DISCLAIMER: Sexuality, as important as it can be, is often not a priority when you are still deep in the illness. This article is intended for those in the final phases of recovery or those with residual symptoms but whose condition is no longer life-threatening. If you are under medical supervision, please consult with your healthcare providers before making any decisions. Do not put yourself in danger, and remember that you have all the time in the world to explore these rich facets of life and of yourself!
Opening up to yourself and to another person physically may take time, but it is absolutely possible. Eating disorders are often associated with a distorted body image, which can leave lasting traces even after recovery. With these exercises, you may find it easier to navigate moments of intimacy. As always, the most important thing is to respect your limits and check in with yourself before, during, and after, to ensure everything is happening at your own pace and in a way that feels right for you.
Solo Exploration Feels Good
Explore what you like! You don’t have to aim for orgasm right away, nor do you need to use complex positions or sex toys (but if that’s what you want, that’s great too!). You can start by simply touching your body—with or without clothing—and focusing on what you like or dislike, what sensations you enjoy. Do this at your own pace, without judgment. What are your erogenous zones? When you close your eyes and imagine a scenario, what would you want the other person to do?
Shared intimacy will feel more organic if you’re already comfortable exploring yourself solo. Of course, touching your body and feeling your own skin under your fingers may be unsettling at first. That’s why it’s even more important to go at your own pace and avoid judging yourself. As mentioned earlier, try to stay focused on sensations rather than overanalyzing the moment.
Creating a Safe Space to Deal with Nudity Anxiety
Feeling uncomfortable with nudity is a common issue for those who have experienced or still struggle with eating disorders. To work through this and gradually become more at ease, you can:
- Make sure you are in a space where you already feel safe and comfortable.
- Adjust your environment to feel less exposed—this could mean dimming the lights, keeping some fabric or blankets covering your body, asking your partner not to remove certain clothing items, playing music, or even positioning mirrors in a way that feels better for you.
Try to understand what exactly scares you about being naked with someone else. Are you afraid of being judged? If this person is ready to be intimate with you, do you truly believe their goal is to criticize you? And if, by chance, they were to judge you, wouldn’t that say more about them than about you?
Consent, Comfort, and Connection
Before anything else, if you are about to explore sexuality with partners, make sure that you feel safe with them.
If you’re preparing to embark on the experience of partnered sex, it is essential to consider and then talk about your boundaries with your partner. For instance, there may be parts of your body you don’t want them to touch for now or ever—and that’s always okay. For a long time, I absolutely refused to let anyone touch my stomach. But over time, as I built trust with my partner, I reached a point where it didn’t even cross my mind anymore. Now, when I fall asleep with this person, I only think about the fact that I like to feel them holding me. I no longer even think about whether or not this person is touching my belly.
Explore together what might make both of you feel more comfortable—what your limits or boundaries are. What are you most sensitive to? Words of affirmation? Physical touch? Discuss how you can strengthen your mutual confidence when it comes to your bodies.
After sharing an intimate moment, you can also talk about what you enjoyed, what felt triggering, or anything unexpected. You can also express to your partner what you love about them, what parts of their body drive you crazy. You might find that they’ll enjoy returning the favor and telling you what they love most about you. If your partner compliments you, you might struggle to accept it. A small tip: if you can’t yet accept it with a big smile and truly believe it, that’s okay—it may come with time. For now, just try not to argue against it. Laugh a little, smile, even just a bit—but don’t contradict their kind words. By doing so, you allow the compliment to settle into your mind, making it easier for you to believe it one day.
Explaining Your Journey: Helping Partners Understand
Whether you’re sharing a few moments or making a bigger commitment, it’s important that you feel at ease with the special person or people you choose as a sexual partner. A good first step is to talk to this person about how you feel and how you perceive your body. They may not themselves have experience with eating disorders or body image distortions. Having these conversations requires mutual empathy. Be patient with each other—what you share might be difficult for them to hear because they care about you. Try to create a calm and reassuring space to ensure the conversation happens in a safe environment. Be open to answering questions while respecting your own boundaries if anything feels too intrusive. If this person reacts poorly, reconsider whether you want to move forward with them, or in what kind of relationship. You can’t control how the other person reacts, but you can decide how to respond to it.
If you’re exploring intimacy in a more casual or short-term relationship, you can still talk about your boundaries and comfort levels in a way that feels light and manageable. You don’t need to share your whole story to be understood—just a few clear cues or simple statements can help create the safety and respect you need to feel at ease.
