Hope is the foundation of true eating disorder recovery. The last post named one of the most difficult obstacles in this work: hopelessness. It’s critical to differentiate between hopelessness and depression because conflating the two implies that the hopelessness can be treated completely with medications. This tenet would take the success of recovery out of the hands of the person who has an eating disorder and instead place it in a pill.
The hope for recovery stems from several important points at the heart of eating disorder treatment.
First, people do fully recover and get well. They can come to a place where their eating habits normalize; eating disorder thoughts wane and body image also returns to a more typical way people see themselves. The first step in recovery is always to fight to normalize eating and tracking with through food logs. The second step is to tackle eating disorder thoughts followed by the longer process of mitigating body image distortions.
Second, every person can find the clinicians who will understand them profoundly and know the path recovery will take. As I have written in this blog many times, put in the effort to find the right practitioner. Settling for someone who doesn’t feel right only reinforces the hopelessness in the end.
Third, remember that recovery won’t just be about changing eating patterns. The underlying power of an eating disorder relies on certain philosophies that pervade our society: the superiority of thinness, the diet culture, the exercise culture, the food industries and the money and clout behind maintaining these issues as important in our lives. Recovery will promote individualized thoughts, prioritize personal wellness and value care and love.
Above all, recovery must have hope at the core to be successful and valuable. Acknowledging and recognizing the hopelessness is important. No one should be alone with those feelings, yet every treatment needs to fight for hope as a central theme of the process.
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