Blending Personal and Professional Experience to Heal Eating Disorders

Professional Experience Article

There was a time, in the first half of my life, that I didn’t recognize I had an eating disorder. I knew I craved food beyond its ability to nourish me and that it had a psychic hold on me that seemed unbreakable. The only solace I had as a child and adolescent was that my father also seemed to have a similar affinity for food. My mother, a normal eater, was the odd person out in our small family.

She berated my father for overeating and me for sneaking food that was hands off, for company only. In my teenage years I binged and dieted, dieted and binged. In my twenties, I spent about 18 months perfecting bulimia.

Then British psychotherapist, Susie Orbach’s book, Fat Is A Feminist Issue, transformed my life with its wisdom, teaching me that I could eat according to appetite and stop worrying about my weight. From there, I read every book I could find (not many back in the early 1980s) on what was eventually called intuitive eating and I was finally on the road to recovery. Half a lifetime later at 75, I enjoy being a “normal” eater at a comfortable weight without dieting.

I entered social work school knowing I wanted to treat people with eating disorders, to teach them what I’d learned and maybe save them from making some of the mistakes I’d made. Of course, as I now know, that was never a possibility because missteps are part of the zig-zag road of recovery and every individual’s journey is unique.

What I can offer clients is a blend of what I personally learned the hard way and more than thirty years of clinical observations about what is needed to recover from an eating disorder. I share these insights with clients and colleagues through my books and blogs and let them know at the get-go the pre-requisites for getting them across the finish line. Here’s what I tell them:

Persistence

Recovery requires a passion to heal oneself and a deep certainty that you won’t stop trying until you are healed. I knew in my heart that failure wasn’t an option and that if other people could become “normal” eaters, I could too. I had no ambivalence about that possibility as so many clients do. I definitely had unconscious reasons for not wanting to stop bingeing—because then I’d have to deal with uncomfortable feelings—but I felt undeterrable in reaching my eating goals.

Patience

Although patience might seem the antithesis of persistence, it is actually its sister trait: you know you’re going to get where you want to go, but that it’s going to take a while and that’s perfectly alright. Having patience means you understand there are no quick fixes and you’re not going to avoid any of the pitfalls that others (like me) have encountered. You fall and pick yourself up; you head off in the wrong direction and circle back and start again— and again and again—and you’re all the wiser for it.

Curiosity

It’s crucial to wonder why you do what you do, especially if it’s hurting you. Curiosity involves no judgment. It’s mere observation and reflection which hopefully leads to insight: Oh, I ate only salad for dinner because my friends did, Now I understand that I stuffed myself at the party because I starved myself all day, or I finished off the cookies because I didn’t want to feel how sad I was. Ah-ha moments are what drive recovery forward and you can’t have them without curiosity.

Self-compassion

Dysregulated eaters are notoriously hard on themselves. They’re judgy and focus more on their mistakes and failures than their progress and successes. Selfcompassion means making a sharp one-eighty and looking for and putting attention on what you did well. It doesn’t mean you ignore or don’t hold yourself accountable for your missteps. You simply accept them with grace as part of the learning process and shift your gaze towards small steps you made in the right direction.

These are, of course, only the basics for recovery, but without them, our clients will not succeed. It also helps for therapists to practice persistence, patience, curiosity and self-compassion, both to model these traits for success and to take care of themselves as they accompany their eating disordered clients on their long road to recovery.

Written By: Karen R. Koenig, LCSW

Karen is an eating psychology expert with more than three decades of teaching people how to become “normal” eaters. Recovered from dysregulated eating for half-a-lifetime, she uses her clinical expertise and personal experiences to help clients improve their relationship with food and their bodies. Practicing out of Sarasota, Florida, she can be found online here.