There is a misconception about eating disorder recovery is that it’s mostly about food. Eat more, eat less, stop throwing up, follow the meal plan, become weight restored, lose weight, whatever. It’s not.
Real, lasting change requires learning how to set firm boundaries. How to start saying yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no. To repeatedly and bravely speak what’s real for you. To no longer put up with relationships, environments and beliefs that are not helping us be the person we know we’re meant to be and live the life we most want to be living. To remember how to have fun. It involves learning how to accept being disliked and rejected, but also embrace being more loved and seen than ever before. It’s a lot more nuanced than following a meal plan, but the exponential growth is endlessly rewarding.
eating disorder
Loss of the fantasy.
Warning: eating disorder trigger.
When we experience grief over the loss of a person, environment, identity, etc, what we’re often grieving is the loss of the fantasy that whatever it was represented for us.
This was my experience with the loss of what I had come to think of as “the perfect” (aka thinnest) body. When restriction failed me and I gained a lot of weight, I grieved the feeling of being untouchable and forever in control. The numbed out fantasy world that I was floating in evaporated, and I landed flat on my face.
Fantasies are there for a reason. They give us perceived safety from a reality we’d rather not living be in. When the bubble bursts it’s frightening and might feel excruciating, but it’s from there that we are given the opportunity to build a life we won’t need or want to run away from.