QUESTION: hi... i saw your video on youtube and it was very inspirational. i am currently struggling with an ed and don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve gone inpatient and it hasn’t helped. any suggestions??

ANSWER: Without knowing more details about what you mean by ‘hasn’t helped’, it is difficult for me to offer specific suggestions – but I can share some thoughts with you. From my experience over the years in working with those who have attended inpatient programs, there seem to be many reasons why inpatient treatment may fall short of our expectations and treatment goals – see if any of these resonate with you:

• The program is not a good fit for our needs at the time we attend the program
• We are not ready for what the program has to offer
• Insurance or financial reasons prevent a stay of sufficient length to make significant improvement
• We do not have sufficient aftercare resources available to sustain any progress that was made during inpatient treatment

It is my firm conviction that even a program that is not an ideal fit for our treatment needs has something to offer if we are ready and willing to take it in. In my own recovery from anorexia and bulimia, I was not able to receive inpatient or even outpatient care, and I still found ways to build the skills I needed to overcome my eating disorder, because doing it on my own was the only option I had. I was desperate and determined. I was not willing to die without giving recovery ALL that I had. I wanted my life back, and that became my battle cry – my ‘key to life’ – the one thing that was more important than holding on to my eating disorder. I used the power of my key to life to inspire me to fight back until I got my life back.

If you can state with 100% certainty that you WANT to recover, and that recovery is your #1 priority, then you know that you have what it takes to recover. That is the first step. Once you have ascertained your level of willingness, then you need to build your skills over time. This takes remembrance of all you have already learned about recovery and daily self-effort to learn even more and put it into practice.

My recommendation is to sit down with your journal and think of every single thing you have learned that could possibly be helpful to you in overcoming your eating disorder. Analyze yourself in depth – become your own lab rat. Conduct ‘recovery experiments’ on yourself – try new things each day and see what works and what doesn’t. Repeat what works and discard what doesn’t. Remember your experiences with treatment in the past and think about what worked and what didn’t, and why. What helped you stay strong – even if it was just for a few minutes? Even a few minutes of recovery is better than nothing – and if you work at it, a few minutes can become a few hours, and then a few days, and then a few weeks, and….you see.

Recovery is HARD work. If it feels hard – nearly impossible – that is how you know you are doing it right. It is like anything else we do for the first time – it feels overwhelming and confusing and out of reach – and then if we persevere, what used to be so difficult flows more easily. In time we forget how difficult it used to be! Then new challenges come, and those feel overwhelming and confusing and out of reach….this is the cycle. Lay the foundation, then build on it.

The ‘4 keys’ to overcoming my eating disorder were these:

1. Find a ‘key to life’ – something that matters to you more than your eating disorder, and choose. Either your eating disorder, or your key to life. Make a choice because you can’t have both. Then all decisions become easier because they either support or sabotage the choice you’ve made, and you can choose accordingly.
2. Turn your mind from your enemy into your ally. Find the part of your mind that speaks with the eating disorder voice, and create powerful statements to combat its words.
3. Turn all the misdirected potential (discipline, determination, perseverance) you have been spending on being very good at maintaining your eating disorder around and use those same skills to FIGHT your eating disorder!
4. Build healthy, supportive relationships wherever and whenever you can find them, because relationships replace eating disorders.

So try these ideas and suggestions on for size and please do write again to let us know how it goes! Thank you for writing – and whatever you do, KEEP FIGHTING!

Warmly, and with HOPE,

Shannon

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