Caroline Toshack, Author at TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh

There is a place beyond the intensity of being in recovery

Caroline Toshack — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 14:53:50 +0000

There is a place beyond the intensity of being in recovery.

I promise.

When we are at the beginning, or midst of recovery it can all seem so blooming well consuming.

Because it is.

For a while, it might seem like that’s all you can think about. It might feel like choosing recovery is there ALL. THE. TIME!

Which might mean that often it feels like it’s easier to go back to what you know – even though you also hate it there.

Recovering from an eating disorder, in whatever way that has manifested, most likely means going against the grain of some of society’s messages.

Which makes it even more exhausting!

It might mean blocking out some of the opinions and beliefs around you. It might sometimes mean that others think things have regressed, whereas you know you’re making decisions that are recovery focused.

Recovery can some days require a laser-like focus on your wish to have a more fulfilling life that doesn’t include an eating disorder. When life around tries to pull you elsewhere, it can mean choosing you – again and again and again.

However, one day at a time leads you to a place where you are eventually able to look back and see how far you have come. A day after a day after a day leads to more experience and skill at making choices that take you out of the eating disorder. These choices become easier. You see the path ahead clearer.

You can stop for a breath, without feeling like you’ll fall.

And then one day the shame that consumed you, will quieten and reveal pride.

You will see all that you once bore, and the courage that you showed by choosing ‘no more’.

And one day the strength of your recovery will knit deep within your bones.

Someone recently told me that they didn’t want to admit to being in recovery for fear of making others uncomfortable.

It makes me sad that others might feel uncomfortable in the presence of such strength and courage.

Keep going.

I’m proud of you.

The post There is a place beyond the intensity of being in recovery appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.

Breathe (Video)

Caroline Toshack — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 10:54:34 +0000

Caroline takes us through how we can feel after taking a deep breath, and has included a video on how we can fully do this and feel grounded.

To pause
To notice
To collect your thoughts
To make space
To listen in
To connect with yourself
To face the next moment
To find choice

The tiny amount of time it takes us to stop and breathe can create a vastness of opportunity.

In the pause for breath we come back to ourself to check in with the moment. In that pause we can make a different choice that comes from our own knowing. It is the pause that can help us to break destructive habits, or put our own oxygen mask on first, or gather strength for the big grown up pants moments that we all inevitably have.

It is the pause that allows us to make decisions from our internal barometer.

It can be the pause that calms us enough to wait or step back or that gives us the energy to step forward.

The infinitely vast yet microscopically small moment of taking a breath can change everything. You don’t have to know how to breathe ‘right’, your body knows.

You ALREADY know.
So stop for that breath.

That tiny moment might feel like forever if you’re used to reacting immediately.
Actually, no one notices. But you will.

If I could only ever offer one piece of advice it would be this: stop for a breathe. And if you still don’t know what to do, then stay for another…. the answers are in there. For those of you who find it challenging to focus on your breath, if it’s triggering in any way, then you can stop and notice the feel of the ground underneath you. Trust yourself, when the time is right, you’ll find your breath.

The breathing practice below takes you through a layering of techniques that can help to calm and steady you.

When we’re more used to feeling ungrounded, unsteady or ungathered, taking a moment to ‘just breath’ can be seen a less accessible option. Instead we might react habitually and continue to reinforce behaviour patterns that aren’t necessarily the best ones for us.

BUT if we practice breathing techniques at times when we are feeling more resourced (at times when we already feel more stable and able), THEN these resources become more readily available to us at the time when we need them most. They’re in the tool kit for the moments when we don’t want to practice them, but we want to implement them.

Go easy on yourself, working through the layers as you are able to today.

Author: Caroline Toshack

Movement Therapist & Eating Disorder / Body Image Specialist BSc

The post Breathe (Video) appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.

Move From The Heart

Caroline Toshack — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 11:57:33 +0000

With social distancing still very much in place, how can we generate the same sensation and warm feeling after receiving a hug? Caroline Toshack, TRC Edinburgh, talks us through moves that leave us feeling cheerful.

I miss hugs. My arms ache for them. I miss giving them and I miss receiving them. My heart feels a little bit less full, a little bit sadder, for not giving out the hugs that I now realise 8 months ago I was offering out several times a day.

While I know I’m missing the sharing of the feel good emotion ‘oxytocin’ that we get from hugs, it feels more. I miss showing my love. I try to smile more from my eyes, I animate my face differently and I’m conscious that I’m now verbalising my hugs to friends by telling them how happy I am to see them. These all feel really positive new strategies and yet, my arms feel the undispersed energy of ungiven hugs.

