Each Person has a Unique Path to Recovery

In many past posts, I have written about important elements to successful eating disorder recovery including food logs for accountability, regular contact with a provider to consistently counteract eating disorder thoughts and a meaningful connection with a therapist.

These parts of recovery remain essential but also are not a bellwether of success or failure in treatment. They are essential for most treatment but not enough to get well.

Just as central to the process of tackling an eating disorder is the individual and personal component of treatment. After the initial, universal steps of recovery such as stabilizing eating, any road to get well is a very individual experience.

As comforting as it might be, clear and consistent steps that guarantee recovery don’t exist. Each person needs to use the support they have and the structure they learn to figure out how to get well.

Since an eating disorder becomes the foundation of one’s identity, the process of extricating oneself from an eating disorder must allow for the exploration of who each person is.

And the individual herself can begin to learn their likes and dislikes, their internal emotional world and their desires in the process of getting well.

No treatment guidelines or overall recovery plan will dictate how getting well looks for each person. Recovery uncovers who each person truly is, and treatment needs to leave room and freedom to explore, not create a false path to become the person a provider might mold or create.

Therapy which leads to a successful recovery is open ended, creative, free but often frustrating. The therapist must allow for fits and starts, confusion and missteps, anger and connection. What remains constant is acceptance, understanding and freedom without judgment.

Creating space to grow and learn works best in that environment and leaves little room for an eating disorder tho thrive.

The Profound Challenges of Eating Disorder Recovery

Clinicians, including me, often lay out the broad strokes of eating disorder recovery when someone is first starting treatment. The steps often include at first some form of higher level treatment like the hospital, residential treatment or outpatient group programs. Following the initial stabilization of food intake and medical health, the longer and more challenging part of recovery involves an outpatient team with one or several appointments per week. This stage of recovery reinforces regular eating and focuses on the emotional and psychological transformation that inevitably comes with meaningful recovery.

The second part of treatment sounds clear and streamlined. It is anything but. As difficult as the initial food stabilization can be, the personal transformation that accompanies a new life in recovery is inevitably a lot more challenging.

As a clinician, I know that any new patient who is truly engaged and determined to take the path of recovery will reach many points along the way of frustration, sadness, confusion and loss. And even if I describe what this course may look like, no words can prepare someone for the feelings of going through this existential, deeply felt and often wrenching change.

Eating disorders don’t simply comprise a series of eating behaviors and thoughts about food and weight. They represent a philosophy about how to live, about what feels truly meaningful and a moral guide to what is right and wrong. Since eating disorders usually start at a young age, people tend to develop their understanding of themselves and the world through the lens of the eating disorder beliefs.

Hence, recovery demands shedding one’s full understanding of how to live and necessitates starting fresh almost creating a new sense of identity. It’s hard to conceive of reimagining who we are after years of developing an identity based on the life and values we already know. No other recovery means starting over in quite the same way.

A clinician’s role is not to devise a new identity, explain new values or imply they know better. Instead, the clinician needs to be along for the ride and ready to embrace any feelings and experiences the person in recovery goes through and concomitantly provide comfort, support and understanding.

Life with an eating disorder will always be limited in scope and devoid of space for true connection and meaning. The eating disorder takes up so much energy and time that there is no room for a more complete life experience. The road to recovery is not an easy one, but it does make possible the ability to create one’s own sense of meaning, not just the eating disorder’s, in one’s life.

What People in Eating Disorder Recovery Value Most

Compassion and kindness need to be present in eating disorder treatment. Increased awareness and knowledge about eating disorders have helped lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment but haven’t helped family, friends and sometimes even clinicians remember that eating disorders are psychological illnesses, not merely a measure of willpower.

Many people expect that once someone is getting experienced help for their eating disorder that improvement and recovery aren’t far away. It’s hard to recognize that being in treatment is only a first step.

For so many medical conditions, treatment leads to improved health and the resumption of normal life. Eating disorder treatment instead results in a long process of recovery and many profound changes not just in how one eats but also to the core being of that person.

Since eating disorders become a focal point for one’s identity, getting better also means unwinding what feels like an inextricable sense of oneself and creating a new identity. That change takes time and enormous effort. Recovery is not a matter of days or weeks but instead months or years.

True support for someone in recovery needs to be grounded in patience, kindness and compassion.

Patience allows the person to believe getting better isn’t a race against time or a constant feeling of failure. Instead, recovery is a journey of self-discovery and self-care that leads to a new and improved way to live.

Kindness will give the person in recovery a new way to consider treating themselves. Instead of the harsh, critical thoughts of the eating disorder which always reinforce the feeling of not being good enough, kindness can introduce the concept of caring for oneself emotionally in addition to physically.

Compassion reminds everyone that an eating disorder is an illness that happened to someone and was not a choice. Recovery from an illness deserves compassion for the pain and suffering caused by the illness and love and support for the patience needed to find health and internal peace.

Frustration, disappointment and struggle are always going to be a part of recovery. For the people truly providing support for someone working hard to get well, patience, kindness and compassion will serve as cornerstones to a path to a new life.