Positive Signs for People with Chronic Eating Disorders

People with chronic eating disorders often feel trapped and hopeless without any sense that recovery is still an option. They look into literature and treatment programs and find everything aimed at people who have just been diagnosed, not geared towards them. The path to to recovery looks very murky. It becomes very hard to imagine life without the illness.

In my work with people who are not new to treatment, I look for certain keys that point towards a likelihood of success. 

First and foremost is the existence of a life outside the eating disorder. That may entail a career, friends, a passion or close family ties. When a person has found something meaningful outside the eating disorder, movement in recovery can lead her to further engage this part of her life. She has a place to put that new energy and to escape the eating disorder.

Time of wellness during the eating disorder also is meaningful. It’s important for the person with a chronic illness to have known a period of semi-adequate nutrition, decreased behaviors and to know what it feels like to be better, even if that time is brief. This more recent memory connects them with the idea of wellness so that recovery doesn’t seem so farfetched.

Third is the ability to make emotional connections with people. Sometimes people with chronic eating disorders lose the ability to tolerate personal closeness and the development of emotional bonds. The closeness to the eating disorder replaces real relationships. Knowing that actual relationships are within the person’s grasp makes it possible to be more present in the world, a necessity in recovery.

Last, the patient has to feel able to engage in meaningful work around the food behaviors. If the thoughts and behaviors remain hidden, if that person cannot find a way to communicate and expose the eating disorder, the illness will hold into its most powerful weapon: secrecy. Openness and the ability to tolerate exposure is a critical sign that recovery is possible.

These four signs all point to the possibility of real progress to treat chronic eating disorders. This is a general idea of what parameters make recovery possible although it is not absolute: some people without any of these four strengths can get better too. However, the more a person can engage in these activities, the more hopeful the possibility of recovery.