Our arms could be said to be our first source of expression. In utero, our arms developed before our legs. And they originate from our heart, which was beating and developing before our brain was even on the horizon. Watching the video below of embryo development, it looks to me like the arms express out from the heart and around the body in a big hug. A huge big hug from the heart saying ‘here I am’!

It makes sense to me now how much our arms are an expression of our heart.

Notice when someone talks passionately how much they use their arms to add more vigour and depth to their subject. The expression of grief as arms wring or lift upwards or hug around ourself to somehow hold the loss. And the opening of the arms in a hug to express our love in a way that words cannot.

In so many ways this year we have lost that expression of our arms, whether we are conscious of it or not. We spend even more time on technology working away with great finger dexterity, but keeping our arms quite close in to our body and expressing through our gadgets rather than with our body. And of course, we’re socially distancing, less able to hug, or offer out a gesturing touch or hold to show that we care. We can’t dance together with arms above our heads or around our space connecting with others through our dance.

I wasn’t always a hugger. I’d class myself as ‘arm-shy’ for many years. It felt too vulnerable, too exposing. I see now that I was protecting my heart. Through my training as a movement therapist I began slowly; first some gentle pushing and pulling and then a little swing here and there, and finally I found fully expressive hugs that I could sink into and fully hold. And now I really miss that.

So imagine my joy yesterday when Michelle and I were both in at TRC Edinburgh together – the first time we’d seen each other in person since March – and she had an idea! She asked me to take 2 big cushions from the couch, as she did the same. She gave her two cushions a huge big bear hug and gestured for me to do the same. “Caroline, I’m so so happy to see you. It’s so good to hug you” she said as drew the cushion to her heart. “Oh Michelle, what a beautiful hug. I am so very happy to see you too” I said. We hugged our cushions and we felt the connection. I know I breathed a little bit fuller and my arms ached a little bit less for the interaction. Michelle, you are a genius!

So in this time when just maybe our heart needs our arms more than usual, what can we do to give it a bit of a lift:

Grab your cushions and hug them as you tell your friend how much you care – just like Michelle and I did.
Open your arms wide and air hug with the fullest expression your arms can offer
Place both hands on your heart and feel all the love from your heart flood into your arms and come back round to yourself. The circle of giving and receiving.
Stretch out in your space – reach out and lengthen your arms as much as you can, raise them above your head and let your heart breath fully.
Dance with the music on fully, Shake your arms, move them in all directions and let your heart express itself.

We will hug again, and I look forward to when we do.

Author: Caroline Toshack

Movement Therapist BSc

The post Move From The Heart appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.

How a Pandemic Affected Our Body Image

Caroline Toshack — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 09:38:25 +0000

Caroline Toshack, TRC Edinburgh, explains how living in lockdown may have distorted our image of ourselves. Has being disconnected from our friends and loved ones brought us to seek validation from other sources? Tune-in to your body and take these steps to reclaim your perspective.

Over these last few months, we’ve found ways to stay in touch and socially interact because our need to connect with others is a fundamental instinctual drive within us. This powerful need is hard wired into our system and we seek connection to experience feelings of safety, love, care and of being seen, valued and accepted. Lucinda has written recently about how our childhood experiences of being seen, or not, impacts our self-esteem and our acceptance, or not, of ourselves as we already are.

Trying to change ourselves to feel connected

A lack of self-acceptance can lead to us trying to change how we are in order to feel connected and seen. We seek validation from others that we are accepted, to feel that we belong, and we may do that by trying to emulate what we believe others admire or value in a person. For those with a negative body image, this can manifest in trying to look a certain way, or cover up what they don’t like about how they look. I wrote previously about what makes up our personal sense of body image, which you can read here.

Throughout history, cultures have revered different body shapes and sizes; from the Egyptians to the Rennaisance period, to the 1920s and through to the current day. In the last century in particular, this has changed rapidly, each decade bringing it’s own apparently ‘ideal shape’ around which fashion is formed. The increased speed of these shifts coincides with rapidly expanding marketing, consumerism and selling. Advertising feeds on our insecurities and the promise that if we could somehow look like a certain way, then we would feel better about ourselves.

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

Brene Brown

In this age of social media, multi-channel television, 24-hour news and incessant advertising we are now constantly exposed to these messages. Even with healthy levels of self-esteem, it can feel overwhelming, impossible even, to know how to navigate through these continual messages about how we are apparently supposed to look.

Why you might be feeling worse about your body image

Life during the pandemic has brought new challenges to this conundrum.

