QUESTION: Is it normal during recovery to feel like you’re just in a daze, thinking is a challenge, your head just feels extremely packed with fuzziness, and incapable of anything?

ANSWER: Just the fact that you are so aware of newfound changes to your past daily state tells me that you are in some kind of transition process. While it is impossible for me to give you a firm ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer without access to a thorough medical evaluation by your doctor, I can tell you that I did go through just such a period in my own recovery journey, and I know of many others who have had similar experiences.

You do not mention exactly what type of eating disorder you are recovering from, but all categories of eating disorder impair your normal functioning to some degree or another. Whether you have been starving, binging, purging or a combination thereof, your nutrition and hydration levels are impacted. In the case of malnutrition due to starvation, for instance, during re-feeding and weight stabilization, there is a ‘catch up’ period during which your body needs to not only absorb and equalize nutritional deficits, but then to begin to build back up enough in reserve to meet your normal daily needs.

This takes time. I have seen cases where caloric levels are raised and raised, without corresponding weight gain, for months at a time. Eventually, the weight stabilization and normalization does take place, but only after the body has had time to replace the extreme nutritional deficits it has been laboring under. In the same way, your mind has to recalibrate itself when it is no longer forced to subsist for functioning on inadequate nutrient levels.

All that to say that you have most likely been used to doing far too much with far too little, for far too long. Your fatigue, which you are only just now beginning to realize, is immense. Your mind, allowed for far too long to dwell in relative ease on one subject (eating, or not eating, as the case may be) is suddenly being challenged to tackle a variety of subjects, and on deep levels. Your re-emerging emotions pack their own powerful energy punch, and drain you of energy you have been relying on to just get through the day. Recovery requires more energy, a new kind of energy, than your eating disorder has asked of you. You are suddenly beginning to function on all four levels again – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual – whereas before, you were compartmentalizing most or all of life into your unilateral focus on weight management.

So, be patient with your fatigue, with the fuzziness, the incapacity. Like early morning fog, in time, with adequate, sustained hydration and nutrition, this should burn off in favor of new clarity and energy. HOWEVER, I would advise you to get a thorough medical evaluation from your doctor to rule out any other unknowns that could be contributing to your symptoms.

Warmly, and with HOPE,

Shannon

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