I’ve been working with clients for over a decade now, helping them recover from eating disorders like anorexia, binge eating disorder, orthorexia and bulimia.
While every client is unique, there are many commonalities. And this is especially true in terms of the beliefs that can get in the way of recovery.
Below are some of the statements I’ve heard most often repeated from clients about why they can’t recover or why recovery is so difficult. I can see that holding these beliefs can make the idea of recovery more challenging, but as I’ll explain, these beliefs either aren’t true, or even if they are true, aren’t actually relevant for a successful recovery process.
(Note: the beliefs and statements are listed in no particular order.)
There are a number of stages you move through as part of your body image and body acceptance journey.
At the start, the feeling is that your body is the problem. The belief being that if you could just lose some amount of weight, become more toned, have some specific part of your body look bigger/smaller/different, then you’d be able to accept yourself and face the world with confidence.
This is a perfect example of “conditional acceptance”, where you believe that acceptance will come as a result of having achieved a certain goal.
While I hate to be the bearer of bad news, this doesn’t actually work.
For one thing, it might be because you’ll find yourself unable to reach this specific physical change your mind makes out to be so important. No matter how hard you try, your body never changes in the way you want it to.
But even if you end up reaching your personal goal, you‘ll soon find out that it still doesn’t work. Why?
Because the goalposts move. Now that you’ve reached a certain place, the attention suddenly shifts to some other part that you think needs to change before you can feel confident in your skin. This is true with every goal that is achieved; at no point does it feel like enough.
It is just as likely that, even though you reach a certain physical goal, you’ll find that it doesn’t provide comfort. On the contrary, you now experience dread that you won’t be able to maintain it, and you constantly feel like you’re hanging on by a thread.
Or, even worse, you do reach your goal and you’re actually happy and are, for some length of time, able to enjoy it. You get the praise, the admiration, the attention, the confidence.
But because of the methods used to get you there, this change isn’t sustainable, which could be for many reasons.
If you are heavily restricting your food intake, for example, out of the blue you start experiencing uncontrollable binges.
If you use exercise as a compensatory method, suddenly an injury stops you.
Or an incredibly stressful life event happens that prevents you from using rigid methods of body control.
Whether it’s three months or even three years later, your body starts changing again and you don’t like it.
So from there on out, you are always trying to get back to this place where, if only for a short period of time, things seemed to be great. You might even associate it with your salvation and end up, in a way like an addict, trying to get back to that first high.
If unchallenged, this belief can easily cost you your precious time, as a decade (or more) later, you might still be trying to rigidly control your body to make that feeling happen again.
If, however, you can make some inroads and do some actual recovery work, you can get to the next stage. This stage is where you understand that body acceptance is an inside job, rather than an external one.
You’ve come to the realisation that people can be happy or miserable at any shape or size and what really matters is your own beliefs, values and feelings.
You understand that, rather than focusing on changing your body, it is about changing your mind and your psychology.
This is an incredible shift to be able to make, and still, it is a place where many people get stuck. This is because it’s easy to think “since this is about thoughts and beliefs and psychology, I’ll be able to recover by simply thinking differently. I better read all the books and listen to all the podcasts on this topic“.
Don’t get me wrong, doing that certainly does help, but because it is all solely happening in the realm of theory, it won’t bring about the actual changes that are needed for recovery.
What actually makes the differences here is taking action. It’s doing the uncomfortable thing, even when you feel you aren’t completely ready.
For instance, it could mean that you decide to go to that party despite feeling resistance.
Or it could mean going to the pool or on a beachside vacation despite your feelings of body shame. Or that you eat lunch in spite of that bloated feeling.
Because the reality is that you’ll never feel ready. It might seem counterintuitive, but the actual confidence comes after the fact, namely by demonstrating to yourself you can do the hard thing. If you stop short of the required action, you’ll stay stuck, mentally driving in circles.
Now, this doesn’t mean you have to dive in at the deep end. You can start with the things that feel less challenging first and work your way up. But the truth is, the belief that there will be a time when you‘ll wake up ready, much like a cocooning caterpillar that suddenly re-emerges as a butterfly, is false. It is only through doing that confidence and acceptance can evolve, and this takes time.
