Living With Food: The Science Supporting Eating Disorder Treatment

By Dr. Mark Warren

In many of our blog posts we have mentioned the need for community in order to maintain recovery from an eating disorder. The reason for this is straightforward. It has been very rare in our experience to see anyone get better from an eating disorder by themself. Eating disorders speak loudly inside our brains in painful, relentless, insidious ways , and without a community around us the voice of the disorder is too loud for us to fully reject it. It is only in community that other voices, experiences, emotions, and ideas have a chance to influence how we eat, feel, and think.

One of the most painful parts of an eating disorder is the distortion in the perceptions of bodies, food, comparisons to yourself, comparisons to others, and what we imagine our ideal to be. These distortions, which are biological, cannot be thought away. Eating disorders tend to isolate and distortions grows worse with isolation. Joining and connecting to others significantly increases our opportunities to get well. Community provides a counterbalance to this distortion, not necessarily by telling us we are wrong, but by providing us with a greater variety of experience and understanding than we are able to generate from a distorted view of ourselves.
 
When we are under 18 our community is generally based on our family. This is one of the great fortunes of the Maudsley Method and having a pre-established community when you are younger. (Please note that for some patients this is not as helpful as we would like it to be, but for many it is a very important thing to have.) As we get older and move away from our families we start to build community in different ways. Our experience at CCED is that many types of community may be helpful. It may continue to be your family, your treatment community, friends, or someone you love and who loves you. Regardless who constitutes your community, it will be central to your long-term recovery.

Should you have any questions or concerns regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.

Contributions by Sarah Emerman