Posts Tagged “Eating Disorder 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.

Alleigh Colleran is a Seattle-based writer and mother of one, currently pregnant with her second. This essay draws from her lived experience with eating disorder recovery, pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood.

For most of my life, food has felt loaded. It has never been just food. Even when I tried to convince myself otherwise, there was always something more attached to it: control, shame, discipline, temptation, comfort, punishment. I spent nearly two decades moving in and out of the grips of bulimia and anorexia. Some years, the eating disorder whispered. Other years, it took over completely. But whether it was loud or quiet, it was always there, shaping the way I moved through the world.

When I was deeply consumed by it, my inner life narrowed into negotiation. What had I eaten? What had I earned? What would I allow myself next? What did I need to undo? Hunger felt suspicious. Fullness felt dangerous. And pleasure, simple, unguarded enjoyment, felt perhaps most scary of all.

For years, I thought that when I was ready to let it go, I simply would. I thought I was choosing it. I thought the control still belonged to me.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, Rawnaq Albathigi joins us to share her experience with an eating disorder, and how it’s shaped the perspective she’s bringing to the field as an emerging dietitian.

Drawing on a recovery journey she describes as anything but linear, Rawnaq makes the case for a more individualized understanding of healing from an eating disorder, and for treatment that’s far more accessible than it currently is, especially for people whose culture and faith fall outside the Western framework much of it is built around.

What if the help you need for an eating disorder isn’t nearby? And what if the help that is nearby isn’t enough?

Leaving home for treatment can feel like a lot to ask. You may be weighing whether the travel is worth it, whether you could just work with your regular therapist or family doctor, or whether it’s even worth trying again after a program that didn’t really understand eating disorders already let you down.

Eating disorders are complex, multifactorial illnesses, and healing from one takes specialized, multidisciplinary expertise that isn’t available everywhere. That’s worth understanding before you rule anything out—including the option of going a little farther for care that actually fits what you’re facing.

Episode description:

Pride Month is a time for protest and activism, for celebration, visibility, and community. It’s also a reminder of the inequities faced by LGBTQIA+ people, and the work that remains to ensure safety and acceptance for all. That includes addressing disproportionate adverse mental health outcomes—eating disorders among them.

**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.

Kimmy Schuelke (she/her) is a teacher, speaker, and author of the children’s book The Tangle. A survivor of both a long-term eating disorder and colon cancer, Kimmy integrates somatic work and yoga into the classroom to help students regulate their nervous systems for better learning. She is a passionate advocate for ED recovery and systemic change, somatic work, and trauma-informed education, proving that our bodies are the vessels for our stories, not the sum of our worth.

Learn more about Kimmy on her website, or follow her at @teachingkimmy on Instagram and YouTube.

For a long time, I lived in a body I didn’t even recognize. I remember my first session with my therapist. I was sitting there, and I looked down at my own hand resting on my lap. She asked me how an emotion felt in my body. I couldn’t answer her because I couldn’t connect with any part of my body. She told me to start with my hand. I had to stop and really think about the fact that it was mine. I was so disconnected from myself that I couldn’t even process that my hand was a part of me. That was the reality of my life for almost four decades. I was just a passenger in a body I didn’t trust.

Episode description:

Research suggests that 25 to 50 percent of people with eating disorders have also experienced trauma, and that the two conditions tend to reinforce and worsen each other when they co-occur. Despite this, care is often delivered sequentially—people are asked to address one condition before they can work on the other, even though the two are deeply intertwined.

**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.

Recovery Conversations is a question-and-answer series that features voices and stories of eating disorder recovery. In this edition, former Emily Program client Alyssa reflects on her recovery journey and what recovery has made possible for her.

Alyssa is a cat mom who loves singing, baking, and freelance design. She spends her free time watching her favorite TV show, Law & Order: SVU.

**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 Jessica Corriher

I am just a human figuring things out in real time. I’m on a healing journey that includes growth, hard truths, and, at times, a little wit. I share my story honestly because healing is messy, laughter is at times necessary, and pretending we’re “fine” is overrated. None of us is meant to do it alone.

When you’re in the middle of a struggle that takes up way too much real estate in your head and life, hope can start to feel like a nice idea—for other people. I know this because for the longest time, I couldn’t picture my future self.

I remember sitting in a high school classroom, faced with an assignment to write a letter to our future selves. Where do you imagine you’ll be in five years? Ten? Everyone around me started scribbling like they had insider information. I just stared at my paper, pen hovering, coming up blank. While visiting my parents over the holidays, I found that letter, which led me here today, sharing my story with you.