Eating Disorders Today has a name change and a new location.
Please visit Eating Disorder Recovery for Women at http://www.eatingdisorderrecovery.com.
Eating Disorders define a person's life. An eating disorder requires intelligence, strategy, commitment, endurance, strength, organization, secrecy, money, acting skills, ability to influence, persuade and manipulate others repeatedly.
An inspirational question that often helps an individual get on her healing path is this:
"If I used all the time, energy, skills, strategizing, intellectual and emotional involvement I devote to my eating disorder to something else, what could I do in life?"
This is often a staggering question, and people are shocked by the answer that occurs to them. Answers come in many forms, usually in a low murmuring voice with a hand over the mouth where I can barely hear and need to ask for repetition.
"I could run five fortune 500 companies."
"I could make a wonderful impact on the whole world."
"I could go back to school and finish my PhD."
or law degree, or medical degree etc.).
"I could get out of this horrible relationship and
support myself and my children."
"I could write my book....make my film.....design
my clothes.....start and run my business.....
create a school....."
"I could be free to find out what I really could do."
Vast options suddenly open to a person who has been living a limited life controlled by all that an eating disorder involves. And maybe those possibilities are real.
When a person genuinely looks at everything she does, thinks, feels, says in a day that involves her eating disorder and then thinks about what she could do what that energy and those skills if she were free she gets a glimpse of a new world.
She knows she could have useful and meaningful power in the world if she were free. She doesn't know what she would do or how, but she gets an emotional and physical sensation of freedom, just for a moment. She gets a sense of what might be possible if all her resources could be channeled toward something that would make her life worth living.
Sometimes people ask that question of themselves, and the revelation leads them to psychotherapy. Sometimes people need to be asked.
When I bring that question to people with an eating disorder I see faces change. Eyes fill with tears. Voices quaver, so afraid to speak what seems too good to be true A feeling of bewilderment and hope permeates the room. This momentous shift in awareness and sense of possibility always touches my heart.
It's a long road between that moment and full recovery, but that moment of awakening can be the start of a deep and rich healing journey.
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