Personally, discussing my history of eating disorders with my partner helped them understand my sensitivities, the areas I wasn’t yet comfortable with, and why I disliked certain parts of my body being touched. These conversations laid foundations for a more comfortable, understanding, and fulfilling partnered sexuality.
Some tips:
- Choose a time and place where both of you feel comfortable.
- Be prepared to answer questions while respecting your own limits if anything feels too intrusive.
- Understand that your special someone may be surprised or even unsettled by what you share, but that does not give them the right to be disrespectful. Patience and respect go both ways.
See also: Can I Start Dating When I Have a Mental Illness?
Believing in the instinct of love and intimacy instead of the voice in your head telling you that you will never be good enough for it may seem impossible. When that inner voice has guided your actions and choices for so long, it can feel difficult to stop following its hateful commands. That’s why I encourage you to try some exercises to reframe your thoughts. Intimacy can look and feel different for everyone, but one thing that can help make it more fulfilling is approaching it from a place of self-compassion—whatever that looks like for you. Being gentle with yourself, especially when vulnerability is involved, can open the door to more ease, connection, and authenticity in those moments.
Your feelings are not the same as other people’s feelings towards you—your thoughts and feelings are yours and not theirs.
First, your feelings and judgments about yourself belong only to you. Your thoughts may be negative about who you are or how you look, but others do not necessarily think the same way. They are more likely to see you as a whole person and judge you far less than you might imagine — especially if they are considering or taking part in intimacy with you. Other people’s minds do not hold the same thoughts as yours—and often, their thoughts are much more positive.
Second, try to “choose” which thoughts you want to focus on. No one can completely control intrusive thoughts that appear out of nowhere, but you can choose how much importance to give them. At night, before falling asleep, you might close your eyes and imagine your thoughts flowing like a river. You are on the shore, watching them come and go while staying neutral—just an observer. If a positive thought comes along, you can reach into the river, let your hands slip into the cool water, and gently scoop up that thought, bringing it onto your shore—but only that one. Let the others drift away, eventually disappearing into the ocean.
Third, try to separate (over) thinking from your sensual experience. When you touch your body or allow someone else to touch it, focus on the experience of your senses and perceptions rather than analyzing or judging it. Fully immerse yourself in what you feel physically without filtering everything through your thoughts. This purely sensory approach can help you avoid being overwhelmed by intrusive thoughts during solo or shared moments of intimacy.
That inner voice that attacks you—maybe it, too, needs a little empathy and compassion. Listen to it, understand it, but remember that you have the power to decide whether it takes control. Sometimes, it can be so insistent that resisting feels impossible, but you can gradually learn to tell it, respectfully yet firmly: “I know you’re there, I’ve heard what you had to say, but that doesn’t mean I will let you make the decision. Thank you for your opinion, but I’ll pass.”
Exploring Connection Without Nakedness
People in recovery may feel anxious or even afraid of engaging in sex or intimacy because it’s often assumed to involve nudity. But here’s the fact: a fulfilling, rich sexual or sensual life does not require any nudity at all—unless that’s something you genuinely want. There are many ways to share closeness, pleasure, and connection that don’t involve removing clothes. If nudity feels overwhelming or just isn’t part of what intimacy looks like for you, that’s entirely valid. Your experience of intimacy is yours to define, and it doesn’t have to fit into anyone else’s idea of what sex “should” look like. If you don’t feel ready to be naked with someone, you can always explore other forms of intimacy that don’t involve the same level of “body contact.” This could include activities with less direct physical contact, such as mutual masturbation, perhaps even while being partially clothed or under a blanket for extra comfort. You might explore deep eye contact, gentle hand-holding or even synchronized breathing while lying next to each other. You can also use your voice to gently guide how and where you’d like to be touched, creating a shared rhythm that centers your comfort and connection – while remaining totally or partially clothed. Even small acts like tracing patterns on each other’s skin or cuddling under a blanket can cultivate intimacy while keeping you within your comfort zone.
During these moments, if you feel too anxious, you can slow down and focus on your breathing. There are different breathing techniques that help reduce stress and anxiety—learning some in advance could be useful.
Above all, respect your own timing and how you feel in the moment.
