I was sitting with a client recently who was feeling discouraged about her recovery.
She had slipped back into some eating disorder behaviours and was being incredibly hard on herself about it. As she talked, I could hear the frustration in her voice. She felt like she should be further along by now. She wondered why, after everything she had learned and all the progress she had made, she still found herself pulled toward something she knew was hurting her.
It’s a feeling I hear often.
The Problem With "Fighting" Your Eating Disorder
Many people enter recovery with the idea that healing should look like a clean break. And they’ve often been sold this idea in the language used in recovery spaces:
- We will “beat it this time”
- How can you challenge those eating disorder thoughts?
- Let’s fight this thing together
Often, language used in recovery is about deciding that you’re done with the eating disorder, commit to recovery, and gradually leave it behind. People seem to imagine that if you “fight” hard enough and make “the right choices”, eventually the urges disappear, the thoughts become quieter and the eating disorder becomes a distant memory. If this isn’t the case, it means that there’s something about you that isn’t “trying hard enough”.
In reality, this isn’t what recovery looks like for anyone. And this idea that an individual can “fight” their way out of it creates a sense of responsibility and deep shame in people that are working tremendously hard to change their relationship with food and their bodies.
Why an Eating Disorder Can Feel Like an Old Best Friend
As my client and I talked, I found myself thinking about old friendships and it felt like a perfect way to describe an eating disorder. Most of us have had this kind of friendship in our lifetime so we can relate. Not a casual friendship, but the kind that becomes woven into the fabric of your life. The friend you spent every day with in high school. The one who knew everything about you. The one you called when your heart was broken, when you got good news, when you didn’t know what to do with yourself on a Friday night.The kind of friend who was there through some of the most formative years of your life. This person was your “ride or die” and being with them often allowed you a sense of confidence and calm that you didn’t have without them.
And often, these friendships end with time. When we think about those friendships years later, we often remember them with a mixture of emotions. There was certainly joy, but there was likely also hurt and maybe there were parts of the friendship that were unhealthy. Maybe there were parts that got us through periods of our lives that felt impossible. Regardless of how the friendship ended or changed, it mattered and it was real.
And I think that’s something we often overlook when we talk about eating disorders.
Eating Disorders Often Serve a Purpose
Most people don’t develop an eating disorder because they’re vain, shallow, or trying to make their lives more difficult. Eating disorders often emerge during times when people are struggling, overwhelmed, lonely, scared, disconnected, or trying desperately to cope with something that feels bigger than they are.
The eating disorder serves a purpose. For some people, it offers a sense of control or it numbs difficult emotions. For others, it creates structure, certainty, distraction, achievement, or even a sense of identity.
This doesn’t mean we celebrate the eating disorder or ignore the harm it causes; It simply means we acknowledge that the relationship is complicated – similarly to what likely comes up when you think about that old best friend. It TRULY was special, it TRULY was unique AND, you may realize that you’ve outgrown this old friendship.
The Slow Process of Outgrowing the Eating Disorder
Perhaps, at first, you don’t even realize it’s happening. It may be subtle; you begin building a life outside of your friendship; You invest in other relationships; You discover new ways of coping; You learn things about yourself; You start imagining a future that doesn’t revolve around that friendship in quite the same way.
And then, inevitably, something that makes you feel vulnerable happens. In this [new] life you’re building, you may feel rejected, overwhelmed, exhausted (or all of the above?). It may not be dramatic, but there are times in life that you may feel more vulnerable.
And suddenly you find yourself reaching for that old friend again.
Why Slips Are a Normal Part of Eating Disorder Recovery
I think this is where so many people become frightened in recovery. They assume that because they felt pulled toward the eating disorder, because they had urges, because they engaged in a behaviour, because they spent an afternoon bargaining with themselves or questioning recovery, that all of their progress has somehow disappeared. They remember the traditional rhetoric that they “can fight this thing” or “beat it”.
But if you’ve ever drifted away from an old friendship, you know that’s not how relationships work. When you’re in the middle of moving away from someone who has been important to you, you don’t necessarily stop calling them all at once – it’s a process that may happen over years. You might go a month without speaking and then reach out. You might convince yourself you’ve moved on completely and then find yourself missing them unexpectedly. You might spend time together again and feel relieved or sad or confused or nostalgic or all of those things at once.
Recovery often feels surprisingly similar.People move toward recovery and then back toward the eating disorder. Then toward recovery again.Then back again.This isn’t about doing recovery wrong, being unmotivated or not wanting to get better bad enough. It’s actually because they are trying to loosen their grip on something that has been intertwined with their life for a very long time and this is messy, confusing and complicated.
In my work with clients, I’ve found that these moments of “going back” are often misunderstood. What looks like a “setback” from the outside is actually part of the process, and I would actually say is where the WORK happens, of tolerating moving away from the eating disorder. When people reconnect with old behaviours during recovery, they often discover something important about themselves, their resilience, how the eating disorder served them and how it now harms them. What people discover each time is a bit new.
The Grief We Don't Talk About in Recovery
And sometimes, while the relief of seeing your old best friend again feels SO GOOD, so secure and so known, you may also realize that it just doesn’t feel the same. The relief isn’t quite as relieving; The comfort isn’t quite as comforting; The promises don’t land the way they used to.
And that realization can be very painful and deeply unsettling. Because if the eating disorder isn’t working the way it once did, then what?
There’s grief in that; Real grief.
The grief of recognizing that something which helped you survive no longer fits who you’re becoming.
The grief of realizing you can’t unknow what you know.
The grief of standing between two worlds—the old one that no longer serves you and the new one that still feels uncertain.
I think this is one of the least talked-about parts of recovery. We celebrate letting go, but we don’t talk much about the sadness that can accompany it. We don’t talk enough about the fact that healing often involves repeatedly choosing recovery while simultaneously mourning what you’re leaving behind. And we certainly don’t talk enough about how normal it is to hesitate.
Because ultimately, that’s what many slips are: moments of hesitation.
Moments when a part of you wonders whether the old way might still work.
Moments when life feels hard and you instinctively reach for what is familiar.
Moments when you temporarily forget why you started walking in a different direction.
Those moments don’t erase recovery, they are often woven into it.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like
In fact, when I look back on the recovery stories I’ve witnessed over the years, none of the people who recovered as per their definition follow the neat, linear trajectory people imagine. All of the recovery stories are filled with periods of growth followed by periods of struggle. They are sprinkled with moments of clarity followed by moments of doubt. Because after all, isn’t that what living is?
People rarely (because I don’t want to say never) wake up one day and walk confidently away from their eating disorder without ever looking back. More often, they slowly build a life that becomes bigger than it. And somewhere along the way, almost without realizing it, they find themselves needing it less. Their recovery wasn’t about never slipping, never struggling, never missing it. It was about allowing themselves to return, and each time, gaining a better understanding about what they were actually searching for.
And each time they chose recovery again, they strengthened something new.
Maybe that’s what recovery is.
Not a straight line away from the eating disorder, not a single decision made once and for all.
But the gradual process of learning, over and over again, that while the old friendship may always be part of your story, it no longer gets to decide where the story goes next.
Written By: Annyck Besso, Registered Dietitian and Founder of Fueling for Recovery
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