Eating Disorder Recovery Quotes

I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy...

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March. ......... I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest. I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help. I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape. There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore. I am thawing.

I'm learning how to taste everything.

Killing yourself slowly is still killing yourself. Wanting to die is not the same as wanting to come home. Recovery is hard work. Not wanting to die is hard work.

Guilt is a destructive and ultimately pointless emotion

Real hope combined with real action has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through.

Hold yourself back, or heal yourself back together. You decide.

Anorexia cannot be cured by treating the physical symptoms alone; it is the mind which must be treated.

Between 10 and 20 percent of people with anorexia die from heart attacks, other complications and suicide; the disease has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Or Kitty could have lost her life in a different way, lost it to the roller coaster of relapse and recovery, inpatient and outpatient, that eats up, on average, five to seven years. Or a lifetime: only half of all anorexics recovery in the end. The other half endure lives of dysfunction and despair. Friends and families give up on them. Doctors dread treating them. They’re left to stand in the bakery with the voice ringing in their ears, alone in every way that matters.

Sometimes it's hard to see the rainbow when there's been endless days of rain.

We take action when we have the honesty to admit that things are still broken, despite our best efforts otherwise. We take action when we hold ourselves continually open to new techniques, remaining resolutely receptive to new sources of support and new feeds of information. We take action when we are willing, in each new moment, to try again.

Recovery is full of ups and downs. There is no such thing as a linear life. But you can always turn your setbacks into setups to come back stronger.

I would not encourage you to go through the sweat, blood, and tears of the recovery process only to reach some kind of mediocre state where you were just ‘managing’ the illness. It is possible to live without Ed.

Whatever you did today is enough. Whatever you felt today is valid. Whatever you thought today isn't to be judged. Repeat the above each day.

One of the most dangerous myths surrounding eating disorders is that they are a life sentence.

No food will ever hurt you as much as an unhealthy mind.

Just because something is familiar, doesn't mean it's safe. And just because something feels safe, doesn't mean it's good for you.

Eating disorder recovery becomes possible when you keep making the next right decision over and over. With time, these decisions become automatic.

Her behaviors turn her psychic pain, which she fears is not legitimate, into physical pain, which is indisputably real".

Everyone kept asking me if I wanted to die, Well, no. No I didn't want to die. But no one ever asked me if I wanted to live.

You don't have to preserve your pain in order to prove that it was real.

Bear in mind you have a life to live. There is an incredible loss. There is a profound grief. And there is, in the end, after a long time and more work than you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier.

Recovery so far is, in some ways, as difficult as the bulimic/alcohol-ridden years, but difficult in a different way because I'm facing my issues for the first time instead of burying them with eating disorders and substances. I'm processing not only the grief of my mom's death, but the grief of a childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood that I feel I had never truly been able to live for myself. It's difficult, but it's the kind of difficult I have pride in.

To stay in recovery, you must be responsible for finding your own motivation. Remember, motivation may not be easy to come by at first. It will probably be a very small, timid part inside of you. When you find it, let that part be in charge. Let the minority rule and lead you to a life you never dreamed was possible

A huge part of recovery and life -is slowing down and accepting the unKNOWN. This is how you get to KNOW –yourself.

Oftentimes, especially during my recovery, I didn’t need to think about everything I was doing wrong; instead, I needed to focus more on what I was doing right—and then do more of the right stuff. I needed to live more in the solution.

My only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn't think I would make it.

Clinicians have told me that our emotional is arrested at the age that an eating disorder takes control of our lives. After we recover, we pick up emotionally where we left off at that age.

For me, recovery from recovery was probably the most confusing time – the most lonely, frustrating and psychologically challenging time. It did not feel heroic and it was also incredibly tedious.

Not all battles are visible and neither are the victories.

Recovery is hard. Regret is harder.

Let go of toxic control, in order to regain healthy control.

