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Abbie’s Advice to Patients and
Families with Eating Disorders
If you are entering eating
disorder treatment, it is important that you understand the following:
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An eating disorder is
essentially a device meant to solve problems and insure one’s emotional
survival in the world; though its intentions are noble, its functions
are harmful and potentially deadly. Eating disorder recovery will help
you to discover more effective and less harmful ways to accomplish your
life goals. Remember that eating
disorders are completely curable with effective treatment in 90% of
cases.
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ED treatment is designed
to help you to set and achieve goals that may yet be unknown to you at
the start of treatment. In ED recovery, weight loss or gain becomes
secondary to your ability to develop the internal resources and
emotional resiliency you need to gain, lose or sustain that weight
healthfully, to develop a healthier
relationship with food. One’s
relationship with food becomes a metaphor for how you approach life and
problem-solving in genera, food choices both reflect, and impact, your
emotional well-being. Eating behaviors and emotional issues should be
part of the fabric of each therapy session.
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If you are currently, or
have been, engaged in treatment that has been less than successful, your
next treatment experience needs to be different. It is up to you to make
sure that this happens. This time around, your treatment needs to be
change-centered, action-focused and outcome-based; your therapist needs
to be directed and intentional, skilled in cognitive behavioral
techniques as well as in mindful, psychodynamic treatment.
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ED recovery successes
are often camouflaged in what might appear to be “failures,” so don’t be
discouraged; keep your recovery expectations realistic.
Though progress may be slow,
expect to experience changes, if small, from the very start of treatment
and throughout care. Every session should provide fodder for learning
and change and be a source of empowering self-understanding. Expect ED
recovery to feel worse before it feels better;
it may be anxiety-provoking for an anorexic person to gain
weight, but in the end, re-feeding the malnourished brain is the best
medicine of all for reducing that anxiety.
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Both you and your
treatment professionals must consider you to be a collaborating member
of your treatment team. The
decision to recover, and the pace at which you will do so, remains
your own, unless, of course,
you are at risk physiologically.
Be aware that an eating disorder
temporarily strips it victims of the judgment and capacity for
self-care. Under dire circumstances, ED individuals need to put their
care in the hands of others, until such time as they can resume
responsible self-care.
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Everyone with an eating
disorder needs to be under the care of a medical doctor. Eating
disorders are the most lethal of all the mental health disorders.
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Most recovered clients
admit to feeling gratitude for
having suffered through a painful and convoluted ED recovery process, as
healing produces an improved quality of life in all spheres; some call
recovery “getting their life back,”
others call it “a better me.” Always,
the treatment struggle is well worth the recovery effort.
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