Our increased lack of real contact has made us even more vulnerable to the messages around us. We may have used social media and television more to keep us feeling connected with others. Yet, it can also create increased anxiety and stress about how we might have been spending our time during the lockdown. Feeds and news stories have been filled with conversations around daily exercise, who’s eating what to keep healthy, and how we could be using ‘this opportunity to improve ourselves’.

It can lead to pressure to keep up with what we think everyone else is doing and a belief that just coping with getting through a pandemic is somehow not enough. Those who already had negative feelings about their body may find that these feelings are accentuated, and many who aren’t used to feeling insecure about how they look may be finding fault with their body or scrutinising their changing shape.

If any of this resonates with you then you may find these tips helpful:

Accept that this is a unique time and that it will not last forever. History won’t look back on this time and care about how people looked or what they ate.
Practice being kind to yourself. It’s ok for your body to change, and it is in no way representative of who you are as a person, nor how successfully you have coped with the pandemic.
You are not alone in how you are feeling. Even though it may seem like everyone is creating their fittest form ever, the reality is that most are not.
Follow feeds and stories that impact on you positively. If posts from influencers, or even your friends, leave you feeling bad about yourself then unfollow or at least mute them.
Be aware that we only ever see a snapshot of someone’s life. We can never know the real story behind the posts and the pictures, and we have no actual idea how that person feels about them self. They may very well be trying to hide truths about themself from others.
Talk about how you are feeling. It can feel incredibly vulnerable to do this and allow others to know how we feel or to let ourselves be seen as we truly are. Yet, it can be one of the most empowering things that we can do. And it can allow others to see and accept us as ourselves, cultivating a true sense of connection and belonging within us.

Author: Caroline Toshack

Movement Therapist & Eating Disorder / Body Image Specialist BSc

The post How a Pandemic Affected Our Body Image appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.

Understanding Body Image (Video)

Caroline Toshack — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 10:36:28 +0000

Caroline Toshack, TRC Edinburgh, guides us through what lockdown may have brought our body image. Is isolation encouraging feelings of ‘not good enough’? Take these steps to find some perspective.

Lockdown living for some has brought a liberating change of choosing comfort clothes over formal wear, relaxing hair and makeup routines or experimenting with different looks, colours and styles as going to the hairdresser was put on hold.

For others, it has raised concern about their weight or body shape and how it might have been affected by changes in their usual patterns and behaviours of exercise & eating. And as we now transition our way into more social interactions again, many are worried about how others might judge them because of how their body looks.

If you are feeling this way, then please know that you are not alone. It is important to understand that these feelings are not actually about how you look. Rather they relate to your perception, thoughts and feelings about how you look – your body image.

“Feeling beautiful has nothing to do with what you look like”
Emily Watson

The 4 Aspects of Body Image

There are 4 aspects to body image. Knowing these can help us understand our own sense of body image:

Perceptual Body image is the way you see yourself. This is not always a correct representation of what we actually look like. We can perceive ourselves to be bigger, or smaller than we actually are or to have a different shape than we actually do.
How you feel about the way you look is called your affective body image. That includes the things that you may like or dislike about your appearance, body shape or specific body parts.
Cognitive body image describes the thoughts and beliefs you have about your body. Examples of negative cognitive body image would be, ‘my body is disgusting’, ‘I would feel better about myself if I was a different shape’. The inner critic, at play here, has been explored by Michelle in a previous post.
When someone feels unhappy with how they look, then they may carry out certain behaviours that they believe will change their appearance or hide what they believe are their flaws (eg excessive exercise, disordered eating, missing social events, not being seen without full makeup). This is behavioural body image.

What lockdown has highlighted, or exacerbated, is a cycle of trying to change the outside in order to change the negative feelings and thoughts on the inside. This cycle can further deepen a sense of being ‘not good enough’ unless you look a certain way, further fuelling a belief that you will not be accepted by others unless you look a certain way. Michelle has delved deeper into this in a previous post that she has written about shame.

Changing Your Perspective

Things that may be helpful to improve your body image are;

Focus on positive qualities, skills and talents that you have that are not related to how your body looks. You are whole person, with many gifts to offer the world, not just a physical body.

Practice finding things about your body that you like. This can be tricky to begin with but it gradually becoming easier. For example, you might recognise that you like your feet, and you are grateful for what they do for you, and where they take you.

Avoid comparing your body to others. All bodies are completely unique, as are you. We are different heights, bone structures, colours, postures and personalities. Accept your uniqueness and over time you can learn to embrace your body and appreciate that it is part of what makes you special.