And, as an adult, you have the freedom and the access to indulge in much greater forms of self-destruction than a two-year-old could ever have. You can drink and use drugs. You can smoke. You can be promiscuous. You can kill yourself if you want to, run into the streets at night, choose to eat everything in sight, or starve yourself. It's dangerous when the raw black-and-white emotions of a child are harbored in an adult's mind and body.

No two eating disorders are the same. No two individuals are the same. No two paths to recovery are the same. But everyone's strength to reach recovery IS the same.

Even if you do initially start out with a keen intention to 'fight' your disorder, to fight for your health and your life, it's not a decision you make once and for all, but thousands and thousands of smaller decisions throughout the day.

Do you know that feeling? When everything you do seems like a struggle. Where you dont wanna leave the house because you know everyone is judging you. Where you cant even ask for directions in fear that they critise you. Where everyone always seems to be picking out your flaws. That feeling where you feel so damn sick for no reason. Do you know that feeling where you look in the mirror and completly hate what you see. When you grab handfuls and handfuls of fat and just want to cut it all off. That feeling when you see other beautiful girls and just wish you looked like them. When you compare yourself to everyone you meet. When you realise why no one ever showed intrest in you. That feeling where you become so self conscious you dont even turn up at school. That feeling when you feel so disappointed in who you are and everything you have become. That feeling when every bite makes you wanna be sick. When hunger is more satifying that food. The feeling of failure when you eat a meal. Do you know that feeling when you cant run as far as your class. Fear knowing that everyone thinks of you as the"Unfit FAT BITCH" That feeling when you just wanna let it all out but you dont wanna look weak. The fear you have in class when you dont understand something but your too afraid to ask for help. The feeling of being to ashamed to stand up for yourself. Do you know the feeling when your deepest fear becomes a reality. Fear that you will NEVER be good enough. When you feel as if you deserve all the pain you give yourself. When you finally understand why everyone hates you. FINALLY realising the harsh truth. Understanding that every cut, every burn, every bruise you have even given yourself, you deserved. In fact you deserved worse. That feeling when you believe you deserve constant and brutal pain. Do you know what it feels like to just want to give up. When you just want all the pain to end but you want it to continue? Or am i just insane

The notion that life could be any different - that it could be better - becomes inconceivable. You forget how good it was to be normal. Worst of all, you come to believe that you prefer it this way.

A bulimic person's shame may lead her to try to hide not only her eating-disorder behaviors but also her basic needs and yearnings. She may wish that her needs and desires did not exist and may try to act as if she does not need or want anything or anyone. When that attempt inevitably fails, she may wish that others could magically read her mind and respond to her needs and wants without her having to ask for anything. To avoid the shame of expressing her needs and desires, she turns to food, rather than relationships, for comfort".

Recovery is a verb, not a noun. You have to be an active participant in order to continuously improve.

You are the writer, producer, and director of your own mind programs.

Somewhere I read that anorexia recovery is more painful for the sufferer than actively engaging in the eating disordered behaviours

The good news, however, is that, also contrary to popular belief, full and lasting recovery from an eating disorder is possible.

A bulimic person may be so disconnected from her experience that she does not even know what she needs or wants. If she does not know, needing something or someone only confirms her sense that she is weak and inadequate. She believes her needs are not legitimate, and therefore finds it difficult to seek care or engage with any care she does manage to seek. In fact, she is likely to greet others' expressions of concern with contempt, the very contempt with which she views herself".

Yet because her needs and yearnings are real and pressing, she must find some way to express them: she puts into body what she cannot yet put into words. Her eating disorder serves as her voice, her attempt to express and meet her needs and desires without directly asking for anything".

Find YOUR Balance.

With Ed, I always pushed away the good and only heard the bad. Today, I let in the good.

Eating disorders are insidious and subtly manipulative. The behaviors that initially feel like relief are the same ones that will eventually ruin you.

I am in love with myself. I am healthy. I am loving and loved. I am determined to take a step towards recovery. I am alive.

It is called a disorder for a reason. Because it makes no rational sense. It’s completely counterproductive and, the saddest part, it is also dissatisfying and damaging.

There is no right or wrong way to recover. There is only the decision to do so.

