Action & Hope
If you’re reading this, then somewhere inside you there is a healthy self-voice that knows that there is something ‘off’ in how you eat, move or relate to your body.
If you restrict, binge, purge, excessively diet or weigh yourself, exercise compulsively or feel bad when you don’t exercise (and want to change that), we can help.
You don’t need to have a formal diagnosis of an eating disorder for something to be wrong. You don’t have to have a formal diagnosis of an eating disorder to know that you want the relationship you have with yourself to improve.
Hope and motivation in recovery will come and go. There will be times when you feel motivated and others when it seems too hard. No matter where you fall today on the scale of hopeful or dejected; repeated action, actually doing the things that your treatment team are telling you to do, on the days you want to and the days you don’t are how to start to move the needle.
For example, you may wake up and feel hopeless after engaging in a behaviour that you’re trying to avoid, that could be binging, over exercising, restricting at breakfast. Part of you may say to ‘carry on and start again tomorrow’. The problem with that is, we only ever recover in the present, right now.
So you have two choices: make the decision (even if you don’t want to) to do what your treatment team say- reach out to a coach, a friend, leave the gym, go to a yoga class, eat a proper lunch- whatever it may be in your specific case- or carry on with your behaviours because you already started and will ‘start again tomorrow’. Which one will move you closer to the outcome that you want?
Does everyone recover that starts the recovery journey?
No.
Can anyone recover?
Yes, I truly believe they can. Working on patience, whilst you keep working on the action of recovery is a big part of that. Just because everything hasn’t ‘gone perfectly’ today doesn’t mean you didn’t move the needle or take a step towards full recovery.
Your motivation levels may and likely will change and you may need to contemplate change well before taking action, that’s ok too. Change is not linear and it’s not easy, there will be periods of ambivalence and reluctance and that doesn’t mean you can’t recover.
Stay with it, reach out for help and you can create a life filled with peace and fulfilment.