How the Therapy Relationship Helps People Leave Ed

Unlike any other psychiatric disorder, eating disorders are often personified. They are referred to by name, Ed, as a friend or as a partner.

The concept of having a relationship with one’s eating disorder is not just a turn of phrase or a therapy tool. Eating disorder thoughts and behaviors replace the many ways one might turn to family, a partner or friends for support, solace, guidance or comfort.

Eating disorders provide reliable, consistent and predictable answers to difficult situations. They provide rules and structure around food and body when life becomes challenging. They can be strict but caring when events in life get frightening. They can be calm and soothing for periods of enormous stress. And they can be punishing if one’s actions feel like too much to bear.

Ultimately, eating disorders aren’t just about the food, as the saying goes. The disorder provides a stable, steady relationship to help navigate the emotional and psychological challenges life brings.

Once anyone has that kind of support, no matter the associated burdens and pain, it’s very hard to give it up.

After recovery begins, one has to learn how to handle all the emotions and confusion that would automatically be buried under eating disorder thoughts and behaviors. These emotional steps are one of the hardest parts of recovery. Every emotion feels unbearable. The pressure of experiencing these feelings and not acting on them makes the emotions feel too large and overwhelming.

Trying to manage these feelings without any coping mechanisms is extremely challenging at first. Regular relationships in life often are not equipped to handle the initial bursts of emotion in recovery.

The therapy relationship is well equipped to handle all these emotions and thoughts. Recovery almost always needs a therapy relationship able to withstand, process and move through the intensity of emotion that bubbles up when someone chooses to face the feelings and not suppress them with the eating disorder.

The therapy relationship becomes a beacon of hope and promise towards a new way of living without the eating disorder.

The path of treatment is often complicated and intense. The feelings at times are very positive and warm and other times very angry and painful. If the therapy relationship can withstand all these feelings, the person has the opportunity to learn how to identify, express and manage their emotions in positive ways to foster relationships in their lives.

Therapy serves as a vehicle to help people safely learn how to see their emotions as part of their human experience, not something to avoid through the eating disorder. Doing so means the possibility of true recovery.