Eating disorders can make us feel invisible. If we’re anorexic, strangers stare at us on the street, watch cautiously as we order coffee taking note of the calorie content, perhaps feeling confusion or pity in their hearts for us. If we’re bulimic or have binge eating disorder, we may weigh a “normal” weight so we may not be stared at or confronted by family or friends, but inside we’re holding a heavy monster of a secret. No matter what specific form our eating disorder takes, there’s a level in which eating disorders makes us feel invisible. 

The question, "Can love can save you from an eating disorder?" hits at the core of a deeper question. Anyone who loves someone with a behavioral or substance addiction will face wanting to leave the person, or wanting to take his or her love away because he or she has been hurt too many times. As the partner, you may wonder if your love and presence even matters. As the addict (the person with the eating disorder), another’s love may pour a sea of guilt into you, which can drive you back into reaching for your addiction. But love is a powerful force and we can use love for eating disorder recovery. 

Embracing resistance in eating disorder recovery is key to our health and happiness. It can be a confusing process because the eating disorder didn’t develop overnight. We didn’t wake up one morning and say, “Hey, I found a brilliant way to destroy my life, my relationships, my health, and my self-esteem. Hello, eating disorder, come right in.” We didn’t realize that our “diet” would lead to a downward spiral. At some point, we all face the choice of recovery, and it’s scary (An Exercise in Letting Go of Fear in Eating Disorder Recovery). We must venture in the opposite direction of the path we’ve known. Resistance is normal. Here’s how embracing resistance in eating disorder recovery can be simple.

"If you can’t be honest you won’t recover from an eating disorder," the woman said while leading group therapy during my inpatient stay at the hospital. Honesty is a foreign concept to eating disorders. They have a fantastic ability to spin lies. They tell us we’re fat, that we’re rejected, isolated, and alone. They tell us that they’re our best friends and that they’ll never leave us. At first, the statements might fill us with joy – hurray, a best friend who never leaves. But soon, it’s torture – an abusive friend who won’t ever leave. The problem with lies is that they grow with silence. The best way to mute them is to bring them into the light of honesty. Without honesty, you just won't recover from an eating disorder. Here are four vital things to be honest about in your eating disorder recovery.

Making food your friend in eating disorder recovery is a scary notion. For many of us, food has become something to be feared, rationed, avoided, or lied about. Food has become a source of greed and pain, purging and sorrow, restriction and pride. We use food in unhealthy ways to regain our sense of control over the spinning world around us, and the pain in our lives. As much as we dismiss the food, the obsession with it grows until it becomes a thing of love and hate, want and fear. But food is much more than this. It’s time that we made food our friend in eating disorder recovery. 

When our eating pattern and eating disorder are exposed, there’s a connotation that something is broken, unsettled, or disordered. Disorder is a term that swims in a level of metaphorical darkness. No one wants to admit that they have a disorder. It’s much easier to say that we have strange eating patterns, or that we exercise intensely. No matter what level our eating, body image, or exercise patterns lie, if they’re causing us stress in any part of our lives, then they’ve become a problem. So the exposure of our eating patterns and eating disorder can be a good thing.  

It comes as no surprise that eating disorders break our hearts. One of the most important relationships we will have in our lives will be the one we have with our eating disorder. Perhaps others view our eating disorder simply as a medical diagnosis. However, most of us who’ve lived with it know that it takes on a life of its own. It becomes our closest friend and confidant, the closest relationship in our lives. It often becomes a strange triangulation and stands in the way of connection with romantic partners and friends. At its worst, the eating disorder breaks our hearts time and again. It’s no surprise why. 

Safe coping skills in eating disorder recovery are so important. Having an eating disorder can feel like walking around in a black hole, lost and in darkness. As we all know, simply stopping the disorder doesn’t happen overnight. In recovery, we go through a process of learning our triggers. Prior to this, we never knew when we’d be triggered and when that neural pathway would fire us down the road of our disordered patterns. In the disorder, we often had zero coping skills for emotions except the eating disorder, so, naturally, it’s the one we chose every time. In our eating disorder recovery we can develop many safe coping skills to assist us in getting, and staying, healthy.

In our eating disorders, we fear fat but yes, eating dessert during eating disorder recovery is okay. We fear the way it looks in the mirror or how it collects on our thighs and the way it shows itself in the grams on labels and hovers in molecules of our food. When we have an eating disorder, we’d rather do anything than be fat and so we do. We react in unhealthy ways by starving, binging, purging, overexercising, obsessing over calories, or putting foods into lists of can/cannot eat. In recovery, we learn how to eat for nourishment but desserts can still be a feared and precarious category. But what if recovery included our ability to eat a cookie for the pleasure of it, simply because it’s delicious? What if eating disorder recovery included eating dessert?

Mirror triggers are one of the many triggers in eating disorder recovery. Two common themes for those with eating disorders are a repulsion of fat and negative or distorted body image. Recovery includes adjusting our thoughts and feelings around these two, in spite of eating disorder triggers. It’s important to note, however, that no two people recover exactly the same way. Last week we talked about weight gain during recovery and viewing ourselves in the mirror (How to Deal with Weight Changes In Eating Disorder Recovery). One person told me that that they couldn’t look in the mirror because it made them want to cry. This made my heart hurt because it’s an honest, raw, and legitimate feeling. Many of us have experienced this feeling, myself included, and it’s a source of deep sorrow. So, how do we keep moving forward with mirror triggers in eating disorder recovery?