347: Navigating The Messy Middle Of Recovery

Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcript, the show notes, and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/347.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

Before we get on with today’s show, I just want to say that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you are living with an eating disorder and you want to reach a place of full recovery, then I would love to help. And it doesn’t matter how long this has been going on. I work with people where the eating disorder started a couple of years ago and other people where the eating disorder started multiple decades ago, and I don’t believe that there’s any length of time that can get in the way of someone reaching a place of full recovery. I know it can feel like that is the case, that it’s been going on too long, it just feels too much of a struggle, it feels too embedded, that “I just can’t get there.” Well, from my perspective, that’s an eating disorder thought, and I truly believe that everyone can reach a place of full recovery if they do the things to get them to that place.

So if you would like to reach full recovery and you would like the support to help you along the way – and I would love to be able to offer that to you – you can send an email to info@seven-health.com and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and then I can get the details over to you.

So, on with today’s episode. What I want to do today and what I want to talk about today is navigating through the ‘messy middle’ part of recovery. Or I could talk about it as getting out of the quasi-recovery phase of recovery.

00:01:52

The ‘messy middle’ of recovery

If I think about how eating disorders go, or more aptly, how recovery goes, you start recovery and recovery begins with a decision of “I just can’t keep going on like this.” And sometimes that’s a very confident decisions and other times it’s less confident, but there’s just this realisation of “This is not how I want to continue living” and you start recovery, and sometimes that brings relief. The weight of all the secrecy around this, all the constant control has been really weighing on you, and it feels like that’s now starting to lift, and there’s this flicker of hope or there’s more curiosity or there’s this feeling of like “I’m finally doing something.” There can be this relief that happens.

But for others, there’s no relief. It feels like “I’ve been backed into a corner”, and maybe you’ve had injury after injury or illness after illness, or it just feels like “I just can’t do this anymore. I don’t really want to do recovery but I feel like my hands are tied and I just have to do it.”

But for whatever reason, recovery has started, and as part of that you start to make changes. You start to eat more, you start to rest more, you let go of some of the structure that’s been in there, and maybe you start to notice some progress with this. Certain symptoms start to change, things start to get a little better in certain areas.

But what can happen as this goes on is it can get a little messy, and it can get a little blurry, where you feel like you’re in this in-between place where “I feel like I’m doing the work but I’m not where I want to be. I’m not in the safety of the eating disorder, but I’m not feeling confident in this new place that I’m in.”

I think about this very much as the messy middle, or it could be called quasi-recovery. It’s where things aren’t as bad as they were before, but they’re in no way where I want to be finishing up. In a lot of ways, this should be a place that is in transition. “This isn’t where I stop; this is just a place on the way to getting to full recovery and getting to a better life.”

How long it takes to get into this place, this messy middle, really depends on the individual and what they’ve done as part of their recovery. For some people, it could be a matter of months and someone finds themselves in this place because they have really ripped the band-aid off. They’ve really increased their eating, they’ve put a complete stop on their exercise. They really dove head-first into recovery, and so within a matter of months there’s been a lot of changes, and they then find themselves in this place.

For other people, it can be a year. It can be multiple years to get to this place because it’s really been slow and chipping away, and “I did a little bit and then I pulled back and then I did a little bit more”, so it takes a lot longer to get to that place.

But if I’m thinking about if someone does recovery in earnest and they start making intentional changes and they’re setting goals and they’re following through on it, I think that someone is typically hitting this place in somewhere around 3 to 6 months. But as I said, everyone’s recovery varies.

00:05:37

Signs that you’re in the messy middle

So how might you recognise if you’re in this place? I don’t think there’s any definitive ‘these things have to be happening or must be happening’, but I can go through a couple of things that are often going on that you can then think about “Does this feel like it’s going on for me?”

You’re no longer restricting, or at least you’re no longer restricting as severely as you were doing before, but food still feels like a fight. It’s really still difficult at many meals / most meals. It’s difficult to bring in snacks that weren’t there before. We’re doing more of the eating, but it still doesn’t feel easy. So you can eat with more freedom in theory, but in practice, there’s still a lot of emotions that come up. There can be a lot of anxiety and anticipation. There can be a lot of guilt afterwards.

