Posts Tagged ‘Recovery’

**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.

While navigating her own recovery journey at The Emily Program, Teresa Schmitz discovered a hidden gift in being known as a great listener with a compassionate heart. Being earmarked as an IT Leader who was more into the people on her teams than the technology they were building, she realized her purpose was beyond her title. She connected the dots and soon realized her purpose was to help empower others. She pursued her dreams of becoming a coach and launched her own coaching business, My Best Self Yet.  She now helps women feel empowered to navigate the journey of loving themselves unconditionally. She also empowers others to know and use their character strengths in the In It Together group coaching program. Learn more about Teresa’s story and follow My Best Self Yet on Facebook, Instagram, and her blog.

Choosing to say yes to the eating disorder treatment that is offered after your diagnosis can be scary. Most likely, you’ve been living with your eating disorder for some time, and it has been your go-to coping skill when life got hard. Yet, I am living proof that while it is scary at the beginning, it is very rewarding at the same time. There is so much you gain from seeking a recovery journey.

**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.

Julia Tannenbaum is the author of The Changing Ways trilogy, which she started writing when she was seventeen, and the co-creator of Nourish, an online cookbook and eating disorder recovery blog. She’s an advocate for mental health awareness and often incorporates her personal struggles into her written work. Tannenbaum is currently pursuing a Creative Writing and English B.A. at Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut with her family.

I still find it surreal sometimes that it’s already been five years since I was in my last treatment program. Five years since I’d wake up in the morning and dread the moment I’d have to eat. Five years since I was convinced that my identity was dependent upon my disorder. Five years since I tried to hurt myself. Five years since that fateful moment, at the tender age of fifteen, when I realized I deserved more than the half-life I was living and finally committed to recovery.

I distinctly remember that moment as if it happened only yesterday. I was in the process of being admitted to my second residential treatment center (my ninth inpatient program overall), having just come straight from an ED ward where, for the first time, I’d been exposed to adults with eating disorders. Seeing women in their thirties, forties, even fifties and sixties, walking around evoked a revelation: I didn’t want to be here in a couple of decades. I didn’t want to be chained to my disorder forever. I wanted to get better.

For many, summertime means vacations, long, warm days, and a much-appreciated break from school or work. It is a season of sunshine and recreation. For the millions of people with an eating disorder, however, summer often means something much more difficult than carefree leisure and freedom.

As the school year ends and summer approaches, now is the time to plan for and address the common challenges facing people with eating disorders during the summer. In this article, we discuss some key factors that make this season difficult for those affected by these illnesses and describe how providers and loved ones can help to connect them with support.

Episode description:

Abby Anderson is a business school graduate who works a corporate job and is passionate about mental health, yoga, and personal development. Diagnosed with anorexia in the summer of 2018, she has experienced a series of ups and downs worth noting to anyone with an eating disorder or disordered eating.

In this episode of Peace Meal, Abby tells us about the process of her eating disorder recovery, including the shifts in motivation she has experienced during it. She begins with the rock-bottom moment she first sought help. Exhausted and physically depleted, she recalls being highly motivated to make a change then.

But, as is typical in recovery, her motivation ebbed and flowed as time went on, and she learned why healing is often described as a nonlinear process. “Your body catches up a lot before your mind does,” she says.

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By Alex Ellen

**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. This post includes references to domestic violence and abuse. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

When I was 13, I had to quit gymnastics due to an injury. This, combined with hitting puberty, resulted in a little, very normal weight gain. I wanted to get “fit” again, so I began eating what seemed like a very healthy, balanced diet, and exercising more. It seemed like simple maths: less in, more out. 

As I started to lose weight, one of my friends said to me, “Don’t go all anorexic on us though.” I never had heard the word “anorexic”… so I asked what it was, and she explained, “Some girls stop eating to lose weight.” And I remember in that exact moment, the feeling of the “penny dropping.” It had never even occurred to me to stop eating, but I thought, Well that would be quicker and easier. And, just like that, I stopped eating.

**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.

By Isabella Gómez Girón

“Okay, okay, just another more, my tongue needs it—my tongue? Not my tongue. Something needs it. I need to keep filling. But not my stomach, not my throat, those are clogged. It’s the heart, it’s the soul, not the body” (This is Me Eating Hugs). 

Have you ever felt like what you’re trying to fill while anxiously eating is more than your stomach? And you want more and more, even though you are not even hungry?

Well, I have been there too, and still am sometimes. My name is Isabella Gómez Girón, and I am a Colombian artist based in NYC. I hold a BFA in Acting and a Minor in Psychology from NYU. I participated in Et Alia Theatre’s online series called This Is Me Eating. . . , an experimental online series where each participant filled in the blank to describe what they were metaphorically eating as a way to explore the relationship between food, our body, and our image. I wrote This Is Me Eating Hugs toward the beginning of the pandemic when one of my fears was that I—being completely alone in NYC—would fall back into bad habits with food, as it would become my only comfort in that period of isolation. I was afraid my desire for overeating and my negative thoughts about my body image would start to control me. Writing this short experimental film helped me to channel those feelings out of my brain, allowing me to trust that I loved myself enough to not overeat all the time as a way to solve all my emotional turmoil.