Bingeing on Eating Disorder Recovery (not a typo)

This title is not a typo.  I don’t mean bingeing during recovery.  I mean actually bingeing on the recovery process itself.

Fear and Hope

If you have an eating disorder you enter psychotherapy with fear and hope. You fear the loss of your eating disorder, and you fear that therapy won’t work to end your eating disorder. 

You hope you will get rid of the burden of the eating disorder and you hope you will keep your life as it is so you will have access to the eating disorder when you need it.

Binge Method of Sabotage

One way to combine your fear and hope is to binge on getting well so that you sabotage your recovery.  You do this by rushing into goal-oriented behaviors.

You have a list of positive goals that you tell yourself you will work to achieve, but you don’t get very far.  This is the life of a person with an eating disorder.  You know what you would like to be able to do or not do, but you cannot make those activities real and steady in your every day life.

Does this sound familiar?

Goals

Get adequate sleep.
Eat three meals a day.
Clean and organize home.
Get back to the gym or walk every day.
Get back to classes.
Stop all bad habits (booze, drugs, negative or abusive relationships, shop lifting, lying, postponing etc.).
Fix everything that is broken – clock, watch, car, windowpane, and chair leg.
Organize money and papers. Pay bills.
Clear out clutter.
Write apology and thank you notes.
Come out of isolation and be with people.
Be responsible at work or go back to work in a responsible way.
Start the project that is meaningful to you that you never really get into.

Bingeing on Recovery

Nothing is wrong with these goals. But bingeing on recovery involves sailing into action on all these goals immediately.  You clear the decks and begin to set your life straight.

But you’ve only been in therapy for a week.  You haven’t even established a solid relationship with your therapist yet.  You haven’t healed any wounds or developed coping skills based on newly acquired strength. 

You haven’t cleared your mind or your perceptions of the eating disorder distortions that affect your ability to think and make reasonable judgments. You are bingeing.

You are filled with hope and determination.  You exhaust yourself with activity and frighten yourself by removing defenses.

Binge Aftermath

When your momentum, fueled by hope and fear, hurls you into a situation where you are more exposed and available to the world with which you cannot cope, you crash. (You always crash after a binge.)

Then you criticize yourself for failing.  At the same time, you are home in the familiar zone of binge aftermath with your eating disorder intact.

You binged on your recovery.  You feel miserable that you failed and relieved that you failed.  That’s effective sabotage.

How to Understand

Nothing is wrong with that goal list.  Nothing is wrong with you.  You are using the skills, knowledge and energy you possess to move forward with your life and cooperate with the aims of your recovery. 

But you are still governed by the force and the limitations of your eating disorder. You act out your symptoms with therapeutic goals as well as food.

Relationship with Your Psychotherapist

Your therapist will encourage you to take it easy, slow down, go gently into your work by being present for the therapy itself.  Early in therapy you’ll most likely think that she is being easy on you. 

You’ll think that she doesn’t understand how competent you are and how you have the ability to do these things. You’ll believe that she doesn’t appreciate how important these tasks are or the urgency involved in getting them done.

You may feel offended or angry or superior or all three, just as you do when anyone attempts to interrupt you in a binge.

Real Challenge in Beginning Recovery

Your challenge is to let yourself be present with this unknown person, this therapist and discover if he or she is trustworthy, is reliable, and is warm, caring and firm at the same time.

The first step in recovery is not to sail into all those goal tasks, but to develop an honest relationship with your therapist.  Establishing that relationship will allow her to help you slow down your eating disorder momentum. 

Focusing on showing up for your appointments and giving yourself a chance to have a relationship with your therapist will give your therapist a chance to help you.

Then you can believe her when she says, “You don’t have to do everything at once.  In fact, you can’t.  If you try you will only set yourself up to fail and then feel bad about yourself.”

If you can let her help you pace yourself in a reasonable way, something you can’t do if an eating disorder is running your life, you can drop the binge behavior and begin genuine recovery work.

A lot of learning happens when you discover you can binge on recovery. 

Even more learning happens when you discover you can stop that binge and open yourself to genuine recovery.

(Related blog post, “Eating Disorder Recovery: Why “To Do Lists” Work and Don’t Work”)

May 1, 2008 | Filed Under Psychotherapy, adjunct healing methods and resources

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