You’ve stopped or you’ve drastically reduced your exercise and your movement, but it still feels wrong to be resting. Maybe you’ve made peace with some of the elements of this, like “I’m just glad I’m not doing that much walking like I was doing before. I can recognise that wasn’t great for me, but I still feel like I’m being lazy. I still feel like I’m letting myself go. There are all these thoughts around rest that I haven’t really made peace with yet.”

You’re gaining back some of your physical health – maybe your sleep has got a little bit better or maybe your digestion’s got a little bit better or maybe these things have improved, and at the same time, there are others that are still either outstanding or it feels like have got worse. So maybe my sleep’s got worse or maybe my digestion’s got worse. There are some signs that are pointing toward my body is doing the physical repair work based on what I’ve been giving it in terms of food and rest, and there’s still a long way to go with this, or there’s still a way to go with this.

And mentally, things still feel pretty chaotic. it doesn’t feel like I’ve got a huge amount of respite from the eating disorder thoughts and the judgments. My mind, in a lot of ways, is still not really caught up to my body. I can notice that there’s more of the physical healing, but my mind hasn’t quite caught up there.

You can feel logically like you understand recovery – so it makes sense for why I’m doing recovery or why one would want to do recovery, but emotionally, it still feels really hard to be doing this. There’s a lot of things that are coming up emotionally, psychologically, sensations-wise. And there can be a lot of this questioning around it, like if I’m really doing the right things, and if I am doing the right things, why isn’t it feeling better by now?

So that’s a bit of an indication of what some of the things can be if you’re in this stage, so reflect for yourself; does that feel like where you’re at with this?

I want to go into a little more about what it can feel like, but then connected to this, why it then feels so hard, because I think this stage is – at lots of stages through recovery, people can be in this precarious place, and I think this is especially true with this stage of recovery. Because one, this is where people can have a relapse, or two, this is where people can just put the brakes on and say, “This is good enough. I can’t move forward from here. I can see how much better things have already become; I don’t need to do any more work from here.”

What I want to get across as part of this is: this isn’t the place to stop. I want to suggest that you keep moving forward with this, and I’m going to offer some suggestions for how to do that as we get further into it. But I want to first explore why this can then feel so hard.

00:10:01

Why the messy middle is such a hard part of recovery

If I’m thinking of a word that comes to mind most when I think about why this part feels so hard, it would be confusion.

It’s being stuck in this middle place where things can often feel paradoxical and it just doesn’t quite make sense. So “I’m eating more, but I’m thinking more about food, too. I’m no longer in full restriction, but it feels like such a battle with my meals. I can rest, but there’s so much guilt connected to this. Yes, there are parts where I feel better, but I also feel worse. I thought this thing would be better by now. I thought I would have more energy, but I actually feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. I thought my digestion would be better by now, but I actually feel I’ve got more bloating now than I used to get.”

I think a lot of what comes in here is a lot of the expectations of “I thought things would be better by now” and better whether that be physically or mentally or emotionally. “I thought that things would change more than this.”

I hope when I do these podcasts, I hope when I put content out through Instagram, that I’m actually able to be honest about recovery, because I think it can be very easy to put out this message of “Oh gosh, everything’s going to be so much better when you do recovery. Your life is just going to be so much better. You’ll think ‘Why didn’t I do this earlier?’ every day because of how much better things are going to be.”

I’m a firm believer that recovery and full recovery does make your life better, and in an infinite number of ways – and the recovery process is a difficult one, and there are things that are really challenging to go through. And even when you are recovered, life is not just easy-breezy all of the time. We are constantly knocking up against challenges. I always just want to be honest about what recovery is truly like so that people aren’t in this place of “Hey, I expected this to be better.” There are things that get better and there are also things that can be challenging as part of this.

But what I also want to get across, especially at this stage of recovery, is that even though there are moments and times where things are feeling unbearable, that isn’t how it always is. There can be this situation where in the beginning of the day, the day started well, and then by the afternoon something went awry. Or “I started the day in a not-good spot, and then by the evening things felt different.”

You’re at this stage where there is a lot of shift, and in the early stages of recovery, because you’re in this really depleted state, it can be all terrible because it’s really hard to be more in this safe and social state and not just constantly in fight or flight.

