Asking why recover, is like asking a seed, why grow?
The following is taken from Marya Hornbacher
An introduction
First let me tell you what I am not.
I am not a doctor. I am not a clinician of any sort. I have no letters after my name that would give you reason to believe I am an expert in the fields of psychology or medicine, which is good, because I am not such an expert. People with expertise in these areas are essential to the understanding of and recovery from eating disorders, and their work is invaluable to the furthering of progress in treatment and knowledge in this field, but I am not one of them. As such, please be aware that anything I write is written from the perspective of a layperson, with no therapeutic training, and is not under any circumstances to be taken as a therapeutic directive.
What I am is a former anorectic and bulimic with a seventeen year history of severe eating disorders, multiple treatments, endless therapy, and, finally, a state of recovery neither I nor anyone else ever believed would be possible for me. On a more practical level, I’m a writer. One of my books is called “Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia,” and in that book I explored the cultural and personal issues which I believe contribute to the development of eating disorders, as well as the ways of and reasons for letting them go.
Let me go back to a phrase I just used: “a state of recovery.” Break that down into two parts: first, recovery. By this I do mean that it is possible to recover—not that it is possible to hang onto your favorite parts of the eating disorder, just a few, and call it recovery, because that’s not it. I mean flat-out eat-normally stay-healthy get-comfortable-with-your-body-and-actually-like-it recovery. I never thought it even existed, and the statistics suggest that it exists only for the few. The statistics are misleading for the simple reason that they do not take into account the sheer force of willpower that most of us posess, and that, when turned toward our health rather than our illness, can bring us to real recovery. Second, “state of”: recovery is a fluid state, not a fixed point. You reach its edge first, and that’s where most of us stop, because then we can always look back. But if you push through, you move into its center, where you find that the state of recovery is an ongoing effort of major proportions, and with enormous rewards.
Without blathering on at length about the history of my eating disorder—I figure if you’re reading this, you know the gory details, which are more or less the same for all of us, and which are pretty dull—I became bulimic in childhood, anorexic in early adolescence. My long tenure in the deeply uninteresting but very addictive halls of eating disorder treatment began when I was sixteen; by the time I was twenty-four, I’d been hospitalized six times and spent a year in residential treatment. There, that’s the details. I was very sick. I don’t feel it’s helpful to fuss around with weights and pulses, because we have a tendency to get sucked into the minutae of such things and pay no attention to the real issues, which are that, as a group, we’re terribly fearful people, and food, hospitals, and addiction are very easy ways to feel safe.
I was expected to die and I didn’t. The reason I didn’t is simple: I felt it was the easy choice, and an irresponsible one. What’s been harder is learning to live. It’s something that requires an immense amount of energy and concentration, concentration you are used to putting toward self-torture. I depart from accepted wisdom on many issues, one of which is the idea that you can’t help having an eating disorder. I believe you can. Perhaps we don’t choose to get one, but we choose whether or not we’ll keep it. We choose, furthermore, whether to linger at the edges of addiction, or to move forward into a full life. In my articles, I hope I can convey to you how I chose the latter, and why, and the ways in which I continue to grow as a person, a woman, without an addiction holding me back from who I truly am. I do not regret the fact that I got sick and had to get well; I feel it has taught me some invaluable lessons, like learning how to let go, and like how to be grateful for the life I’ve been given to live thoroughly, rather than nibble at, or throw back.
I cannot tell anyone how to get well. I can tell you how I got well, and hope it helps. The ‘how’ I will leave to the professionals. But maybe I can share a little of the ‘why.’ It’s so worth it.
This is taken from Mirror Mirror
The recovery process will take time and it will not be easy. Many people have asked me how long it will take, but I cannot answer such a question nor should anyone else feel that they can. Everyone is different and everyone will recover at their own pace. You cannot put a time limit on recovery. I can tell you that the eating disorder will not disappear overnight like many people wish for. Going to bed at night, hoping and praying it will not be there in the morning, will not help you. You will only feel worse when you awake to find it still present in your life. Acceptance is best. Accept that for now you do have an eating disorder, but remind yourself it is only temporary. The more you move forward in your own personal recovery, the more the eating disorder will be left behind to become part of your past. Recovery is difficult, but then again, so is living with an eating disorder.
I know that I used to want a quick fix and be recovered immediately. I discovered that there were no quick fixes. I hated living daily with an eating disorder and wanted so badly for it to go away so that I could feel good, experience happiness and start living. I came to realize that I had two choices:
1) I could hold on to the eating disorder, stop fighting and give in to it.
OR
2) I could make the decision to let go of the eating disorder, fight it daily, and receive help and treatment.
No matter what choice I made, I knew neither decision would give me instant relief from how badly I was feeling. After facing those choices I knew the best one was the second. By choosing the second choice, I accepted that for a period of time I would continue to feel badly, if not worse, but eventually things would seem brighter, I would feel better and I would recover and have my life back. If I choose the first choice, I would have continued to feel badly and there would have be no chance for recovery and no chance at life. I guess what I am trying to say is that when you decide to recover, accept that it is a process and it does take time. You are not going to feel better immediately. It can take a long time to feel better, especially depending on the underlying issues that you need to deal with, but always know that in time, you will feel better. Recovery is very difficult, but it really is worth it.
I hope the sections below will be helpful to those beginning the recovery process and those who are already on their journey to eating disorder freedom