If you are like most clients, unless you’re distracted enough, you spend a lot of time thinking about food. What/when/if to eat, consequences thereof, and methods of control. You also wish that these constant ruminations would stop.
Understandably, you don’t want these food thoughts to take up that much mental real estate. They impair personal relationships, your performance at work or the ability to engage in your favourite pastimes. In short, a full participation in life.
A part of this statement is undeniably coming from the eating disorder. Because what is often meant by “I wish I didn’t think about food” is really “I wish I didn’t desire food, and could have an easy time controlling what I eat“. Meaning that you would be able to achieve your weight loss goals, or you could stop the binges, or you’d be able to stop eating “junk” food, or whatever your specific issue is. It’s an eating disorder thought.
The other part that drives this statement, however, is coming from a genuine place. You do want to be able to recover and have food take up much less time and space in your mind. Because you have realised that there are very few moments when food thoughts aren’t present, or when you’re not doing things to distract yourself from these thoughts.
The reality is, as humans, we have to eat on a fairly regular basis. Recovery essentially means accepting this fact and living accordingly. There are always going to be times throughout the day that are dedicated to shopping, preparing and eating food.
But chances are that, in your life, this is currently happening in an obsessive, tightly structured manner and you want to work on loosening that grip. Let me stress this: the goal can’t be to eat less frequently, as this would only increase the number of food thoughts. The goal is to eat regularly and to allow satisfaction. This is the recipe (pun intended) to make the obsessive thoughts around food decrease.
In my practice, what I see all too often is an attempt to ignore food thoughts altogether. New clients report that they keep themselves busy, or distract themselves, thinking that that’s the only way to keep those thoughts at bay. And while this is a commonly employed strategy, it never actually works.
If we look at this more closely, we can understand why. Food thoughts appear for a multitude of potential reasons. For example:
Food thoughts are connected to physiology. The hungrier you are, the more you think about food. This makes great evolutionary sense as your body is trying to keep you alive and wants you to eat. So it doesn’t want you to forget about eating.
This is exactly what was seen in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. The longer the experiment went on and the greater the calorie deficits these men were in, the more food was at the forefront of their minds. Some even reported collecting and hoarding cookbooks or daydreaming about becoming chefs.
Counterintuitively, the way for food to drift into the background is to intentionally bring it into the foreground. Where you accept that food is going to take up more headspace for now, rather than trying to push it away.
And this involves eating more and eating more often. It can involve spending more time thinking about hunger, fullness and satisfaction and actually following through.
Food thoughts drifting into the background is a symptom of eating and living in a way that supports your physiology. Trying to shove the thoughts away or ignoring them does not work.
Now, to be clear, some people are “successful” at pushing aside their thoughts about food, but this comes at a high cost. Maybe you recognise some of the following things:
So even when you feel like you are “winning” the battle against hunger, you’re really losing. The real way to win is to actually give your body what it needs. And when you do this, with enough time, food really will take up less thinking time.
Some version of the above statement is something I hear from nearly every client I work with. It’s typically the roadblock that prevents recovery from ever starting. Or, you start for a short time, but at the first sight of weight gain, you revert back to your old ways of doing things.
This fear of gaining weight makes sense. Your eating disorder makes it feel like gaining weight is one of the worst things that could happen to you. That is true even for people without eating disorders because we live in a society that often sends us messages along the lines of “weight loss is good and weight gain is bad”. No ifs, no buts. In all cases. Which is objectively absurd, of course.
It’s horrifying to me to see the number of programs and “methods” directed at people struggling with eating disorders that promise the holy grail: being able to recover without gaining weight.
As tantalising as the idea of recovery without weight gain is, it’s a mirage. It’s snake oil.
Weight restoration isn’t some bothersome side effect of recovery, it is recovery. It’s by gaining weight that recovery takes place.
How much weight is gained can vary. Some people will put on a smaller amount, others will put on a larger amount. But what determines the amount needed is your body, not you.
My guess is that even if you are prioritising recovery, you’re trying to get away with only allowing yourself the tiniest possible amount of “more food” or “less exercise”, while still being able to recover.
Unfortunately, this is a red flag that you’re still trapped in the eating disorder. One of the main facets of the disorder is making decisions solely based on how they will impact weight. Meaning, you’ll move more because you believe it will reduce or maintain weight, or you attempt to eat less for the same reason.
