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Days After Christmas: Were you alone with your eating disorder?

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Category: Psychotherapy and Recovery Work

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              A bell alone can still ring.

How did you spend Christmas this year?

People with eating disorders isolate. Was that you this Christmas? Were you alone? Did you go into a cave and wait for Christmas to pass by? Did you hope for phone calls and invitations that didn’t come? Did you binge and watch TV?

It was worse this year because of Covid. You couldn't go to a movie by yourself. You couldn’t go to an inperson  OA meeting or a 12 step marathon to be with people, even if you didn’t know them.

Going to a seminar or workshop so you could be with people celebrating in a way that blended with the workshop theme was too risky this year.

Some of you got sick and stayed in bed under the quilt with hot tea. Some of you wrote letters or wrote in your journal.

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Eating Disorder Recovery: pain and joy

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Category: Healing Resources

                                       
    Suffering and Joy to reach her goal

In the eating disorder recovery work I share with my clients in my private practice I need to remind myself that some of their achievements don't register as achievements to them. In the moment they may be experiencing pain or anxiety.  They don’t understand that experiencing their pain and anxiety is part of releasing the eating disorder and gaining emotional strength.  They don't know, yet, that they are crossing a threshold into stronger and healthier ways of being in the world. Growing your way out of eating disorder entrenchment, even a little, can feel frightening at first.

Joy in Recovery Work

The eating disorder recovery path, even though challenging to every aspect of a person’s way of being, is a joyous experience for me. This must be why I do this work.

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Eating Disorder Slips over the Holidays

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Category: Psychotherapy and Recovery Work

A letter came in today that may speak to many people this holiday season. The writer, I'll call her Kendra, had an eating disorder slip last night.

Recovery Work

She spent successful time in a residential eating disorder treatment center. She continued her recovery work on an outpatient basis at home with a private psychotherapist and a support group. This sounds good to me.

Danger Signals

She stopped seeing her therapist and stopped going to the weekly support groups because

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Eating Disorders: How Long Does it Take to Recover?

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Category: Psychotherapy and Recovery Work

No preset path and many choices. Recovery is a journey.

Realistic Answer 

How long will eating disorder recovery take? This is a reasonable question. Not only can I not provide a specific time, but also I can't guarantee that someone will indeed recover. And I certainly can't support an answer many people want,\i.e. days or a weekend or at most, a quick stay in a residential program.

The question is complex with a different answer for every individual. If you are still reading after this undesirable news, please let me talk a little about eating disorders and recovery.

First, it can be scary to start what you believe to be a journey into the unknown. It’s true that you don’t know where you are going and what you will experience on your healing journey. That’s because your psyche