There are a lot of times the heart burrows deeper, goes tunnelling into itself for reasons only the heart itself seems to know.They are times of isolation, of hibernation, sometimes of desolation. There is a bareness that spreads out over the interior landscape of the self, a bareness like tundra, with no sign of life in any direction, no sign of anything beneath the frozen crust of ground, no sign that spring ever intends to come again.

Do you want to know the answer? The easiest, simplest solution to all of your hiding, and purging, the end of your exhausting, isolating, repulsive routine? Just eat. Like a normal person.

Ironically, this physically weak feeling signifies that I’m actually getting stronger. I know from my past that I will ultimately feel strong if I just sit with the feeling and experience it.

As she continually disregards and overrides her body's signals of hunger, fullness, and fatigue, a bulimic woman becomes increasingly disconnected from her subjective experience. Because she does not heed her own needs, desires, preferences, and limits, she grows ever more reliant upon external gauges to guide her life".

In the past, I was a perpetual victim; how I was doing in any given moment depended on what happened to me. Today I do my best to avoid this kind of ‘victim thinking.’ Instead, how I am doing is determined by how I respond to what happens to me.

Connect with supportive people who empower you. The more you jump into your life, the further away from Ed you can get. Don’t have a backup plan for living. Live today. […] Trust in God. Believe in yourself. Get friends and family members to stand behind you. That’s the only backup you’ll need.

Healing requires you to be vulnerable and strong at the same time.

Recovery doesn't mean putting your life on hold. Recovery means holding on so you can live your best life.

Then I took a shower, unlocked the door, and set out on destroying myself.

Healing from an eating disorder is a personal journey—the medicine is whatever reminds you that you do in fact want to live, and that you are worthy and capable of love.

Needing help doesn't have a look, but asking for it always looks beautiful.

Recovery is hard. Staying in your disorder is Hell.

Basically, when it comes to women, both aging and eating are somehow shameful.

I also know that I have forgiven myself. And that it’s okay to laugh at your mistakes, even the dangerous dumb ones.

I promise no food will ever hurt you as much as a negative mind.

At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a northern fall. And now, the temperature drops well below zero and the deadly cold lake rages below, I feel the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in my heart, spring will come again. But first the winter must be waited out. And that waiting has worth.

Not all battles or victories are visible.

Just because your heart is beating, doesn't mean you're alive.

I left myself out of humanity by focusing on differences. This isolation only strengthened Ed” (17)

If you hold on to any part of your eating disorder, you are always one step away from a relapse.

A really important and underestimated part of recovery is allowing yourself to fall apart without rushing in to fix it.

A suicide is tragic because nothing interrupted it.

Your life is worth so much more than whatever body part you are so furiously fighting.

At times I'd felt courageous on the journey, but it was borrowed courage. Now we were here, and neither of us had a plan. Was she going to abandon me, leave me stranded in my body? I'd be in exile with a stomach that demanded more of everything.

In yet another paradox, bulimia nervosa serves as both an expression of feelings and a defense against experiencing feelings, particularly shame, anger, loneliness, sadness, envy, and guilt. A person with bulimia nervosa fear, whether consciously or unconsciously, that painful feelings would be unbearable, even annihilating".

There is a type of courage that cannot always be seen. It's a bravery that you have to choose for yourself. You use it in the little, seemingly insignificant choices and decisions you make each day. Keep making these tiny, good choices over and over until you realize your whole life is different and the hero who saved you is yourself.

The very ironic, almost laughable thing about all of this, is that all the punishment and pain you’re inflicting on yourself is an infinitely harder way to accomplish your end goal of looking and feeling good.

Sometimes we take leaps of faith, and sometimes we take tiny steps. Even the tiniest step can require a lot of courage. Like climbing out of denial and admitting my real need for help. Like trusting someone who said I wouldn’t die from eating a bowl of pasta, and taking another bite. Like reaching for a pen or a yoga mat when what I really wanted to do was reach for a cookie. Like searching for a smile in my heart when my mind was busy screaming about how sad and serious I should be.

