Introducing Crossroads and Turning Points

A crossroads is a place where two or more roads meet .   

A turning point is defined as a very significant change or decisive moment. 

If your were to map your eating disorder journey, you would find it peppered with crossroads and turning points. Read on to find out why these forks in the road and opportunities to change direction are so important. 

I have been recovered from anorexia nervosa for over 25 years. I have been a psychologist treating people with eating disorders for over 20 years and have worked with over 500 people with eating disorders during this time. These experiences have made me passionate about recovery. That is why I am writing a blog intended to challenge you, the readers, to think and grow.

This blog is about turning points and crossroads in your recovery and mine, forks in the road so to speak, choices about taking the road less traveled or the familiar path. This blog is about life choices, empowerment, and developing wisdom. It is intended to be a safe place where we can explore together the choices we have and understand how they affect recovery. This blog is to be a place to find courage when confronting fears and to find support when life is hard.

A turning point can be thought of as a change in direction.  It can be health promoting or self-destructive. For example, a turning point in recovery could be deciding to begin therapy (health promoting) or could be refusing to seek treatment despite family intervention (self-destructive).  

A crossroads can be thought of as an intersection of options, again the path chosen affects rate of recovery. For example, a person who loses weight due to illness needs to decide whether to regain that weight (moving toward recovery) or to maintain the new, lower weight (resisting recovery). 

Your thoughts and observations are what will make this blog life changing for others.

I want  you to have the opportunity to share your turning points and crossroads. After becoming aware that turning points and crossroads exist in your life, you may be surprised at how many you notice. Sometimes, it helps to look back to see how you have negotiated the turning points and crossroads in your past. I invite you to share a turning point or crossroads from your life. If you would like me to consider featuring your story in my blog, e-mail me at kklr@msn.com with subject line BLOG. 

This blog will also include relevant stories from the lives of people I have had the privilege to treat in my practice as well as from my own recovery, such as the one that follows.

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One brisk, autumn New England day, my boyfriend came to my dorm room, sat down, then announced that we were not together anymore.  We talked for a few awkward minutes. As he was leaving, he said, “I think you should read this.  It sounds like you” and he thrust an article about anorexia nervosa into my hand. I bristled, became defensive, and threw it in the trash. After he was gone, I retrieved the crumpled newspaper, then smoothed it enough that I could read it (crossroads – I could have left it in the trash).  In the article, the book The Golden Cage, was referenced.  I decided to read the book (crossroads – I could have ignored the book). The book spoke to me and spooked me. One sentence in particular haunted me, the one about how a person with an eating disorder spends all of her time and energy in the pursuit of something (being thin) that accomplishes nothing of lasting value (I added the last three words).  When I finished the book in the wee hours of the morning, I decided, alone in the quiet of the night, that I wanted to recover no matter how long it took, no matter what I had to do (turning point – thus began my eight year journey toward recovery). 

Comments

[wendy]

Thank you for starting this blog!!! One of my turning points was when I realized I was getting to weak to do nomral activities. First, I went to get a hair cut and could not lift my head up from the sink the hair stylists washed it in without using my hand. Then soon after I went as a counselor to a youth retreat and tried to climb a rock wall and my legs were so weak I could not go more than three feet. That scared me and I knew if something did not change I would be in serious danger health wise. I began looking for some help at that point. Like you, I wanted to do what ever it took, no matter how long or how hard it was.

[Dr. Kim Lampson]

Wendy
Thank you for your comment. It seems that a loss of strength and a desire to be strong enough to do normal things or things you love is a powerful motivation to recover for many people. You sound like courageous person.
Dr. Kim

To: kklr@msn.com

[KL]

Hi, I found your blog and article quite moving. I feel as though I am at one of those turning points/cross roads right now in my life. I have been recovering by myself for the past year and because of it I have put on quite a bit of wieght. To others I now look normal but to myself I now feel fat. I cant look at myself in a mirror anymore. Because of this I feel my tendencies and/or 'traditions' coming back into play. The turning point I now face is wanting to loose wieght and at the same time wanting to have acceptance to do so or coming out and admitting I need help. The thought of 'professional help' scares the be-geezes out of me. A part of me knows what I need and should do but the other part just wants the wieght gone. Like I need it gone in order to feel pretty about myself.

[Dr. Kim Lampson]

Thank you KL for writing about the crossroads you are facing. I am really impressed by how aware you are of your struggle and that you have a difficult choice to make. One of my professors defined the counseling relationship as the only relationship in which two people focus on helping one person make her or his life better. If you find a therapist with whom you can connect, it can really help you recover faster. A well run support group can be a great help as well. It takes a lot of courage to ask for help for the first time, but it is worth doing.
To: kklr@msn.com

[Laura]

Thank you for starting the blog. I am looking forward to reading and participating. My first crossroads was when I was talking to a college professor over lunch and couldn't focus on what they were saying because I was too busy counting and recounting the calories in my lunch. It was then that I thought "I am becoming a bad listener." At the time, I would have shrugged off the bad physical effects of an ED, I would have shrugged off all the negative ways the ED was effecting my life, but when I realized it was making me a bad listener... I realized it was negatively affecting others. And that was not okay with me. The next day I decided to try to go the day without counting calories and without a calorie limit (This did not work... but it began my quest for trying to change).

[Hilde Stone]

Thanks you for providing me with an approriate place to share this experience. The turning point in my struggle with bulimia came during a meditation workshop with the Tibetan Buddhist Teacher, Robert Thurman. The food with which I have binged and purged is ice-cream. In the midst of enumerating ways in which people cut themselves off from others and from their compassion for themselves, Bob said, "You can lock yourself in your refrigerator and refuse to feed your family." At that moment, I realized that binging and purging with ice-cream was not merely a psychiatric symptom but a metaphoral statement about the way I was living my life. Now, when the compulsion to binge and purge arises, when I want to lock myself in the refrigerator rather than deal with my turbulent or conflicted feelings, I can usually go back to that moment in the workshop with Bob and sit with my feelings until the desire to binge and purge dissolves itself.

[ct]

Thankyou for writig this post. I have been in recovery for only a few months but am learning so much every day about my 'Ed'. I am at the point where I have begun to get my appetite back. After every meal I am looking forward to the next. Hungry all the time. Yet Ed tells me not to be greedy so I shouldnt follow my diet plan completly. Sometimes he wins but I am at the tunring point where I have been starting to say no to him. He just makes me feel so tired.