Solomon's Paradox in ED Recovery

Have you ever encouraged a friend to lessen their schedule only to consistently overwork yourself and neglect your body’s calls to slow down? Or, perhaps rebuked your mum about her choice of a carb-less salad because carbohydrates are the brain's primary source of energy, only to under-portion your own pasta later? When I had an eating disorder, I know I got really wound up when characters in movies ran out the door without having breakfast because they were in such a hurry. Or, a more specific example that comes to mind, when Harry was too stressed to eat before his Quiddich match. You need energy to perform well Harry!! I thought. Although I never skipped breakfast, you can bet I pulled out the 'too busy/too stressed to prioritise food intake' card elsewhere often enough to serve my ED.

This is “Solomon’s Paradox”, a phenomenon coined by psychologists Grossman and Kross that highlights the disconnect between our ability to offer objective, rational advice to others, and the application of that same level of wisdom to our own personal situations. 

In this blog, I am going to chat through this fascinating dimension of our behaviour in a context I think you will be familiar with: our inclination to offer compassionate advice to others regarding unrestricted eating and the necessity of rest, whilst struggling to apply the same wisdom to our own recovery.

I will then touch on the strategies that can enable us leverage the inner wisdom that we so willingly deliver to others, and apply it to our own healing actions.

First, let’s begin on the name.

Solomon’s Paradox

The term 'Solomon’s Paradox' derives from King Solomon — the Israeli Old Testament King who was renowned for his sagacity when it came to other people’s affairs, but pretty myopic when it came to his own.

In a very succinct nutshell incase your O.T knowledge is like mine (aka, very poor!), King Solomon’s reign of Ancient Isreal marked an era of unmatched wealth and peace. Deemed even wiser than some ancient paragons of wisdom, Solomon's acuity and consideration of justice were world eminent.

One of the most famous portraits of his wisdom is held within a biblical story of two women — both claiming to be the mother of a singular baby. Solomon determines the true mother by observing each woman’s reaction to the prospect of dividing the child into two halves with a sword. The woman who protested with screams was decided to be the mother, whilst the woman who did not display the same degree of emotion was decided to be the fraud. Pretty wise, right? This verse epitomises how Solomon’s wisdom and art of fair judgement, assumed to be granted by God, was recognised across the kingdom.

In contrast to his wise and fair rulership of his land, though, Solomon’s personal life held a different story. As well as fathering many illegitimate children, his deeply flawed parenting of his son and successor Rehoboam resulted in the northern tribes seceding and splitting the Israeli kingdom into opposing hostile states.

And there, quite simply, lies the reasoning behind the name Grossman and Kross chose for the psychological phenomena they conceptualised. Like Solomon, most of us are proficient at giving sound, rational and compassionate advice to others, but struggle immensely to do the same for ourselves.

I see this so frequently in people with eating disorders, and I wonder if you too see it within yourself. Are you the first to advocate for unrestricted eating for those you love, but do not consider it appropriate to apply this to same permission to yourself? Would you reassure your sibling or parent who is worn out of their unconditional permission to rest, but fail to afford the same consent to yourself? How about your swift efforts to tell a friend who just made a disparaging comment about thier body that what they look like does not need to change in order for it to become acceptable, only to scruntinize your own physique with checking behaviours?

I thought so!

The next question is why.

Clearly, it is not an insight problem. My friend, we both know that you spend a great deal of your time and energy very capably compassionately advising others.

The key insights offered by studies showcase that real gap between our ability to offer interpersonal wisdom and intrapersonal wisdom is largely down to the degree of emotional distance to the situation.

This means:

• When we are considering someone else's problems, we are objective, rational, and balanced.

• When we are considering our own problems, we are emotional, irrational, volatile and loaded with fear of 'consequences'.

  
  

And so, in order to challenge disordered thoughts more effectively, offer self-compassion when guilt, shame, or fear creep in and, act in the face of ED backlash, there is an essential need to develop skills to create emotional distance.

What are those skills, you say? Read on!

Mindful Distancing

Mindful distancing, also known as 'de-centering', refers to the ability to distance oneself from their thoughts and feelings and recognise them for what they are — ‘just’ thoughts and 'just' feelings.

It is a skill, and so requires steady practice, but once you have mastery of it, is a phenomenal weapon to use against the ED. For me, it was such a fundamental part of my emotional management, and still now continues to be.

In my recovery, being able to recognise that thoughts were ‘just’ thoughts, and knowing that I did not have to act on them, put me in control of my brain rather than the other way around. It made me realise that my thoughts were suggestions, and not obligations forcing me to respond to a disordered urge. As I said, beyond full recovery, it is a very handy skill too.

Just to forewarn you, the first technique I am going to invite you to practice is going to make you roll your eyes and want close this blog post. But, it is exceptionally well regarded as a stategy, so be open minded!