So following a plan that promises recovery while also allowing you to not gain weight isn’t actually recovery. Because it’s not doing anything to confront the fears around weight.
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t be worried about weight gain. In fact, as is true for nearly everyone in recovery, you most certainly will be and this is completely ok. But what is important is actually doing the things that increase your positive energy balance – namely increasing your food intake and/or reducing exercise, despite your eating disorder telling you not to.
I first got interested in food and nutrition back in the early 2000s. It was 2006 when I went to study it formally.
It’s interesting to think how things have shifted over the almost two decades that I’ve been reading about and studying the topic. One of the biggest changes during this time is the spread of various ideas of what it means to eat a “healthy” diet. And how difficult it is to live up to this ideal.
Dieting is obviously nothing new. The 80s and 90s were huge in bringing this to the public’s attention and making it a fairly “normal” thing to do. I remember how low-fat products were suddenly appearing everywhere, and, given that this was the craze at the time, people thought that this was the “healthier” option.
But really, despite the focus on reducing calories and/or fat, dieting was still fairly rudimentary, and fewer people got sucked into it.
Fast forward to today and the general knowledge about nutrition has vastly changed, and the various different viewpoints definitely reach more people. And with that, the subsequent fears about food have also drastically intensified.
A person in the 80s might have had a focus on the belief that eating less fat was important, whereas, in today’s world, we all get bombarded with countless different fearmongering food narratives. A person can easily become fearful of all sorts of foods, ingredients or substances like carbs, gluten (and the proteins gliadin and glutenin), FODMAPS, dairy, e-numbers, parabens, PBA, lectins, sugar, vegetable oils, trans fats, pesticide residues, heavy metals, and PAHs.
Note that this is a list that took me merely a couple of moments to compile, and it is just the tip of the iceberg. In this current onslaught of fear-instilling food messages, it is not surprising that many people become afraid of food, obsessed with it, or at the very least confused by the various different ideas.
Food fears manifest in any number of ways, of course. Eating spiralised courgette instead of eating pasta, eating carb-free or keto bread instead of real bread, or choosing cauliflower “rice” or a cauliflower “pizza base“ instead of the real thing. Some people have given up on going to restaurants or their friends’ houses for food altogether, because their fears now only allow them to eat home-cooked meals consisting of certified organic and biodynamic produce or with the “right” ingredients.
The fact is that for many people, eating what they define as a “healthy diet” has become infinitely more difficult than it used to be. The irony being, of course, that it’s just this which actually impairs the overall quality of life for many.
And what I regularly see is that those who are wanting to recover start employing this same level of thinking: “If I’m going to recover, I want to do it perfectly and only give my body the highest and best quality food.”
This line of thinking is actually still the eating disorder. It’s still about control, fear, obsessiveness and rigidity with eating.
Because in reality, if recovery is really the goal, the best way of eating to support this goal is focused on two things:
Number one is calories. Calories trump everything else. Unless you are taking in enough calories for your body to heal, then you are getting lost in the minutiae. Yes, vitamins and minerals are important, but if you are eating enough food you are very likely going to be getting these in decent amounts.
To be clear: Not enough calories is a much bigger concern than not getting in enough, say, magnesium or zinc.
The second is normalising food and creating freedom from the fear and obsessiveness with it. And this obviously doesn’t happen by eating “safe” foods and only things that you (or more likely, your eating disorder) deem as “healthy”.
Now, you don’t have to do both of these at once. There are times, if it is physically doable, that someone increases their calories first and then moves on to tackling more of the fear foods.
I’ll do this with clients if they are already eating foods that allow them to get calories at a more appropriate level if they simply increase their intake. Or we make some minimal shifts to the variety of foods so that they’re able to get a more appropriate amount of energy. Once the overall energy balance is in a better place, we can start to tackle the fears and the food rules.
For most of my clients, however, these changes happen concurrently, for the simple reason that the shift that’s necessary to get them out of energy debt is too great using their current foods. So they don’t just increase the amount, but also the variety of food at the same time.
Whatever the case, the changes that are necessary don’t have to happen overnight. If you want to rip the band-aid off and go all in, I’m all for it. But if going all in seems like too much for you, we will find a way to work up to it step by step.