So what happens as you’re getting more into this messy middle stage is you do have the capacity to have more bright spots and better moments, and I want to suggest – and we’ll come back to this when we look at the practical sides – really being able to notice that. When things are hard, remembering “It wasn’t hard like this earlier today” or “It wasn’t hard like this yesterday” and being able to notice that there are times where things feel easier and there are times where things feel more difficult, and that both of those are transitory.

I think it can be very easy to think that everything is permanent, and being able to recognise, “This is a really challenging morning, and it wasn’t like this yesterday” or “Gosh, this morning feels much easier. Let me really enjoy this and make the most of this because I know there are going to be some challenges that come up.” Being able to be honest with yourself about that can hopefully mean that you do actually enjoy those moments where things feel easier.

So let me just go through, as I said, what things can feel like during this stage and why it can be harder, and I’ll go through it section by section in terms of we can look at physically and then mentally, etc.

00:14:40

Why this stage is hard physically

From a physical perspective, your body at this stage is doing so much of the repair work to get you back to a proper place of health and to be getting things to be working as they should be. By going through that process or while going through that process, there are lots of things that can then come up that aren’t always necessarily pleasant.

You can have a situation where “I’m getting more hunger signals”, which can be scary, but hunger can also feel unpredictable. “I can be ravenous one moment or one day and then the next day I feel like I don’t really have any hunger.” You can have these feelings of being so full, and it feels like it was an hour ago or two hours ago that I ate, and this feeling of fullness seems like it’s getting worse, it’s not getting better. I can have this extreme bloating that’s going on even though I’ve just eaten a normal portion of something.

There can be swings in energy. “I felt like I just had so much energy yesterday and things felt really good, and today I just feel absolutely drained.”

Digestive stuff. There can be lots of changes. One day it feels like I’m really constipated and everything’s backed up; the next day it feels like everything’s moving through me so quickly.

There can be headaches and muscle aches and temperature shifts. The body, in terms of weight gain, can feel like it’s unpredictable. It can feel like “I thought everything was getting a little bit steadier now and then it feels like I’ve had a bit of a jump.” So it can feel very inconsistent.

And this isn’t just about the food piece. There can be so many aspects of life that then impact on this. There can be the stress, there can be hormones, there can be sleep that play into it all.

A lot of the people that I work with are in their mid-forties, late forties, early fifties, so you’re going through recovery while also going through the phase where your body’s going through menopause. So we’ve got this all thrown in on top.

What often makes this so hard is because all of these sensations now feel really loud. When you’re going through recovery, for example, if you’ve got bloating, that feeling around the bloating is so much more intense because you’re just so much more acutely aware of those sensations. All of these different sensations, all of these different changes, you’re just so much more aware of them.

What happens is that the eating disorder then interprets these changes as signals of danger. For a level of bloating that for me personally would just feel like “It’s some bloating, and I feel a little bit uncomfortable after a meal, but it is what it is”, for someone else just feels so much different to that, and there’s all this story that then gets attached to that, and the eating disorder is saying “You must be doing something wrong” or “You can’t handle this. What’s going to happen if it’s still like this in a couple of hours’ time? I’ve gone too far with this.” So there’s all this noise that is going on there.

But again, there are days where this isn’t the case. There are days where, actually, things do feel more comfortable. So being able to notice what it’s like day to day, even hour to hour, and how things will fluctuate across that time, because by this stage in recovery it’s not that everything is terrible all of the time. There are more of the bright spots.

00:18:30

Why it’s hard mentally

Then from a mental perspective, you’re starting to notice how constant a lot of the eating disorder thoughts are at this point, because I think what often happens, and what people are told will happen, is you start eating more, you start resting more, all the eating disorder thoughts are just going to go away. And that’s just not true.

And often when you’re getting to this stage of recovery, things can be a lot louder. You have much more of an awareness around what’s going on. You’re doing things that are going against the eating disorder, and that’s when you start knocking up against the eating disorder wanting to reassert control and to fight back against this.