Strategies To Self Distance

1) Speak to and with yourself in the third-person

Hear me out !!!

Illeism, the reference to yourself in the 3rd person by using your own name and non–first-person-singular pronouns, is an example of a perspective shift that has been shown to significantly assist with emotion regulation.

Whilst it may feel strange to try out, decades of research illuminate the functionality of language for allowing us to regulate our emotions by limiting the degree we 'zoom in'.

As well as preventing introspection from becoming rumination, the cognitive distance provided by illeism has been shown to strongly shed the judgemental bias inherent in first-person reflections. Studies show that engaging in third-person chatter reduce activity in the brain areas assosiated with negative self reflection. Furthermore, this technique has been found to foster a sense of intellectual humility and empathy, as well as provide a notable psychological boost.

If the above technique feels a little too Elmo and doesn’t feel comfortable to try out intially, writing down your thoughts in the 3rd person via journaling and then reflecting on them as though they were written by another person is another way of practicing this form of self-distancing.

Rememeber, all we are trying to do here is remove the internal bias that the ED will induce as it analyses your actions. I know it feels very-fucking-odd to write about yourself in this way, but that 'weirdness' is part of the art. Changing your 'usual' patterns of reflection and viewing them through a different lens, even if its a peculiar one, is the aim!

One final suggestion in this same vein is to write a letter to yourself from the perspective of someone who loves you. The perspective shift permitted by this method will also enhances self-awareness and facilitates a more impartial evaluation of the situation.

2) Cognitive Diffusion

Cognitive diffusion, a core technique in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), again helps us create space between thoughts and feelings. 

In practice, it involves becoming aware of the actual process of our thinking, enabling us to reflect objectively.

It encourages us to see thoughts as "words inside our head" rather than as objective truths. It removes the impressions that a feeling is an indisputable fact that we are obligated to act upon.

So, let's say we get the thought:

"I am worthless”

Applying cognitive diffusion would direct us to reframe this to:

“I am having the thought that I am worthless”.

Or

“I am the anomaly who this won't work for”

becomes

“I am having the thought that I am the anomaly who this won't work for”

Or for one final example:

"I just ate far too much"

turns into

“I am having the thought that I just ate far too much"

Whilst this may feel quite jarring, it is very effective at highlighting the difference between thought/feeling and fact. However, it is only useful if practiced enough. The real difficulty is remembering to apply it ‘in the moment’ and so sharing this technique with somebody in your close support system is likely going to be of great initial benefit. It was only with external prompt that I found this technique accessible.

3) Create temporal space

The technique of viewing yourself from the future (i.e. a recovered version of you), involves thinking back on the current thought or feeling. The distance and objectivity possible to apply here leaves us less likely to focus on the perceived ED “consequences” of the situation and instead view the scenario in a broader context. With enough practice, this technique allows us to see that the current moment is one that will pass. In the future, it will not hold as much magnitude as it feels to now.

If viewing your circumstance from a future state feels difficult, is also possible to apply this technique with viewing yourself from your childhood self. Many of us have an affinity with that innocent childhood character who had not yet been touched by the chaos that is an eating disorder. In this way, sometimes we can attain a more compassionate perspective than the one we may be able to offer now.

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The long and short of this is: if you're struggling to make decisions or think clearly when it comes to your own recovery, you're not alone — that’s a really common cognitive bias. Of course, a large part of our reluctance to heed our own advice is down to the low self-worth that is an inherent by-product of the an eating disorder. But, this doesn’t change the fact that we are continuously choosing not to act in alignment with the almighty strong recovery wisdom we do hold and would readily offer to anybody else in our circumstance.

The issue most of us find with many traditional therapeutic approaches lies in the fact that if we just focus on removing fear and bolstering self-worth prior to acting, we end up just endlessly talking about recovery. We don’t end up DOING – which is actually the most important part of fear reduction and self-worth improvement. As far as I have observed, it is nigh on impossible to make vast strides with fear reduction or self-compassion when you are stuck in neverending discussions of recovery. They may be very rational discussions, but don't provide the solid evidence of safety to your brain that exposure via actions does.

Therefore, rather than focusing your energy on WHYs of your fear, reluctance and hesitancy, (e.g, chatting at length about why a burger and fries is rationally safe), please spend your energy on the HOW you can manage your emotions so you can carry out the ACTIONS in the face of fear (aka. eat the burger & fries!).

With enough practice, these self-distancing tools can help significantly, enabling you to offer more compassionate and balanced reasoning as you force the necessary follow-through of recovery-aligned actions. You do hold the knowledge, the insight and the wisdom. It is now about allowing yourself to apply that to yourself.

Even if you are dubious, please do give these a go. If you do, I'd love to hear your experience of trying them out.