Eating Disorder Recovery and Grief: when are you done?

Grief, like eating disorder recovery, is individual. Although sometimes it can follow a trajectory like this recovery slogan:

It gets better

Then it gets worse

Then it gets different

Then it gets real different.

There are all kinds of metaphors about how grief is something you learn to carry more gracefully over time. The grief doesn’t get smaller. We grow bigger, around the grief, and learn to live with it differently. Here is a beautiful visual of Dr Lois Tonkin’s model of grief, which shows how the griever grows around the grief…

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3 truths I've learned along the Road to Recovery...

Three tidbits I’ve discovered along the road to recovery:

1) You are not responsible for your eating disorder. You are responsible for your recovery.

2) The size of your body is not your business.

3) The mean girl voice in your head will continue to share. You do not have to believe it.

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Why Your Head Might Be Full of Bullshit (and What to Do About it)

The bullshit in your head, aka cognitive distortions, can be affected by sleep, hormones, and diet culture. Here’s what you can do to identify the cognitive distortions and get back into your eating disorder recovery.

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Exercise and Eating Disorders: Thoughts on No Longer Trying to “Run Away from” Yourself in Recovery

How can exercise be bad when it feels good? When does exercise become an addiction? Isn’t exercise an antidepressant? When do you need to take a break from exercise? How can you move your body with joy in your eating disorder recovery?

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A Recovery Story

The story of the velveteen rabbit has lots of eating disorder recovery wisdom. What are the essential parts of yourself? What are the eating disorder parts? What parts of you are shiny and polished, what parts are dismissive, what parts are diseased? What is the part of you that wants to connect and wants to become real? How does one become real (recovered)?

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Orchids, Dandelions, and Recovery

Some recovery counselors recommend getting a pet after going through treatment (for alcoholism, eating disorders, depression)…

Many of my clients are what might be characterized as “orchids.” Orchids are a sensitive lot. They need just the right amount of light and water, or they don’t bloom. They’re often the ones, as children, that stay on the edge of the playground until the conditions are exactly right for them to jump in and play. I often use this analogy with my clients: If you go to a playground and one person runs right to the slide to go down it, and one person pauses before deciding where they would most feel comfortable playing, who is better?

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Get your (skinny clothing) skeletons OUT of the closet

Having a changing, new body shape, size, and image in eating disorder recovery and postpartum can be challenging. But you CAN accept your body. You are not the same person as you were in your eating disorder or before becoming a Mom. Why should your body be the same?

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