The point here is to show you that there is no perfect way of eating. And, actually, the way of eating that is most helpful for recovery is in stark contrast to how you may believe (or your eating disorder tells you) that you should be doing things.
If you’re like many of my clients, exercise is a part of your eating disorder.
For most, it started out in a gradual and innocuous way. Maybe there was always a connection between doing exercise and losing weight, but to start with, the amount and the compulsion with it wasn’t there.
But over the years, exercise has increased. Often this increase happens in parallel to a client experiencing a loss of control with food. Say, early on you were able to restrict fairly consistently, but at some point, the “binges” started happening. And as you subsequently found yourself unable to restrict as you did before, you increased the amount of movement, and exercise has become a compensatory mechanism.
I should also note here that the word exercise is also not so straightforward and you probably noticed my use of the word “movement “ in the previous paragraph. This is because many clients are “only” walking and this can then be seen as “not really exercise”. Even when walking is happening for multiple hours a day, it’s discredited as not “real” exercise.
It might also be your previous habits that are distorting your view here: Maybe you used to exercise more or in a more “intense” way than you do now, and you see the previous amount as a benchmark. So, simply because you’re doing less, you feel like you’re barely doing anything at all.
It doesn’t matter, though, whether or not you consider walking to be exercise, or if you have, at one point, done even more. The sheer fact that the idea of reducing or stopping what you’re currently doing triggers such a massive fear response indicates a problem. The rationale I most often hear is something like this: “Unless I can get my eating under control, the movement can’t change. The food has to reduce first and then we can talk about the exercise.”
It borders on irony that the truth, and thereby the solution, is the exact opposite: the exercise (or movement) is the driver of what you consider “eating too much” by generating a higher energy need for the body.
Aside from the caloric needs exercise generates, it can also interfere with your meal timings. For instance, you might eat later because the exercise you’re doing pushes back the time that you get home, and the point at which you can eat.
Another common side effect is that exercise can suppress the sensation of hunger. Exercise is a stress on the body, which leads to an increased release of stress hormones. These hormones can blunt the feeling of hunger.
So it’s not surprising that after a workout you might not feel as hungry as you biologically should, or that you feel full before energy stores have been restored adequately. (This might, of course, be one of your very reasons for engaging in exercise in the first place.)
As our biology dictates, suppressing hunger or pushing back meal times bears the side effect of there being points in the day (often in the evening) when you are much hungrier. You might not even label it as hunger, but once you start eating, you feel compelled to keep eating. And by the end, you’ve eaten more than you “hoped” you would, or than you think is an appropriate amount.
So, from an eating disorder perspective, it makes sense that you feel like you need to get the eating under control first and that you can’t make any changes to your exercise or movement until this happens.
But the reality is that this isn’t going to happen, because exercise and movement are connected to hunger and you needing more food.
Nearly every client I speak to tells me “recovery would be easier if…” followed by some scenario that’s different to what’s currently happening in their life. You imagine if some variable or variables were changed, you’d be well on board with the recovery process.
The thing is, whatever you might have said, I have, most likely, heard the exact opposite from another client.
For basically every scenario that would make recovery easier, there is the complete opposite statement testifying how this would make recovery harder.
But one area in which I don’t typically hear the counterargument is around someone’s starting weight. Many clients seem to believe that recovery would be easier if they could lose some weight first so that they’d have a buffer and could start recovery. The idea being that they know they will put on weight with recovery, so starting at a lower weight would help make the process easier and would somehow lead to a lower end weight.
And while I don’t often hear the opposite sentiment there, the statement still isn’t true. It can’t, in fact, be true, because I’ve heard this comment from people all across the weight spectrum.
Whether that person fits the stereotypical mould of what society thinks anorexics look like and is visibly emaciated, or whether someone is in a larger body, these people are all dealing with the same devastating disease. And utter the same statement.
I have never heard someone say “I was x pounds heavier, and it was impossible for me to even think of starting recovery, but now that I’ve lost the weight I’m ready to do it.”
And that’s because eating disorders don’t work that way.
No matter what the number on the scale is, it doesn’t produce calmness with the thought of putting on weight. And it should go without saying that a person who is energy deficient to begin with, is only increasing that deficit as more weight is lost. And, typically, the greater the deficit gets, the more insurmountable the thought of recovery becomes.