So there can be a lot of thoughts that come up at this time, and you become very aware of this. You become aware of the counting that you’re doing, or the comparison that you’re doing, or the judgments that you’re doing. You then start to feel guilty or shame or judgments about having judgments. There’s this layer around, again, “I should be further along than this. Why am I still having these thoughts? Why am I still so concerned about this thing or that thing?” It can feel very relentless in that way.

It can often feel like it’s regressing. It can be like “I didn’t use to have so much of this going on. I feel like I’m making a lot of mistakes at work” or “I feel like I’m really struggling to be able to pay attention because there’s all of this noise going on.” Again, the eating disorder can try and convince you that things have got worse, this isn’t working, we’re doing something wrong.

But again, what I would encourage is being able to zoom out to be able to see that there are moments where actually, the brain does quiet down, or “I was actually able to be much more present in that conversation with my partner or when I was playing with my niece or nephew” or whatever it may be. Or “I’m able to read again. I couldn’t read before. I’d read the same paragraph over and over again and I just couldn’t concentrate, but I’m actually able to do that now.” Or “I’d put on an audiobook and I just couldn’t follow along, but now I’m able to.”

So being able to recognise those positive changes that are happening at this point.

00:20:55

Why it’s hard emotionally

Emotionally, this can be a really difficult stage because when you start to loosen the restriction, or really remove so many of the eating disorder behaviours, emotions start to return. You might start to cry for no reason, or apparently no reason. You can feel angry about your body, feel angry about the time that’s been wasted, feel angry about “Why aren’t I further along?”

There can be a huge amount of grief. I talk about recovery being a grief-filled process because there is so much grief connected to this about the time that’s lost, the fact that this is still going on, “Did I do damage to my body and it’s never going to properly repair?” There’s so much grief that then comes up. There’s guilt and shame and a whole host of different emotions.

And the thing is, in the past, when these things used to show up, this was when you would use the eating disorder. It becomes your coping mechanism. And now you’re trying to not use that coping mechanism, and yet there’s now all of these emotions that are there, and they’re there in a way that is so much more intense than was there before. So this becomes really hard because there is this intensity to it, and there is an inability to know how to really deal with this. And you’re learning how to be able to feel those feelings without numbing out or trying to control it.

Again, being aware that yes, it can feel like a lot, and actually, this is the work of recovery – so often, when people have lived with an eating disorder for a really long time, it becomes their only way of being able to cope. The point of recovery is learning how to be able to cope in other ways, which is wonderful for recovery, so it helps you be able to have those tools to make it through recovery, but this is then what you use for the rest of your life. These tools that you’re learning of how to be with difficult emotions or to have this event happen and then be able to console yourself or be with yourself or support yourself without using the eating disorder, this is the stuff that you then use for the rest of your life.

Once again, recognising that yes, it can feel like this huge emotional roller-coaster, and there are also moments where things do feel calmer, where you are able to experience joy or wonder or awe or curiosity or creativity or these other, more pleasant emotions. Because I think what happens – not I think, I know – what happens when you’re numbing these things through the eating disorder is it’s not just the ‘negative’ emotions that get numbed; it’s everything that gets numbed.

00:24:06

Changing identity + sense of belonging

The next piece is identity and belonging. The eating disorder, the longer it goes on, it shapes who you are. It shapes your routine, your relationships, your sense of safety. It becomes this thing of how you think about yourself, and letting go of that can feel like losing a part of yourself.

It can feel very discombobulating because “There’s this thing that I used to feel very tethered to, even if I could notice all the pain and the collateral damage that it was causing, it would allow me to at least feel familiar, and that familiarity was the thing that was so helpful. So now if I’m letting go of this, who am I without this? How do I spend my time? It feels like there’s this real big time void now that I’m not exercising in the way that I was doing before. How do I spend that time?”

It can be really difficult to navigate that part, especially because this is often the point where people may be commenting on you or about you like, “Oh, it’s so lovely to see you doing so well. You are just looking so much healthier than you were before.”

One, the eating disorder often really manipulates those comments and twists them around and makes it “Well, you’re telling me that I’m fully recovered now” or “You’re telling me I just look fat” or whatever it may be, and the eating disorder will twist this against you. But what’s also difficult is that people are telling you how much better you are or better you’re doing, and for you, internally, you’re thinking “I don’t feel like this is the case. Yes, I can notice certain things have changed, but fundamentally it feels like I’m still very much in the thick of it and I’m still struggling.”