Make conscious decisions about what you read and look at. If something you read or watch leaves you feeling bad about your body, then turn over, mute or delete. Remember that a significant majority of images in the media are unrealistic, digitally altered and not true representations.

Learn to trust that your body and you are on the same team. We can work WITH our body and gently shift postures that we adopt to deal with or hide uncomfortable feelings we have about our body. In doing so we can experience how it feels to be accepted by ourself first and foremost and to be seen as our whole true self. You may wish to use the short movement practice below as a starting point.

Author: Caroline Toshack

Movement Therapist & Eating Disorder / Body Image Specialist BSc

The post Understanding Body Image (Video) appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.

Getting to Know Yourself (Video)

Caroline Toshack — Tue, 12 May 2020 09:52:04 +0000

Caroline Toshack shares a short practice for self-compassion.

For many of us, staying at home means we have more time available and more space in our day. Perhaps this offers an opportunity for us to do some of the things that we have been wanting, and meaning, to do for some time. We may find instead that this new found space and time offers up less of the distractions that we unconsciously create to shut out our inner critic, and we find we’re unable to get away from the one person we don’t want to be stuck with – ourself.

Too much time to think, too many changes to negotiate our way around and less interaction with others can be breeding grounds for our inner critic. We find ourselves self soothing in various forms – food, drink, binge watching – or creating new distractions to keep us away from ourself – cleaning what’s already clean once more, visiting the supermarket ‘just because’, or online shopping for things we ‘need’.

Now, this comes with no judgement from me – I get it! I seem to have cultivated a new passion for duvet covers and pillow cases that I didn’t know I had!

But I do also know what it feels like to be full of dislike for yourself and to sit with yourself when you’d rather run the other way. I know that it takes courage. It IS challenging to self soothe in kind ways and to show ourself love and attention when we’d rather point out all our flaws and make a list of how and when to eradicate them. And it does take strength to notice who we ARE and accept all parts of ourself. I also know that ultimately until we learn to do that then we will continue on the same old, same old cycle.

Now, let’s be realistic, we don’t make one big leap from disliking ourself to being filled with self love. That’s a heck of a big ask I reckon.

So, we start small! I’ve recorded and attached this short activity that you can try. Just maybe it can help you can discover that actually some part of you is ok and worthy of some kindness. You may find that it feels nice to do this activity and you feel good for taking the time to look after you. Maybe it’s the start of getting to know your body, building a relationship beyond the distractions and disconnection. Maybe you do it once and never again! But it could also be the first step in making friends with yourself and being ok in your own skin.

You will need some hand cream, or lotion that you can rub into your skin. If you don’t have anything like that at the moment then you could also use a couple of drops of olive oil or cooking oil.

Michelle has also been looking at the inner critic and why it might have come into your life. She has set out a few ways that you can deal with its presence during lockdown.

Author: Caroline Toshack

Movement Therapist BSc at TRC Edinburgh

The post Getting to Know Yourself (Video) appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.

Moving our mood while staying at home – a short movement sequence (Video)

Caroline Toshack — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 17:38:00 +0000

Life, as we know it at the moment, has limitations. The space that we each inhabit with our daily patterns and behaviours has decreased to a smaller range as we stay at home and reduce our interactions. We interact with screens and we spend most of our time in our living space. We cope with these limitations in our individual ways and we seek, and find, a new normality.

So too do we respond to these limitations by moving differently. As we go about our daily lives we express, respond and react with movement. We gesture, we habitually move from one place to the other, we move according to our emotions and to our interactions with others and the world around us. We move unconsciously in different ways and in different directions every single day of our life. So as we stay at home, living differently, our patterns of movement reduce, and we unconsciously reduce the full expression of our self. Couple this with challenging feelings we may be experiencing as a result of lockdown, and we can find ourselves becoming stuck in uncomfortable patterns. How we feel affects how we move, and how we move affect how we feel.

What this means however, is that we can use movement to unstick our patterns and change how we feel. By consciously expanding our movement we can expand our expression again, moving in different directions and opening into the space we are in, rather than locking into it. We can move through a few simple movements and feel better.

The attached video takes you through a short movement practice. It’s 5 minutes long and opens and moves the body in 3 dimensions. You don’t need any special clothes or kit, just you, your body, yourself.

Author: Caroline Toshack

Caroline works at Edinburgh TRC

The post Moving our mood while staying at home – a short movement sequence (Video) appeared first on TRC | London | Midlands | Edinburgh | Riyadh.