The Daily Calm of the Lockdown in Recovery

Adjusting to the pandemic lockdown has been difficult for most everyone. For me, one causality was this blog. With over a month to understand how the coronavirus has affected people with eating disorders, I have had many thoughts I will share over the new few posts.

First, people have a wide range of reactions to the overall situation in the world, our country and our individual communities. There is no right or wrong way to manage the lockdown. This truth applies to people in recovery as well.

The increased stress of dealing with life on pause and the fear of a serious and contagious disease has led many people to rely on old coping mechanisms. For many this has meant leaning on eating disorders thoughts more.

However, the lack of overall stimuli from the world also gave an opportunity for most people in recovery to reflect on the worsening thoughts before acting on them. Interestingly, although these thoughts often worsen, behaviors don’t necessarily follow.

Daily routines are slower and quieter for most of us since our main objective is to be home and safe. So even when thoughts increase, there is ample time and space to try to separate from the eating disorder thoughts and use skills to avoid behaviors.

Accordingly, most people in recovery have not relapsed. Most people attempting to take new steps in recovery have found a way to try to move forward now. And most people have the energy to complete food journals, do the necessary work between appts and engage fully in sessions.

More than one person has likened the time at home to a more loosely organized residential treatment program. Everyone is home and cannot go anywhere, and the food is always there and available with few built in excuses to avoid it. However, the biggest difference is that everyone is making their own food decisions. Nothing is imposed by a treatment program so any progress is based on one’s own desire to get better.

So for many this lockdown has become an opportunity to further recover, something I never would have imagine a month ago.I’ll dive in with more details in the next post.