Posts Tagged “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.

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.

You’re a few hours into treatment—or maybe a few days in—when you begin to wonder if you’ve made a mistake. The anxiety you expected to subside has only gotten more intense. You’re not sick enough for this, it says. You can handle this on your own. Part of you is already scanning for the exit.

This can happen even if you felt ready to begin eating disorder treatment. Even if you walked in with real motivation and a sense of hope. However disorienting it might be to experience, a spike of panic at hour twelve or an overwhelming urge to leave at the end of day three are not signs that treatment is wrong for you. Research tells us that the eating disorder voice tends to get loudest when it feels most threatened, and entering treatment is about as threatening as it gets.

Read on to learn why the first days can feel so destabilizing, and what to do when the urge to leave feels the strongest.

**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.

Pam Sanderson Lyon lives in Durham, North Carolina, in a home full of animals, people, colored pencils, and half-filled journals.

I don’t know about you, but I have never needed encouragement to think more or live in my head.

“Dig in.”
“Analyze your every thought.”
“Stew on it.”

All unnecessary statements.

I never forget them. They come easy.

Episode description:

Coming home for the holidays when an eating disorder is in the mix can be deeply complicated—for the person navigating it, and for the people who love them.

In this episode of Between Bites, Dr. Jillian Lampert reflects on her own experience returning home from college while struggling with an eating disorder, and offers clear, compassionate guidance for young adults facing similar homecomings. Whether the eating disorder is known, hidden, or somewhere in between, Jillian shares tangible strategies to help make this season feel more manageable. With deep care, she holds space for anyone who might be quietly struggling—and for those who want to help, or say something, but aren’t sure how.

For many adults, eating has never felt straightforward.

Certain textures or smells might make you tense up before you even take a bite. Maybe you once choked or got sick after eating something unfamiliar, and food hasn’t felt safe since. Or perhaps you rarely feel hungry at all; eating just feels like something you have to get through.

Over time, you’ve found ways to cope: sticking to a short list of safe foods, keeping meals predictable, checking menus ahead of time, or bringing food you know you can tolerate. These strategies help you get through the day, but they can also be exhausting.

Episode description:

In this episode of Peace Meal, we’re joined by two North Carolina-based Emily Program clinicians, Mem Wood and Elysse Thebner Miller, to talk all things Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, or ARFID.

Mem and Elysse unpack what makes ARFID different from ordinary food preferences, why it can emerge at any age, and how symptoms may affect nutrition, growth, medical stability, and daily life. They describe the three ARFID subtypes, share what treatment actually looks like, and highlight signs that often indicate it’s time to seek support.

This episode also introduces The Emily Program’s new specialized residential and inpatient programming for adults with ARFID in the Raleigh–Durham area—the only dedicated adult program of its kind nationwide.

The ongoing government shutdown—now the longest in U.S. history—has disrupted critical nutrition assistance programs. 

For the first time in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program’s (SNAP) 60-year history, benefits were not issued as scheduled on November 1st, impacting 42 million Americans. Federal action is underway to fund payments, but the timeline for distribution varies by state, and there’s no guarantee of SNAP funding in December if the shutdown continues. Support for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) also remains uncertain.

At The Emily Program, we recognize the serious implications of this crisis for our community. Eating disorders don’t discriminate by income, and many of the people we serve rely on SNAP, WIC, and other programs to meet their basic food needs. We know that sudden changes to food access can be particularly destabilizing for those working hard in eating disorder recovery, on top of the stress and hardship these gaps in benefits bring for everyone affected.

**Content warning: This episode includes discussion of suicide. Please use your discretion when listening and connect with your support system as needed. If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, help is available. Text or call 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Episode description:

When their daughter Grace developed an eating disorder, John and Kathy experienced the heartbreak and confusion familiar to many parents. In this episode of Peace Meal, they speak with raw honesty about the helplessness of those early years, the shock of seeing Grace’s personality shift under the illness, and the mix of fear and relief that came with entrusting her to treatment.

When Grace turned 18, she left treatment, and John and Kathy lost the ability to make decisions for her care. She struggled through a college relapse that felt devastating at the time. John and Kathy talk about learning to support Grace through those years—finding community with parents who truly understood, separating their daughter from the illness even when it felt impossible, and accepting that recovery had to be something Grace wanted for herself.