The Internal Struggle Between Illness and Recovery

How can it be that eating and being nourished are the ways to recover and that eating and weight change feels so bad?

For almost all illnesses, the process of getting better also feels better. People often gain strength, feel more hopeful and can think more about their future.

Eating disorder recovery rarely involves a sense of forward progress. Eating many times per day, each day, for one day after another feels painful at first.

The sense of loss of not being able to engage in eating disorder behaviors is akin to losing one’s fondest pleasure, most effective coping strategy and a sense of accomplishment. Eating disorder symptoms wreak havoc on people’s lives and simultaneously give structure and meaning to each and every day.

So the steps of recovery are always conflicting and painful, never straightforward and easy. The ambivalence of giving up a foundational part of one’s life and identity is a slow death, agonizing but necessary.

Other ways of coping with life don’t also cause sickness, weakness and even death. Living with eating disorders means a much smaller life with much less room for relationships, intimacy and fulfillment. Although if may feel like a safer life, it’s also a sick and sad one.

This means that recovery means not only the struggle to eat each day and fend off the urges to do eating disorder behavior, but also saying goodbye to a life and to a way of surviving. It means giving up something that feels like a part of your identity and who you are. It means deciding it is worth learning how to live a full life and not settle for a sick and small one.