So while it is easy to feel that at a lower weight you’d feel more comfortable to pursue recovery, this has never proven true. It is just another mind trick of the eating disorder.
Now, it is the case that getting to a lower weight can be connected to someone making the decision to recover. But this isn’t because of the weight, however. It is simply due to the added symptoms that are occurring at this point. Losing more weight might temporarily give you some peace (a honeymoon period of sorts), but soon you‘ll find that:
So even if being at a lower weight coincides with making the decision to recover, it’s not the weight per se. And, as a matter of fact, it isn’t guaranteed to make you want to recover, as for most people, as weight drops, they only get further away from recovery, not closer.
There is no getting around the fact that we live in a world that is fatphobic and biased towards weight and appearance.
I do have glimmers of hope that this is changing. Movements like Health At Every Size, practices like Intuitive Eating and concepts like weight stigma are making more inroads into the wider public consciousness. Not in every country and not at the rate that I’d like to see it, but it does feel like things are shifting and have been at an increasing rate over the last 3-5 years.
But despite this, these biases aren’t going anywhere quickly. For the foreseeable future, we’re going to be living in a world where this is the reality. But despite this making recovery more challenging, there are many examples of how this isn’t holding people back from pursuing the goal of full recovery.
As I talk about in this article, the issue isn’t actually about society, it’s that you personally hold the views that you say our society holds.
I can always find ways in which clients buck the norm of what is expected of them or what culture tells them that they should do, but where they are ok with being contrarian.
Just as an example: They don’t mind being covered in tattoos or being bookish and introverted or an atheist in a sea of Christians. And the reason they are ok with this is that they believe in these choices and there isn’t a lot of shame surrounding them. These choices are in alignment with who they want to be, so who cares what society has to say.
But when it’s about their weight, they suddenly seize up. The problem is that they themselves have an issue with it. They have internalised society’s hyperfocus on weight.
I will add that weight discrimination is a real thing. And our society isn’t equally set up for those all across the weight spectrum, whether we are talking about seat sizes, medical care, clothes shopping and many other ways. So my point here isn’t that “it’s all in your head”.
Interestingly, however, I am most often hearing these concerns about what society thinks from people who are in bodies that have never experienced weight discrimination and likely never will, even after recovery. For them, it might be a strong sense of overall body shame or memories of being bullied haunting them.
But even if you are someone who is at a size that is likely to suffer discrimination, you have two choices.
One is to continue to follow the rules and demands of the eating disorder in an effort to shrink your body or maintain it at a weight that is below its set point. While this may offer some advantages, I’d argue that you’re paying a much higher price and the list of cons is far greater. You are impacting your physical, mental and psychological health.
The other option is to recover and learn to be ok with your body. This can sound like a monumental task, and I’m definitely not saying that this is easy. But it is doable and I’ve worked with many clients to achieve this. Because, while there is discrimination, if you can be at a place where this isn’t internal and you aren’t constantly at war with yourself, this can make an enormous difference to your quality of life.
Don’t take this to mean that you have to “love your body” and think every part of you is gorgeous. But if you can get to a place of neutrality and acceptance, knowing that your appearance doesn’t dictate your worth or impact on your food and exercise choices, life will be significantly different.
I’m all for changing the world and want to see fatphobia and bigotry eradicated. But as a realist, I know that this is a long way off. So, if you’re waiting for this to happen before you pursue recovery, I’m not sure that your recovery is ever going to happen.
I talked earlier about how difficult exercise can be to modify because of how it is connected to weight and food consumption and burning calories. Well, another reason it can be difficult to change is because of its connection to fitness.
Maybe you are able to walk or run for longer than you ever have. Or you are going to Barry’s Bootcamp or Soul Cycle multiple times a week. Or you own a Peloton bike, treadmill or cross-trainer at home and you use it on a regular basis.
You associate the ability to do this level of exercise with being fit. And even if you wish you were even fitter, you definitely don’t want to lose your current state.
As a society, we have a fairly narrow view of fitness, with the focus being solely about the specific exercise or movement a person is doing, and at the level a person is able to perform.
But fitness should be thought about much more broadly than this. Not just about the ability to do a specific exercise, but your fitness across a whole day.