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they "came to their senses" and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of "enoughness"".

I hate the way people react when they learn Charlie spent a few weeks as an in-patient. As if it’s the most horrific thing they’ve ever heard. It’s because it automatically makes them think mental asylum and crazy people, instead of treatment and recovery and learning to manage an eating disorder.

Eating disorders are prevalent among women who were sexually abused as children. They seem to have components of other symptoms such as obsessions, compulsions, avoidance of food, and anxiety, and they primarily include a distorted body image and feelings of body shame. For some women, eating disorders are related to the loss of control over their bodies during the sexual abuse and serve as a means of feeling in control of their bodies now. Eating disorders can also be indicative of the developmental stage and age at which the sexual abuse began. Women with anorexia and bulimia report that they were sexually abused either at the age of puberty or during puberty, when their bodies were beginning to develop and they felt a great deal of body shame from the abuse. By contrast, women with compulsive eating report that the sexual abuse occurred before the age of puberty; they used food for comfort.

The only way to move forward is to focus on the good in your life and the good that you are doing for others and yourself. My past has shown me things in life, others and myself that I wouldn't wish upon anyone, but I can choose to pick up the pieces and build a beautiful life for myself and help others to do the same.

When we feel like giving up, like we are beyond help, we must remember that we are never beyond hope. Holding on to hope has always motivated me to keep trying. I have found this hope by connecting with others. I’ve found it not only in individuals who have dealt with eating disorders but also in people who have battled addictions and those who have survived abuse, cancer, and broken hearts. I have found much-needed hope in my passions and dreams for the future. I’ve found it in prayer. Real hope combined with real actions has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through. In other words, sitting around and simply hoping that things will change won’t pick you up after a fall. Hope only gives you strength when you use it as a tool to move forward. Taking real action with a hopeful mind will pull you off the ground that eighth time and beyond.

Because the truth is, while bulimia is a devastating illness I would wish upon no one, it has taught me about the fragility of life and the vital need for compassion. Today, I’m quick to love and throw my arms around any girl who has ever stared at a puddle of her own vomit and questioned the point of her life. Or who has ever let a Photoshopped image on a glossy magazine preach to her about her own self-worth, her own beauty. Or who has ever been afraid to face the pain and suffering, within and outside of herself. Today, I’m quick to love.

anxiety becomes high energy when taken to the light. For me, it worked like this: I used to live in a constant state of anxiety, worrying about the past and the future. Now I do my best to focus my attention on the present moment. So the mental energy I used to waste on worrying is channeled into the present, making me better able to focus intently and enthusiastically on a task (whether work or play). In a similar way, perfection becomes tenacity, and compulsivity becomes drive. Traits that once brought us down can lift us up when taken to the light.

I wrote in my journal about how good I felt when I was not living under Ed’s control. Then, when I really felt like giving up, I read these pages and realized that I was striving for in recovery was a real possibility. I thought about these experiences and used them as encouragement to keep moving forward. Even one minute of freedom was proof that I was getting better. At first, these times were few and far between. Now, these moments are connected; they are my life

Black-and-white thinking is the addict's mentality, which can be a bar to recovery when one is still active. But an addict who finds the willingness can then rely on the same trait to stay clean: "Just don't drink," they say in AA. How's that going to work for an addicted eater? Food addicts have to take the tiger out of the cage three times a day. I've read that some drinkers have tried "controlled drinking," and it hasn't been very successful. Eaters don't just have to try it; they must practice it to survive. Having a food plan is an attempt to address that, and having clear boundaries is a key to its working. But the comfort of all or nothing is just out of reach. ... I'm saying that food addicts, unlike alcoholics and may others, have both to try for perfection and to accept that perfection is unattainable, and that the only tool left is a wholesome discipline. The problem is, if we had any clue about wholesome discipline, we wouldn't be addicts.

I decided to say something. It was through an email, an email to my mom confessing that I had a problem with food, that maybe it was an eating disorder, that I wasn't sure what to do or feel. That yes, I had gained weight, and I was scared, and I was constantly thinking about food. That it was taking over my life.