For so many people, there can be this feeling of “I’m not sick enough. I’m only worthy of getting this kind of support if I match up to some stereotype, and now I’m not matching up to any stereotype. I may have never matched up to a stereotype, and now I definitely don’t match up to a stereotype. If someone looked at me, they wouldn’t know that I had an eating disorder, so how can I continue to do the things I need to do as part of recovery?”

This can be so hard because you’re somewhat between identities. You’re no longer being ruled by the eating disorder in the way that you were, and yet you haven’t fully anchored into recovery. But more importantly, what is this new version of you? You’re grappling and grasping in the air and trying to find that, but it doesn’t feel like it’s really settled yet, that it’s “authentically, in my bones, this is who I am and this is how I like to spend my time and these are the things that are important to me.” This is still the process that you’re going through.

But again, even while this is happening, you are having experiences that are starting to cement some of those things. And some of that is about new experiences, but some of that’s about rediscovering the stuff that you used to do before your eating disorder. “Hey, I’m actually spending more time being creative. I’ve got back into drawing or I’ve got back into writing poetry or I’ve got back into doing puzzles, and this is something I used to love doing as a child or during my teenage years.”

“By creating this space because I’m now not doing the things I was doing in my eating disorder, I am starting to find who I am and how I like to spend my time; it’s just that it still feels messy.”

As I said earlier on, a big struggle with this is just that it feels so paradoxical in that “I can feel really proud about lots of things I’ve done in my recovery, and I feel terrified at the same time. I can want the freedom that I know is possible as part of recovery, but I also miss the rules that are going on. I want to eat more, I want to have more freedom with my eating, I want to be able to go out for that brunch or to get that text from a friend saying, ‘Hey, do you want to grab some dinner?’ and I want to be able to say ‘Yes, I want to do that.’ But I miss this feeling of not constantly feeling like I’m doing something wrong.”

So there’s this paradox there, and out of this the eating disorder is constantly trying to tell you, “This isn’t working, and the way you’re feeling now is proving that it’s not working.”

Again, being able to recognise that two things can be true at the same time: that there can be things that are working well in recovery and things that are still a challenge. There can be these different contradictory moments where “It feels like I’m getting relief but there’s a huge amount of fear” or “It feels like I’m really expanding into who I want to be and there’s also this contraction that’s going on.”

So that is why it can be so hard to be in this place, because it in a lot of ways can feel like “Recovery is not quite living up to what I imagined it would be at this point. I thought it would be better by now, and it’s not. I feel like I don’t want to go back and I don’t think it would be useful to go back, but I don’t know what is the right step here.”

So I want to go through, then, how to navigate your way through this messy middle phase and what are some of the tools or some of the things that can be helpful and some of the things that I work on with clients connected to this.

00:30:26

The typical pattern in the messy middle stage

When I think about where people go awry at this stage, so where people get to this messy middle stage and then things don’t go so well, what I’ve seen over and over again is there’s a pretty predictable pattern with it.

What happens is that something occurs during this phase where, intentionally or not, they get back into a lower energy state. This could be that they’ve taken a new job at this stage or their current job has just become a lot busier. Maybe someone got made redundant and now they’re having to do extra work. Maybe they’re studying and they’re coming up to exams, or it’s the start of a new year connected to studying, or they’ve had to move house. There’s an injury or there’s an illness that happens, or maybe there’s some health concerns with a family member. Maybe there’s some struggles with an ex-partner and that’s become more difficult during this period. Maybe there’s a change of season and we’re heading into summer and that has an impact.

But there’s something that occurs that means that someone gets back into a lower energy state. Their meals have started to shrink a little bit or some snacks have started to get missed or the exercise creeps back in or just “I’m doing a lot more low grade movement. We moved house and there were so many boxes that I had to unpack as part of this” or “All of this stress started to really impact on my appetite and I just wasn’t noticing I was hungry, or I was getting more nauseous, so it was more difficult to eat.”

There is something that happens that means that there’s less energy coming in, and when this happens, predictably, the eating disorder thoughts get louder again. And when that happens, often then people get hooked by those thoughts, and the tolerance for discomfort then drops down. There’s more anxiety going on. There’s more rigidity that starts to come in. There’s more hopelessness that starts to come up in terms of the “I’ve lost all my progress” or “Why is this so hard again?”

