• Might you have an eating disorder?
• Are you at a loss for what to do? Are you aware that you have a problem that requires attention?
• Are you seeking treatment for yourself, or if already in treatment, are you considering finding a more effective treatment team?
• Do you need assistance in finding expert care?

If your answers to these questions are “Yes,” you have come to the right place.  Let me help you use yourself knowledgeably, constructively and confidently in mentoring your own recovery.

This site will educate you about eating disorders, the treatment process, and yourself as you approach the challenges of recovery, preparing you to become your own most valuable resource in healing your disorder and in coping with life from this time forth.

As informed consumers, it is for patients to

• Recognize their inherent rights as individuals, participants and partners in the treatment team
• To dare to have expectations.
• To make appropriate demands of themselves and of the team.
• To be steadfast in seeing to it that their own, (and in some cases their family’s) needs get met.

Eating disorders never stand still; they are either getting better or getting worse. Matching the nature and demands of these disorders on the move, patients must insure that there is movement in recovery that is intentional, directed, and tracked. It is this systematic tracking and response to what would otherwise be an unpredictable and counterintuitive recovery dynamic, that yields the most productive learning and outcomes.

The most critical resource for patients is themselves; their most critical tool is  the gentle and familiar art of listening, actively and purposefully, to:

• Themselves; to know their own values, attitudes, and biases about food and weight management. To recognize the courage it takes to maintain a genuine and honest presence throughout the recovery process.
• Their health professionals; to discover whether their professionals are effectively and productively listening to them.
• The uniqueness of the processes of eating disorder treatment and recovery; to comprehend them sufficiently to sustain oneself in their midst and throughout their challenges, with confidence, motivation and perseverance.

In searching out health professionals to work with you, you need to pursue and find a comfortable fit. Your health professionals need to be at once loving and limit setting, sustaining realistic expectations, making demands, inspiring hope, understanding that the quality of the therapeutic connection will be the best insurance of a timely recovery and the best hedge against relapse. By hearing and addressing your concerns, supporting your strengths, and facilitating your partnership in the treatment team, professionals who collaborate with and advocate for you in the healing process will become role models for your own effective self advocacy.

Though the eating disorder shows up in the individual, their most effective solutions are found within the family system as a whole. Recovery from these diseases happens during the course of daily living, not necessarily in the therapist’s or the doctor’s office.  Where parents of adult or young patients are present, emotionally available, and eager to become involved in a supportive way, motivations are invariably pure and genuine, intentions are noble. Intelligent and appropriate parental inclusion in the healing process, with proper coaching and guidance, renders them capable of invaluable mentoring.