how I was supported by the chair.
Within a few minutes the feeling weakened. I finished my letter and shared it with others. I was offered so much compassion that I almost cried. And that was the last step: connection, feeling emotionally held by people.
From Misattribution to Meaning
In this case, bad body image was actually the discomfort, feelings I couldn’t name, getting mislabeled as “fat.”
What shifted everything for me was realizing that I didn’t have to fight the feeling, fix it, or run away. Actually, doing all those things were hurting me, I was frustrated already in the moment and was going to be upset over emotional eating later. Instead I could sit with it, notice it, and still be okay.
And maybe that’s the invitation for all of us: to stop confusing “fat” with feelings, to notice how easily we’re taught to blame our bodies, and to start learning how to hold discomfort without letting it define us.
Because when we do, we find that what we really needed all along wasn’t a smaller body—but a bigger capacity to stay with ourselves.
Want to Explore This With Me?
If you’re like me, and your automatic reaction to stress or discomfort is reaching for food or your phone, you’re not alone. I see this pattern so often—in myself, in my clients, and in people who feel “full but not fed.”
That’s why I created an online 2-day workshop to share the exact tools and practices that helped me pause, notice, and respond differently.
Full but Not Fed: Emotional Eating Workshop
A live space to:
Break free from automatic coping patterns
Discover ways to soothe without food (or endless scrolling)
Reconnect with your body in a kinder, gentler way
🗓 Oct 1–2 | Live on Zoom
🎟 Early Bird €49 (available until Sept 20) → tickets increase after.
👉 Reserve your spot today and start shifting how you relate to food, feelings, and your body.
📎 Free Resource
🌱 In case you haven’t already, don’t forget to download your FREE Emergency Recovery Kit for Bad Body Image Days here.
This essay was first published on my newsletter. Read the original on Substack →