With the changes, unfortunately, with the eating disorder, something that is a new change that is pro for recovery takes a lot longer to become a new norm. But once I start to miss a snack or start to increase my exercise, that becomes a new norm much more quickly.

So someone can be in a situation where “I know I was having that bigger lunch three weeks ago, or I know I was having that snack two weeks ago, but I haven’t been doing it and now it feels so monumental to do it. And I’m now buying into what the eating disorder is saying, where if it already feels hard enough just doing this, it will be so much harder if I then do this other thing and I bring in that extra food.”

It’s typically at this point that things start to spiral. There’s more exercise that comes back in, there’s more restriction that goes on, there’s more anxiety that comes up, and this is where people start to backslide as part of it.

What unfortunately happens at this point is the narrative that gets created around this. Rather than recognising “The reason that this thing slipped was because I got into this lower energy state”, it is “I just couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t handle the bloating. I couldn’t handle the weight gain. I couldn’t handle people talking about dieting at work, and that’s why I had to go back to the eating disorder, or that’s why I had to start to make those changes.” And it’s not true. This isn’t the reason it happened. It was that you got into a lower energy state and that changes your state. That changes the thoughts and feelings and beliefs and perceptions and everything that then arises in you.

When that happens, your perspective then changes around this, and you have the eating disorder thoughts get louder and the flexibility disappears, and it just goes into this pattern. And it’s a very predictable pattern.

I’m mentioning it because if this is happening or this has happened in the past, I want you to recognise, “It wasn’t because of all the stories that I’m telling myself connected to this. It was that I got into a lower energy state first, and then there was this pattern that happened because of that.”

Obviously I want people to stay out of this, so if you’re noticing this is happening, the first, most important thing is “I need to do something to address this energy state. I need to be more intentional about bringing more food in. I need to be resting. I need to put my focus back on this place in the same way as it was in the early stages of recovery. Maybe I need to go back to the meal plan that I was eating earlier in recovery. But I really need to cement those actions that are going to really support me getting out of that hole or that lower energy state that I’m in.”

So if that’s happening, that’s the way to deal with it. But if you’re just in the messy middle phase, you haven’t found that things are regressing, the way to get through it – I’ve got some suggestions with this.

00:36:11

Expect discomfort

One – and this is very much about managing expectations – is expect discomfort, and don’t make it mean something. Discomfort does not mean that you’re doing something wrong. It just is. It’s meant to be going on. As I said, there’s physical changes that are going on. There are emotional changes that are happening so that more emotions are coming online.

It’s mean to be uncomfortable at this point, and if you’re doing the challenges that are required as part of recovery, so “I am having those fear foods” or “I am starting to have a bigger portion at my lunch” or “I am starting to make this change and that change”, discomfort is meant to be there. It’s not that “I’ve been doing this for so long, it should’ve disappeared by now.” You’re at a stage where it’s meant to be there. So being able to manage that expectation and just reminding yourself, “This is what it feels like to do recovery right now. This is what it’s meant to feel like to do recovery right now. I’m not doing something wrong; this is how it should be.”

00:37:23

Zoom out + notice patterns

The second one is to zoom out and to really notice the patterns that are going on, not just what it feels like in that very specific moment. Because as I’ve said going through this already, you can have different experiences depending on the day or depending on the meal. You could have one meal that feels impossible and then the next one feels fine. You could have one day where the body hatred is so strong, and then another day where it feels much more neutral, or there’s not the same intensity to it.

Being able to recognise that those really painful, excruciating moments don’t define you, they aren’t a predictor of how it’s going to be forever. So being able to remember, “Hey, this is temporary.”

What I’ll often suggest connected to this is writing down all the positives that have happened in recovery, and having this be a living, breathing document that you’re constantly adding to so that you’re regularly saying, “This thing’s improved and this thing’s changed, and I was able to have this meal that I haven’t been able to have before, and I was able to be present and spend this day with my niece” or whatever it is, so that when you are having those moments, you can pull out that document and read through and remind yourself, “Oh yes, all of these things have actually occurred, and they have improved for the better” so that you have something tangible to call on.

