QUESTION: Your response to a question was that for every year of your disorder it can take 1-5 years to recover. Wow! I've got a problem . I have been struggling since I was 16. I went into a program at the age of 53. At this moment I feel discouraged , see no light at the end of the tunnel and wonder why I'm still plugging away and working with my therapist. I really need encouragement now!

ANSWER: I can understand how this type of information might seem daunting. I have had to discipline myself throughout my recovery to remind myself that, just like with blood pressure and cholesterol statistics, any statistical information gathered about eating disorders is just that – an average. In an average, you will find contributing numbers that fall well above, and below, the mean.

Example – I was sick for fifteen years, and received no opportunity for professional treatment to heal. It took me a decade to achieve sustained recovery (by which I mean, my need for the eating disordered behaviors and lifestyle has been replaced by healthy relationships and alternate coping skills). So does this invalidate statistics that suggest that, for each year a person is ill with an eating disorder, it takes on average between one and five years to heal?

Absolutely not. Nor does it prove that every case will conform to those expectations. Statistics, like the messages of the eating disorder voice in our heads, only hold as much meaning and validity as we assign to them. My own story turns that statistic upside down. I only share statistics from time to time to highlight the importance of sustained, patient progress over time – we didn’t break in a day, and even though we live in a culture steeped in expectations of instant gratification, it is highly unrealistic to expect ourselves to heal overnight.

YOU get to set the pace for your own recovery. You set your own (hopefully informed and realistic, progressive) recovery goals. You choose to give more weight and attention to your discouragement, or to turn your attention to fostering its opposite – hope and the good company of those who have achieved what you are working towards – lasting recovery.

Pay no attention to that which drains you of hope – and that includes my answers to questions! Protect your hope like the Hope Diamond – it is your lifeline. Do whatever it takes to build up your dream of recovery until it feels so real that you can almost taste and touch it. Make the most of your chance to receive treatment – dive in all the way to the bottom and climb all the way to the top of your own life until you have explored every angle, every inch, and learned what you need to learn to be able to live free from the disordered eating behavior patterns.

Just the fact that you wrote to ask for more clarification tells me that something in you believes that it won’t take you that long to heal. It didn’t take me that long. It has taken some other people I have known longer. It takes the time it takes, and that time is different for every single person. And in a way I was lucky – I didn’t know the statistics back then. I didn’t know anything about eating disorders – I didn’t even know I had one when I started trying to heal! I didn’t know what was impossible, and what was possible. I just knew I had to try and I gave my own recovery everything I had - until I succeeded.

So pretend you don’t know any statistics either. Pretend that anything is possible. Then realize that it IS.

Warmly, and with HOPE,

Shannon

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