When I was around Sunny, there was no time to dream about some easier, prettier, more comprehensible, less fucked-up existence. Now was all we had: Sunny lifting her eyes to meet mine. Cupping water in my own hands to rinse the blood off her head. Sunny’s tongue on my nose, her tail thudding on my leg. The reach of my hand across her spine. The words of comfort and rage and fear and sadness and hope that I spoke only in her presence.

In retrospect, I now see this period in the immediate aftermath of recovery as a time of grief. I see that I was grieving a huge part of me that I had not fully reconciled myself with letting go of. But it is tricky to name it as such, because you’re not meant to feel sad over something that was so destructive to you and everyone in your life.

During the worst stages of my eating disorder, I was all-or-none with food—either bingeing or not eating. Much of my experience was, in fact, that if I ate anything, I would eat everything. I began to understand that this happened because I was starving myself. In starvation mode, my body literally thought I was facing a famine. It didn’t know that I was living near a grocery store and several fast-food restaurants. Thinking I was facing a real food shortage, its primal instinct was to binge on large amounts of food, conserving fat in preparation for the hard times ahead.

In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure—nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average meant failure if I received an 88 out of 100 percent on an exam, I felt that I failed. The fact is most things in life are not absolutes and have components of both good and bad. I used to think in absolute terms a lot: all, every, or never. I would all of the food (that is, binge), and then I would restrict every meal and to never eat again. This type of thinking extended outside of the food arena as well: I had to get all of the answers right on a test; I had to be in every extracurricular activity […] The ‘if it’s not perfect, I quit’ approach to life is a treacherous way to live. […] I hadn’t established a baseline of competence: What gets the job done? What is good enough? Finding good enough takes trial and error. For those of us who are perfectionists, the error part of trial and error can stop us dead in our tracks. We would rather keep chasing perfection than risk possibly making a mistake. I was able to change my behavior only when the pain of perfectionism became greater than the pain of making an error. […] Today good enough means that I’m okay just the way I am. I play my position in the world. I catch the ball when it is thrown my way. I don’t always have to make the crowd go wild or get a standing ovation. It’s good enough to just catch the ball or even to do my best to catch it. Good enough means that I finally enjoy playing the game.

So many nights, I stared out at the inky black ocean, believing that if I could only learn how to eat again and keep my hands out of my throat, that would be enough. I prayed hard and desperately to God and the sun and the moon and the ocean and the universe and every shelter dog I’d ever met, as if they were all genies, that I wouldn’t ask for anything more. But perhaps God isn’t a collection of genies, and perhaps it’s okay to hope for more than relief. To hope big. To hope for Sunny’s limitless capacity to love.

Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, ‘That’s interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did yesterday. Maybe it’s water weight. Maybe it’s my outfit. Or maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.’ I know it’s not possible for me to gain a noticeable amount of weight overnight, so I will go no further than that. I move on with my day without skipping a beat—and definitely without missing a meal.

So many stories lived behind my eyes. I carried the people I hurt, the lies I told, my sick relationship with food, wherever I went. My mind was rarely grounded in the moment. My past was heavy and constant; my thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone. But when I was with the shelter dogs, I didn’t have anything to hide. Sometimes what existed behind my eyes fell away. I wasn’t bulimic or unlovable or fat or a liar. I was a part of life again. I was an observer, and to more than just the dark cyclical patterns of the mind—here was the strong, sturdy presence of another—the breath moving in and out of Angel’s chest, the beating of her heart, the force of life moving through her and through me.

Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are designed so that the feeling will pass through us on its own—in time. All we have to do is sit there and feel what is going on inside of us. We must experience the feelings. To help us deal with the feelings, we can call someone on our support team. We can also express the feelings by focusing on our breath or even hitting a pillow. The important thing to remember is that no matter how terrible, feelings do pass. It takes patience and trust—not food . . .

