Relationships are the Foundation of Full Recovery

Therapy is central to the treatment of most psychiatric disorders but is even more so to the recovery of people with eating disorders. As trends in therapy focus more time on techniques and tools, the nature of the therapeutic relationship might get brushed aside. It’s crucial to make sure the relationship itself does not lose its place as a part of growth and healing.

Tools and techniques play a large role in eating disorder recovery as well. When someone has an urge to engage in any eating disorder behavior, the ability to turn to another action until that urge dissipates is necessary to make progress. That step is very hard and takes repetition and perseverance.

Similarly, eating regular meals regulate the gastrointestinal system to become accustomed to consistent food through the day. Using techniques to stay focused on eating through the day can be very helpful too. The physical cues for hunger and fullness ensue and give a person in recovery new ways to conceive of eating and thus reinforce the need and ability to continue new behaviors.

However, eating disorders also encroach on psychological and emotional development. At the start of the illness, eating disorder thoughts and behaviors replace all other possible ways to face emotions and reactions to daily life. The eating disorder is so powerful, so numbing, that there is no reason to even search for other ways to cope with being human. An eating disorder feels like a panacea to the travails of life while simultaneously extracting the joy, growth and connection that makes life meaningful.

In many different ways, relationships that are connected and true provide an antidote to the dullness of life with an eating disorder. For many people, the therapy relationship can be the first exposure to that sort of connection.

Any relationship that begins to compete with an eating disorder must, first and foremost, engage with the true sense of the person hidden behind the eating disorder. Only after one finds and connects with their true self can a person in recovery chart a course that escapes the eating disorder’s clutches fully. There has to be something more powerful and more important in a person’s life to consider letting go of a set of calming rules and structure. Invariably, personal connections make the biggest difference.

Recovery involves these two pieces—techniques and relationships—working together to form a new path in life. Once each person starts their new path, the directions splay in all new ways because recovery itself means becoming your own self and living your own journey.