One tenet of early treatment for an eating disorder is that it is not the person’s fault for getting sick. Falling into an eating disorder is terrifying, and realizing how trapped one is even more so. As hard as it can be to see that not eating normally is an illness, it’s crucial in order to start the road to recovery.
Education about eating disorders and treatment involves a lot of education. Someone must understand how the thought process of an eating disorder works in order to learn how to circumvent it. This involves difficult components such as identifying one’s own thoughts as eating disorder thoughts or challenging the idea that hunger and fullness may not be an accurate assessment of the body’s needs. Making changes involves questioning daily experiences most people can take for granted and trust.
However, some people, even after having significant treatment and education about their illness, still struggle to get well. Although all people can recover, everyone doesn’t recover, even those who have seemingly taken all the appropriate steps.
There comes a point when someone needs to find a way to implement everything they have learned about recovery into their daily lives. This means following a meal plan, accepting accountability for their daily choices, tolerating the enormous emotional and psychological discomfort of those decisions and committing to difficult changes for the long haul until they see the rewards for their actions.
Clearly this is a difficult road.
For people who struggle to make changes for years, it’s easy to see how the initial phase of not blaming the patient may turn falsely back to blame. Again they are not responsible for having gotten sick. That always remains true. However, after receiving the available treatment, any further changes has to come from the person struggling. No one can feed them. No one can walk in their shoes. No one else can endure that pain and suffering.
At that point the person needs to bear responsibility for the steps they need to take for recovery. It’s not about blame and it certainly isn’t fair. It only highlights the limitations of eating disorder treatment.
Although there is so much more help than there was twenty years ago, the reality is that the final steps to get well still lie squarely on the shoulders of the person suffering. I wish wholeheartedly that treatment could offer more, but these realities mean that responsibility, not blame, still lie with the person who is ill.
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ReplyDeleteYou're just playing with semantics.
ReplyDeleteIf you put responsibility on the person's shoulders then blame is there as well.
If there is no cure for pancreatic cancer, would you say that Responsibility for healing is the patient's? Just because no one else can cure them does not mwan that they can curw themselves.
You assume that since there is nothing better being offered, eventually one who has the knowledge and insight must take responsibility.
That is not really logical. Whether or not someone has responsibility for something is not determined by whether there is something better being offered or not. While you as a doctor must find it painful to see people staying sick because there is nothing more you can do for them, concluding that they are therefore responsible is neither accurate nor fair.
Sometimes people have the ability to do more for themsleves and they don't.
Sometimes people do not have the realistic ability to get themselves better.
Maybe, standing in the outside, you don't know that.
I do.