Introduction
Recovery can take different forms, depending on each person. For some, it means the end of their symptoms (e.g., restrictions, excessive exercise, bingeing, purging). For others, healing involves ending self-hatred, fear, guilt, and negative self-talk associated with an eating disorder. In a broader sense, recovery also means discovering a meaningful and happy life with healthy ways of dealing with the problems that occur.
Why should you recover?
A person with an eating disorder may not easily understand the benefits and value of healing. After all, behaviors related to eating disorders are often a way to treat problems or emotional pain. Indeed, our condition can give us the wrong impression of feeling in control when everything else in our lives feels chaotic.
Here are some reasons to stop your eating disorder:
• No more living in fear, feeling sadness, or not liking yourself.
• No longer letting a number or scale of calories consumed dictate your mood or actions
• Feeling at ease with your body.
• You no longer always think about food or care about what you look like.
• Exercise will no longer be a necessity but a choice.
Where do you start from?
The very first and most important thing is to seek help from a professional. You may also consider using some self-help tools such as Practice self-compassion or Be honest with yourself.
You can learn these “techniques” by reading a good book or surfing the net.
Make a recovery diary
Fill a journal with optimistic thoughts and affirmations. Write down why you want to recover, how eating disorders have affected your life, what you want to be after five or ten years, and everything else that will help you motivate yourself to recover.
You cannot do this on your own
A person cannot give you the keys to healing. Instead, you probably need a team that requires you to take responsibility and the set of knowledge and skills you need to recover.
A dietitian specializing in eating disorders can help you navigate your eating rules and ultimately normalize your diet. In addition, a doctor (MD) or nurse (NP) can check your medical complications and provide you with the necessary real control over the severity of your illness.
Spend time with supportive people
Try to find people who are comfortable with their bodies and do not talk about diet and body image all the time.
You have your own clinical team, but where is your team? Do not let eating disorders isolate you from those you care about; and those who care about you!
Do things that are nourishing to your soul
If you deprive your body and brain of the proper nourishment, it will be very challenging to gain benefits ranging from therapy to mindfulness. In addition, regardless of body shape or size, malnutrition increases the risk of medical complications, non-morbid psychiatric symptoms, and twisted thinking.
Be skillfully smart
Disorders happen to be an incredibly effective mechanism for coping with certain things until it is not. Although it is an oversimplification of a very complex disease that can occur in genetics, temperature, trauma, and many other factors, it cannot be denied that eating disorders fulfill an immediate need to suppress or distract the unpleasant feelings or issues.
You cannot eliminate a coping mechanism whether or not it is a suitable adaptation without replacing it with something else. What about including coping strategies in your toolkit? Here is where all the dialectical behavior therapy hours will come in handy. What about mindfulness, art, or yoga?
Find your real self
Disorders are often ego-syntonic, or in other words, steady with the way one views their own self. So when you decide to get rid of an eating disorder, it might feel like having to leave a part of yourself that you may have held for so long.
Similarly, you need to add new ways to self-regulate yourself when you start refraining from eating disorders. Regaining your self-esteem is key to sustaining your recovery.
Be sincere and ready to try anything, stick to the thing, be kind to yourself and never forget: healing is possible.