My favourite definition of fitness comes from coach Scott Abel. He defines fitness as:
“the ability to meet the demands and vicissitudes [changes] of daily life, with relative ease, with some extra energy available for emergencies or unexpected situations.”
As part of this definition, I would add that it is not just about the physical body, but about mental and emotional strength, and how this helps us to better cope with everything life throws at us.
And when thought about through this lens, despite your ability to work out, it is not leading to true fitness.
Because it is not helping you meet the demands of daily life. Rather, it is hijacking your ability to be present and to do the things that create an enjoyable life that’s in alignment with your values. When what little energy that‘s coming in is being used up by your exercise routine, there simply isn’t any “extra energy“ available.
The phrase “giving up” is also worth focusing on. And while in this scenario it is about fitness, it is a common phrase used in relation to weight, identity, relationships, and many other issues.
Language matters and if this was rephrased to say “letting go,” like “I’m letting go of my obsession with fitness” or “I’m letting go of identity as the fit one”, does this not feel different to calling it “giving up”?
Another way of looking at this is that anytime we say yes to something, we automatically say no to something else. For example, if we are saying yes to getting up at 6am to go to the gym, we are saying no to extra sleep that we might need.
So, when you say no to exercise that is inappropriate for your body, you simultaneously say yes to listening to and supporting your body. Or when you say no to a narrow definition of fitness, you say yes to a definition of fitness that is about supporting your entire life (which may, for a time, mean taking time off exercise altogether).
A final thought in terms of giving up is looking at what aspects you are focusing on when you use the phrase “giving up”.
Let’s imagine a scenario where you are in an abusive relationship (which an eating disorder is very much akin to). If you focus on the fact that you’ve been together for a really long time, that your partner is often nice to you, and that this relationship provides you with some sense of safety, then it can indeed feel like you are giving up something valuable and that it’s probably all for the worse. But is it? What, alternatively, are you giving up by staying with this partner? Isn’t that the more important question?
Regarding your eating disorder, if you focus on your values and how you would like to experience life, what are the things that you are giving up on currently? What can you think of that you’ll regret on your deathbed? What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?
You‘ll see that when you look at things through this lens, then what you’re giving up takes on a very different meaning. As long as your eating disorder is having its way, you are actually giving up on so many important parts of your life and what it could be.
The statistics around anxiety are rather damning. Part of this is because of its prevalence; it affects nearly 20% of the general population on a regular basis and for certain groups, this number is much higher.
But what’s really alarming is that anxiety is on the increase. As mentioned in this article, at UCLA, the Higher Education Research Institute asks incoming college freshmen if they “felt overwhelmed” with everything that they had to do. In 1985, 18% replied yes. By 2000, it was 28%. By 2016, this number had increased to over 40%. Anxiety really is on the rise.
For many, anxiety predates their eating disorder. Maybe you were always that anxious kid, and the eating disorder (at least in the short term) was your way of dealing with the anxiety.
Interestingly, many clients discover that they are Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) and that this is partly connected to their anxiety.
For others, anxiety came after the eating disorder. While you can feel like the eating disorder is calming you or giving you a sense of control, it’s actually anxiety-provoking. Because anytime you deviate from whatever the eating disorder dictates, whether that be unintentionally or because you are trying to recover, the anxiety becomes overwhelming.
And with time, as the rules and demands of the eating disorder become more strict and rigid, it doesn’t take much to set off the alarm of anxiety. Or you get to the point where anxiety has become a constant; that at times is louder, and at others is less intense.
Recovery is often billed as this great place to be. That once you can walk away from your eating disorder, you’ll feel and experience a world of freedom. That you’ll be able to eat without fear, that you will accept your body and feel comfortable in your skin, that life will be measurably better on every front.
While I do think this can be true of full recovery, this definitely isn’t the case for the recovery journey. The journey itself, in all honesty, is fairly unenjoyable.
And this is especially the case because of anxiety since choosing to recover doesn’t reduce anxiety, it increases it. And while this is understandably unpleasant, it is actually an important lesson. A lesson in acceptance.
The goal with anxiety isn’t to take it away (although, long term, this is often a side benefit, in that it is greatly reduced or eliminated). It is to notice and experience the anxiety but to not let it stop you from making a decision and taking the action that you need to as part of recovery.
