Imperfect Eating Disorder Recovery

Eating disorder treatment currently focuses so much on meal plans and weight maintenance that one essential aspect of recovery goes by the wayside: life goals.

There is a point about halfway through recovery when people suddenly find they’re not completely focused on food, weight and body. This moment is shocking and often frightening. As all encompassing and miserable as eating disorder obsessions are, these thoughts are grounding and calming; they serve as a foundation to assess every day and every decision.

People in recovery talk at length about a day when these thoughts aren’t so consuming, when there will be room for other parts of life. But when this time comes, they’re often lost and unsure what to think, how to function and where to find comfort and security.

A common reaction to this key moment is to run furiously back to the eating disorder and hide. The current eating disorder treatment world readily interprets the retreat to behaviors as a relapse and ships the person back to residential treatment.

Rather than encourage recovery, the decision to go back to treatment reinforces the identity of having an eating disorder. The message is that the eating disorder is your identity, and the brief glimpse into a world not focused on eating disorder thoughts is too scary to contemplate.

Instead, the initial moment of seeing another way to live needs to be applauded and recognized for the accomplishment it is. The stronger pull of the eating disorder in that moment is to be expected.

The person and treatment team need to embrace this time in recovery, even if it entails an uptick in symptoms, as an important moment to recognize that other parts of life are important and may indeed take precedence over the eating disorder one day.

The creation of other parts of one’s identity outside the eating disorder is necessary for recovery. Just repeating the fantasy that “life will get better” doesn’t help anyone.

Treatment providers need to embrace the moment and realize residential care isn’t always the best option. Sometimes living imperfectly in the world makes recovery much more likely.