Posts Tagged ‘Eating Disorder Recovery’

Karen R. Koenig, LCSW, M.Ed., is a psychotherapist, international, award-winning author of 8 books, and popular blogger. She has 30-plus years of experience in the field of eating psychology teaching chronic dieters and emotional, binge, and over-eaters to become “normal” eaters through using a non-diet, non-weight focus on eating intuitively and creating joyous, meaningful lives. Her eighth book, Words to Eat By: Using the Power of Self-talk to Transform Your Relationship with Food and Your Body (Turner), is due out January 26, 2021. She lives and practices in Sarasota, Florida. Her website is http://www.karenrkoenig.com.

It is January 2021, a time when many people are chiding themselves for their holiday food intake and psyching themselves up to change their eating, exercise, and self-care habits. But more often than not, our standard self-talk is so judgmental, punitive, and bullying that it fails to generate sustainable positive change and leaves us frustrated and hopeless before the first quarter of the new year has gone by.

To turn this pattern around, it’s crucial to understand that self-talk is not simply mindless mental chatter but instead a major way we humans have evolved to get our brains to take action. Whether conscious or unconscious, self-talk is what governs our emotions and behavior. That is, the brain interprets whatever we say as a directive to feel or behave in a certain way. It awaits our instructions and then executes them.

Read the first part of Carie’s story here. 

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

After college, I found myself taking my first professional job hours away from my friends and family in a tiny town. It turns out ED loves isolation. I told myself it was the only job I could find since I didn’t have any experience, but it also turned out to be the perfect haven for ED. I hardly knew anyone. I could go to work, come home, and just spend time with ED for the entire evening, just as he would like it. Then, I would drive the hours back to spend time with friends and family for the weekend and pretend like nothing was wrong. I had a good job. A nice apartment. I was dating someone. Life was good.

Meeting ED Head-On

At some point, my family and a great friend confronted me about my behaviors. It turns out I wasn’t as secret as I thought I was. ED was furious. Furious that they knew. Furious that our little secret was out. Now I was really going to have to actually face these issues I was dealing with. I began my first treatment with a social worker, registered dietitian, and some group work. It opened my eyes to what therapy really involved, and it was truly helpful at the time. Even then, though, I could not truly open up to my family and friends about what I was really feeling, thinking, and doing.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

My name is Carie Wille, and I am a 38-year-old wife and mother of a two-year-old toddler with our second baby due at the end of April. I own my own consulting business and I love staying active, especially running and waterskiing. I am also a sister, daughter, friend, Christian, and a bunch of other descriptive nouns I could continue listing, but we’ll leave it at that!

Although my family and I now live in Traverse City, Michigan, I am originally from Minnesota and spent my entire childhood and most of my adulthood up until last year there. I dealt with an eating disorder on and off since I was about 17 years old, although my disordered thoughts around body image and eating manifested at an earlier age. 

Although I won’t say I’m fully recovered because I still have to watch for those pesky eating disorder thoughts, I do not actively use symptoms and am ready to share my story to potentially help others in their journey toward recovery after having time to look back and reflect on… So. Many. Things. So many aspects of not only my eating disorder journey, but also life after an eating disorder. I have always felt that there was a reason God was sending me through these difficult seasons of my life that centered around disordered eating and body image complexities; I just didn’t know why. Sharing my story through The Emily Program is just a start for me – I feel called beyond this, but I have to start somewhere! By being vulnerable and sharing my story, I hope to help others through what they are dealing with. And, shhhhhh, just letting you in on a little “non-secret” secret: It is helping in my own recovery as well.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Lisa Whalen’s book,  Stable Weight: A Memoir of Hunger, Horses, and Hope, will be available from Hopewell Publications on March 2, 2021. Her writing has also appeared in An Introvert in an Extrovert World; The Simpsons’ Beloved Springfield; Introvert, Dear; and Adanna, among other publications. Whalen has a Ph.D. in postsecondary and adult education and an M.A. in creative and critical writing. She teaches composition, creative writing, literature, and journalism at North Hennepin Community College, where she was selected Minnesota College Faculty Association Educator of the Year in 2019. In her spare time, she is an equestrian and volunteer for the Animal Humane Society. Learn more at her website and follow her on social media @LisaIrishWhalen.  

Years ago, a graduate school professor showed my class a documentary on restoring famous paintings and frescoes, like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Guardians had managed to protect the fragile masterpieces from vandals, fires, and rain, but they couldn’t prevent centuries of dust, pollen, soot, candlewax, cigarette smoke, and the other pollutants of daily life from accumulating on the surface. The grime dulled paint colors so rich, vibrant, and complex that modern technology hasn’t been able to reproduce them.

Experts used Q-Tips to clean a single, square-inch section at a time. The work was taxing, tedious, and seemed like it never progressed, until one day, restorers stepped back and saw what looked like a miracle. Cleaned sections of the painting leapt from the surface. Their colors sang. Their backgrounds deepened. Their foregrounds glowed with light.

Though 2020 has now officially passed, COVID-19 remains in our present. We are still living through unprecedented times, most of us confined to our homes and surrounded by reminders of the pandemic’s impact. We continue to experience profound stress and anxiety, both of which are only compounded by the stress of months past.

Eating disorders are very troubling in these circumstances.

As many of us are now well aware, the stress of 2020 has exacerbated eating disorder thoughts and behaviors in many people. In some cases, those who were already struggling have experienced even more intense symptoms, and some who were previously in stable recovery have found themselves struggling again. Others who had never experienced these illnesses have found themselves dealing with one for the first time. It is painfully clear that there are millions of people who need attention and care for their eating disorders.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Josh Person is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer and brand communications consultant who has worked with a number of startup companies in the natural foods industry. In addition to his work, he believes in spreading awareness about and educating others on eating disorders and other mental health issues. Follow him on Instagram @thejoshperson.

Recovery Conversations is a question-and-answer series that shares voices and stories of eating disorder recovery. Among the many things Josh Person shares in this post are the lessons he has learned in recovery, the support and resources helpful to his healing, and the wisdom he’d give to his younger self. 

What do you wish more people knew about eating disorders?

It isn’t about looking a certain way or eating certain types and quantities of food. Rather, these are just the tangible manifestations of something so much deeper. An eating disorder is the loop of internal dialogue that cannot be turned off. The feelings of lack and unworthiness. These are emotions not easily put into words.

Another thing I think is important for people to know is that eating disorders are not the result of “bad parenting,” as parents of clients seem to think. So many are unnecessarily blaming themselves (including my own) for “causing” their child’s eating disorder, which is not the case!