It’s learning to be ok with anxiety (even when it’s unpleasant), rather than trying to fight and resist it.
Because by being able to do a particular thing (like allowing more food or saying no to compensatory movement) despite the anxiety, you’re demonstrating to your body “I don’t need to be anxious about this”. And with time, the brain learns that this is the case and subsequently sends fewer and fewer alarm signals.
However, if you keep following the demands of your eating disorder, you only ever achieve a short term reduction of anxiety, and you’re thereby, albeit unintentionally, reinforcing it in the long term.
Let it be said again: The things that create more anxiety in the short term, like eating a fear food or reducing exercise or eating with a friend in public, are the things that reduce it in the long term.
Because, unfortunately, everything that goes into recovering from an eating disorder is anxiety-provoking, anxiety is going to go up when you start recovery, so the goal of “getting rid of anxiety” will only have you running back to the eating disorder because this momentarily seems to “help”. But it’s also the thing that keeps you trapped.
So rather than trying to eliminate anxiety, try practising and learning to be unaffected by it in terms of the choices you make.
It is highly likely that, for some length of time, you were deep in your eating disorder, without actually knowing what was going on. Maybe you’re still largely oblivious to the extent of it, even now.
But if you are reading this article there is undeniably some level of awareness of the situation. At the very least you are flirting with the idea of recovery. Or you could be way past this point and you know that you do want to recover, but you’re stuck trying to figure out how to do so.
At this stage, it’s common to start spending a decent chunk of time reading books and blogs, listening to podcasts, following social media accounts and YouTube channels, all concerned with the topic of eating disorders and recovery. You can listen to and watch many people sharing various stories about how they overcame anorexia or binge eating, or how they recovered their period.
While I do think these kinds of stories can be beneficial, they can simultaneously feel like a double-edged sword.
Because, on one hand, they can be powerful ways of demonstrating that recovery really is possible: You can hear the struggles that others had, and see that they made it out the other side. That they experienced many of the things you’re afraid of as well, yet here they are, still standing, some of them having reached full recovery.
But we all know that it’s impossible to sum up an entire recovery journey that took three years into a 30-minute story on a podcast, a 15-minute YouTube video or a 2,000-word blog post.
Consequently, what you get is this very glossed-over version that isn’t going through every tiny detail and every single struggle in granular detail, in the way that you are experiencing your day-to-day reality of recovery. And because of the way the eating disorder works, you will then find (and focus on) all the ways that your experience is different and therefore all the reasons why their recovery isn’t relevant to you.
And this is true whether we are talking about recovery stories or aspects of recovery that can be read about, watched or listened to. There is this constant identifying of why this works for other people, but not you.
In Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and many other 12-step programs, they talk about the concept of “terminal uniqueness”. It is the belief that the situation you are facing is unlike anything faced by other people. That all the treatments and approaches may work for others, but you are the exception or special case. That you’re unique.
And the reason for using the word terminal here is because this kind of belief in uniqueness can get people killed. Which is true for both alcoholism and eating disorders.
Now, because of how the brain is affected by the eating disorder, this isn’t about you being delusional. It’s because of anosognosia, which describes the physical changes to the brain that render you unable to grasp the full extent of the neurological and cognitive dysfunctions that are present.
The reality is that, while you are a unique individual, the foundations of recovery are the same across the board. How you cope with it and your experience with it may differ from other people, but what’s needed for recovery is fairly well known, and the foundational parts that make recovery possible remain the same for everyone.
As I mentioned at the top, these 10 beliefs are some of the most common statements I hear getting in the way of recovery, but by no means are they the only ones.
When working with clients, my goal with beliefs is twofold:
While the second of these can seem counterintuitive, it’s actually the most important of the two options. Because the thing that really matters is you being able to live by your values and make choices that take you towards the life you want to live.
If getting caught up in a belief, even if it is true, prevents you from doing this, this affects your ability to follow through on choices that support recovery. So often the better question isn’t “is this belief true?” but rather “does focusing on this belief lead me to where I want to get to?”
I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.
I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.
Want to get a FREE online course created specifically for those wanting full recovery? Discover the first 5 steps to take in your eating disorder recovery. This course shows you how to take action and the exact step-by-step process. To get instant access, click the button below.
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