Food is something I am going to have to face at least three times a day for the rest of my life. And I am not perfect. But one really bad day does not mean that I am hopeless and back at square one with my eating disorder. Olympic ice skaters fall in their quest for the gold. Heisman Trophy winners throw interceptions. Professional singers forget the words. And people with eating disorders sometimes slip back into an old pattern. But all of these individuals just pick themselves back up and do the next right thing. The ice skater makes the next jump. The football player throws the next pass. The singer finishes the song. And I am going to eat breakfast.

I don’t remember when I stopped noticing—stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don’t remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed “safe,” or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry—or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I’d done for nearly my whole life. I don’t remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn’t give up this life of freedom for the world. What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That’s the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn’t give up. Recovery isn’t easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you’re willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It’s worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get back your life. There are a couple of things I had to keep in mind in early recovery. One was that I was going to recover, even though I didn’t feel “ready.” I realized I was never going to feel ready—I was just going to jump in and do it, ready or not, and I am deeply glad that I did. Another was that symptoms were not an option. Symptoms, as critically necessary and automatic as they feel, are ultimately a choice. You can choose to let the fallacy that you must use symptoms kill you, or you can choose not to use symptoms. Easier said than done? Of course. But it can be done. I had to keep at the forefront of my mind the reasons I wanted to recover so badly, and the biggest one was this: I couldn’t believe in what I was doing anymore. I couldn’t justify committing my life to self-destruction, to appearance, to size, to weight, to food, to obsession, to self-harm. And that was what I had been doing for so long—dedicating all my strength, passion, energy, and intelligence to the pursuit of a warped and vanishing ideal. I just couldn’t believe in it anymore. As scared as I was to recover, to recover fully, to let go of every last symptom, to rid myself of the familiar and comforting compulsions, I wanted to know who I was without the demon of my eating disorder inhabiting my body and mind. And it turned out that I was all right. It turned out it was all right with me to be human, to have hungers, to have needs, to take space. It turned out that I had a self, a voice, a whole range of values and beliefs and passions and goals beyond what I had allowed myself to see when I was sick. There was a person in there, under the thick ice of the illness, a person I found I could respect. Recovery takes time, patience, enormous effort, and strength. We all have those things. It’s a matter of choosing to use them to save our own lives—to survive—but beyond that, to thrive. If you are still teetering on the brink of illness, I invite you to step firmly onto the solid ground of health. Walk back toward the world. Gather strength as you go. Listen to your own inner voice, not the voice of the eating disorder—as you recover, your voice will get clearer and louder, and eventually the voice of the eating disorder will recede. Give it time. Don’t give up. Love yourself absolutely. Take back your life. The value of freedom cannot be overestimated. It’s there for the taking. Find your way toward it, and set yourself free.

Some protectors do eventually dissolve in their current manifestation. Cutting or purging stops. Addition to alcohol or drugs abates. Suicide plans become ideation and finally depart, although none of this happens as linearly as I have stated it. Often, they are first replaced by less harmful protectors, and then those may be able to transform, bringing helpful gifts. Most important for us ... is to welcome these parts, listen to them and let them become our guides ... They will have a better sense of pacing than we do because they are so connected to the wounded ones inside. As the ones in distress have less hold on thoughts, feelings, behaviors and relationships, we can know that less vigilance over the inner world is needed.

It’s tempting to believe fairy tales and imagine recovery is this meteoric rise from darkness, but I think it must be stated for the sake of honesty, integrity and solidarity with others going through it, that recovery doesn’t feel at all like strength. It feels like giving up, like failing. It feels like lying in a useless lump all weekend, crying about the weight you gained. It feels like the deep shame you carry around all day because you actually can’t stop yourself eating anymore. It feels like the maddening conflict of being hungry and healthy. You gaze back at your skinny pictures wondering what happened – was that really you? It was seemingly moments ago, but now you are asking yourself what happened to the girl who would have given her life to be thin. It feels like you’re being weak and lazy and surrendering to your own worthlessness. It actually, on many days, feels like you’ve lost a battle.