Quieting the Food Voice: How to Stay Present in Intimacy
One of the biggest challenges for someone with an eating disorder is often the constant “food noise”—those relentless thoughts about food. During sex or other physical intimacy, whether alone or with someone, food noise can try to take over—and sometimes, it succeeds.
After years of facing this struggle, I’ve discovered a few small strategies that might help you manage these intrusive thoughts. To be honest, it’s still a challenge at times—but we’ll navigate this together!
First, you can try eating something—even something light—before intimacy. This way, you won’t be hungry, and it may help quiet some of those thoughts. Personally, what helps me is eating with my partner, who happens to be a champion of intuitive eating, and with whom I’ve had long discussions about my residual anorexia symptoms. On the other hand, you might feel more comfortable eating afterward. Food is a source of energy that nourishes your body and soul—and your desire too!
Throughout the day, it’s normal for your body to go through different phases—you might feel bloated, tired, or a little less comfortable in your skin. Again, sexuality does not require a “perfect” body. Quite the opposite. I doubt your partner even notices if you’re feeling bloated or that it affects their desire for you. What you feel is not what they feel.
Food noise is incredibly difficult to quiet, but you can start softening it by reminding yourself that desire is also a form of hunger—a gentle, intuitive longing meant to help you feel and embrace the sensations within your body. Nourishing yourself properly will help cultivate these sensual impulses that you are rediscovering. Try to visualize that each time you focus on something other than food noise, you are allowing yourself to flourish just a little bit more.
See also: The Sex Goddess Blues: Building Sexual Confidence, Busting Perfectionism
Sexual Healing, Not Self-Destruction
As someone with a history of eating disorders, you may be more vulnerable to compensating for that inner voice or certain thoughts through risky sexual behavior, like engaging in sex with partners who aren’t safe people, or taking big risks with STIs or pregnancy. Others may experience a sense of dissociation from their bodies, making it easier to engage in risky behavior without fully processing the emotional impact. For every impulse toward self-destruction, choose an act of self-care—don’t harm yourself, nurture yourself, and feed yourself with care and kindness. Engaging in behaviors that put you in danger will not make it any easier to accept and value your body. I promise I’m not saying this out of principle or to impose a moral lesson, but because I know first-hand that nothing good comes from practices that harm you.
Also, while a partner’s perception of you can positively influence your self-image, someone else’s sense of you cannot be the foundation of your self-worth. Your body may feel like a battlefield, and you may want to reclaim it, but that reappropriation should not depend on someone else’s presence or reassurance. External validation can contribute to self-confidence, but it is not the beginning or the end of it. Understanding these underlying motivations can help you make choices that truly align with your healing, rather than falling into patterns that reinforce feelings of emptiness or detachment. The danger of linking your self-acceptance to someone else is that you make it conditional on them: but what will happen then if that person leaves? That body that you are reclaiming for yourself, you see it through your eyes, under your hands, through your touch, and it will not leave you. So your positive feelings towards it should not leave you either.
Desire, Life, and the Courage to Embrace It All
As I finish writing this piece, I glance at the person I love. I feel comfortable in my body. I had some food noise today, but I didn’t let it overwhelm me. I want them to touch me, and I would also feel just as comfortable touching my own body or looking at myself in the mirror. As I watch the lines of their body come into focus, growing closer with each step, I smile at them. I feel grateful for I know that each of these thoughts is a victory in itself.
This way of experiencing yourself and the world might seem terrifying—because it requires vulnerability and change, but also because it is a resounding yes to life. And eating disorders want to convince you that you can’t live this life that is waiting for you, that your enemies are surrounding you, hiding within the food you eat.
Believe me, I know it’s hard. But I also know you can do it. Enjoy every touch, every sensation, every moment of confidence, every kind word you say to yourself. Be close to yourself, be close to others. Go eat the world.
What the voice says might be true—
You might be what was handed down,
What was denied,
What was tied in your throat,
What refused to stop beating,
What wasn’t seen.
You might be the truth of all your lies and the falsehood of every truth spoken one after the other,
Maybe even what you refused to eat, or what was struck into your skull.
You might be the one who saw everything evaporate from clenched fists, or what overflows.
That would be only a part of you.
But what is true—
You are brave.
You are resilient.
You are sensual.
You are powerful.
You are worthy.
Every line of you is a line of grace, is a line of beauty.
You are nothing less than everything you aim to be and will be.
You have all of you to love.
And love is already in you.