It is useful to do the regular zooming out, but I also think it can be useful to be able to pull something out, whether that’s a Word document that you have or whether that’s in a journal you can open up, to remind yourself that there are patterns connected to this, and “how I feel in the moment, right now, doesn’t tell me about the bigger picture.”

00:39:23

Connect to values, not fears

The next one is really connecting with your values and not your fears. The eating disorder will always really speak to that fear of “you’ll lose control, you’ll regret this, what have you done”, all of these fear-based things. But really, when I think of recovery, this is connected to your values.

What do you want to have your life look like? What is genuinely important to you? I do think as people are getting further along in recovery, they’re able to tap in much more to what their values are. And again, this is work that I do with clients. We go through different exercises connected to this so that they have this in advance, so when there are moments of that fear taking over or it feels really difficult, they can ask the question, “What matters to me most right now?” or “If I say that my value is integrity, what does a person who values integrity do in a moment like this?” Or “If I say I value my role as a mother and being a role model for my kids as that mother, what would someone like that do in this moment?”

So really tapping into those values as a reminder of “This is how I want to act. I don’t want to act from a place of fear.” And doing that doesn’t take away any of the fears. You can still have the guilt or you can still have the anxiety or you can still have all of these fears and emotions that are coming up, and you realise “I can have those things and I’m still going to take the action that is in alignment with my values.”

00:41:08

Use tools in the moment

Using tools in the moment. This is a big piece that I focus on with clients: getting them used to using tools. And I go through lots of different tools with people, and people find which ones work for them, but finding things that you can dependably rely on that you use on a regular basis so that they do become a lot more automatic.

The focus with this – and this is always where I start – is use these tools outside of the really difficult moments, because if the only time you’re ever trying to do journalling is when you’re at a 10 out of 10 panic state, it’s never going to work for you because it will feel so unnatural to do that because that’s the only time you’re doing it, and there’s already this panic that’s going on.

So it’s having these tools that you’re actually using as part of your day-to-day that you also then call on in these times where it’s difficult. I remember someone talking about the idea of “I go to group when things are going well so I know how to go to group when things aren’t going so well.” I think they were talking about it from an NA or AA perspective, but I think it’s a really useful thing to remember: “I need to practise these things when they’re on the easier end of things so that when it’s on the harder end of things, I know how to do it.”

This could be things like journalling, it could be different tools to help you stay in the present moment. I use a thing called dropping anchor or expansion to help people in the moment. There’s the rain meditation and a lot of the meditations from Tara Brach that can be very helpful. There’s a whole host of different things. What’s most important is that you have some that you use and you are able to remind yourself to pull out in these moments.

It could also be texting a friend or texting your recovery coach or support. It could be also getting good at being able to name these things. “I’m noticing I’m feeling really scared right now, and I’m noticing there are these emotions that are coming up, and I’m noticing there are these sensations within my body.” So being able to, again, stay in that present moment and being able to name what is going on as opposed to instantly feeling like “I’ve got to change this, I’ve got to stop this. I’ve got all this resistance to this thing.”

00:43:42

Let recovery be imperfect

The next one is to let recovery be imperfect. This somewhat connects to the first one of managing expectations and expecting discomfort, but you’re going to have better days and you’re going to have worse days. You’re going to have times where “Yeah, I did everything that I was meant to as part of my goals” and there are times where “Life got lifey and things got in the way.”

What’s much more important is, “What do I do next? What do I do now? This thing happened; how do I make the change to get back on the horse or get back in the way that I was doing things yesterday, when I did manage to do all the goals that I’d set out to do?”

Because I think there can be this very black-and-white thinking. I notice this a lot with making changes, where “Oh, I had this plan of what I was going to do for the day in terms of my eating, and my first meal, I didn’t do it exactly as I said on the plan, so I was like, screw it. We’ll pick this up again tomorrow. I’m just going to go back to what I was always doing.”

So part of this letting go of imperfection is getting out of the black-and-white thinking that is so common with eating disorders, and recognising, “Okay, breakfast didn’t go as I planned; that doesn’t mean we have to scrap the whole day. It means, cool, now I need to focus on what’s most important for having the snack go to plan.”

