Identity Transformation at the Center of Eating Disorder Recovery

Most chronic illnesses, medical or psychiatric, have a significant impact on a person’s quality of life. Coming to terms with an illness not easily managed or cured changes how someone sees their life trajectory and future. Although an illness can become a part of the lens through which one sees the world, eating disorders are unusual in how they become tightly woven into one’s sense of self.

No matter how the eating disorder starts, the symptoms, self-image and behaviors around food become paramount. All decisions center around the convenience or difficulty of eating or around what the eating disorder seems doable or acceptable.

Inevitably, the way one thinks of themselves and leads their lives depends largely on the eating disorder. Social events, professional choices and any personal plans revolve around what is best for the eating disorder.

Since eating disorders—or at a minimum eating disorder thoughts—start at a young age, psychological and emotional development occurs with the strong eating disorder thoughts influencing every decision. One’s identity and eating disorder grow up together, connected in the overarching experience of learning about oneself.

At its core, eating disorder treatment isn’t just normalizing eating behaviors and regulating body function, nor is it simply relearning new ways to think about hunger and fullness.

Recovery involves breaking down one’s own identity and building a new identity from scratch, no matter your age or personal situation, based solely on one’s own self and not the tenets of an illness.

It’s hard enough to take the steps towards recovery let alone imagine that recovery involves such a profound and painful emotional process, one that adults rarely if ever need to consider.

Time and again, clinicians working with people with eating disorders see this trajectory. Recovery is hard work starting with eating the food and handling changes in one’s body. Understanding the internal transformation that ensues is the next big step followed by a willingness and ability to forge ahead and find that true self, separate and free of the eating disorder.