00:45:13

Stay connected

The next one is staying connected. I think what can often happen is that when things get hard, there can be a lot of isolation. And I recognise this with clients as well. I had a conversation with someone today of saying, “Hey, I’ve noticed the last couple of weeks we haven’t been in as good contact, and this has happened alongside some of the stuff slipping and you starting to have more thoughts coming up and it feeling more challenging. Those two things aren’t just a coincidence.”

When you are reaching out more, you’re keeping recovery more front-of-mind, you’re picking up when things aren’t working so well, and we’re able to figure out how we remedy this as quickly as possible. So recognising how much it’s important to be connected and how much that connection protects recovery. And that can look like lots of different things.

It can be sharing with others. As part of the way that I work with people, there’s a group component and there’s a group area, so it can be posting in the group and talking about a struggle or saying, “Hey, I’m dealing with this thing; how have other people been able to manage this?” It could be coming to group calls. We have group coaching calls. We do meal support calls where we can eat together. It can be sending someone a message.

It can also be noticing, “Actually, when I spend more time playing with my cat or playing with my dog or just being with the horses” or whatever it is – I’m saying it doesn’t have to be humans. Humans are good, but it also can be animals. Again, noticing with clients that they have recognised that “When I’m doing better, I am spending more time sitting on the floor hanging out with the dog. I’m not quite so busy.” Or “When we do go out for that morning walk and that time outside, I’m much more able to let the dog sniff and I’m going at its pace as opposed to really getting it to go at my pace.”

So using that connection piece, because one, it’s great for your nervous system and co-regulation, but two, it keeps you out of that place of isolation.

00:47:34

Keep sight of what’s coming

Then the final one is just keeping sight of what’s coming. What I mean by this is realising that there are good things that are continuing to come with this and that will continue to come with this if you keep moving forward.

I know that recovery is hard and living with an eating disorder is also hard, but those are two different hards. One of those hards is moving you towards something better and one of those hards is keeping you stuck in something that is going to be permanently hard.

So being able to remember what is on the horizon, but also why you’re doing this. One of the exercises I do with clients is creating their vision of where they want to get to and what that’s going to look like and being able to then come back to something like that, and recognising, “I started this for a reason.”

I think when you’re in a difficult patch, you can look back at the eating disorder with very rose-tinted glasses. You can remember these very specific moments and then generalise them. “Oh, it felt so much better in that moment, and that was how it was for all of the day.” It’s like, that’s actually not how it was all of the day. Someone may remember the sense of relief and the relaxation that they got in the evening time when they finally got to eat, but they forget the torture of the 8 to 10 hours leading up to that place while they had to do all of the things to get there.

Being able to remember the whole 3D version of what was going on as opposed to just this very selective memory of what was happening, because continuing to do recovery is going to lead somewhere better.

As I said earlier, on, it’s not that everything’s going to be easy-breezy all the time. There are going to be lots of challenges, and the goal and the reason for recovery is you then develop the capacity to deal with those. Recovery doesn’t remove all the obstacles of your life; it just gives you the capacity to actually deal with those obstacles. So being able to keep that in mind.

That is really what I wanted to cover as part of this, because I do see a lot of people at this stage of recovery; either they get to this stage through us working together, or this is the point at which they reach out and they say, “Hey, I’ve been trying to do this on my own. I’ve now reached this place and I’m just so unsure. I don’t know what to do. There’s so much confusion around this. This is why I need your help.”

I just really want to remind people, or remind you listening, that this isn’t because you’re broken or you’re stuck or you’ve done something wrong. This is a very natural part of recovery, and it’s a sign that your brain is starting to rewire and that your body is starting to repair and that things are rebuilding, and that emotions are coming back online. All of these things are good signs, even though they can often get interpreted as threats or danger or “I must be doing something wrong.”

So that is it for this week’s episode. If you are in recovery, whether it’s at the very beginning stage or you’re in the messy middle stage and you want to reach a place of full recovery, please get in contact. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and then I can get the details over to you.

So that is it for this week’s episode. I’ll be back with another episode next week. Until then, take care, and I will see you soon.

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Here’s what we talk about in this podcast episode:

Intro