"Recovered" vs. "In Recovery" --- Take II

Hi! Okay, so I know that I have taken a long time to get back with you regarding the topic of "Recovered" vs. "In Recovery." (Sorry about that!) I think the article I just finished writing below will explain why. Enjoy! And, as always, please let me know your thoughts!

Best,

Jenni

“Recovered” vs. “In Recovery”
The truth about eating disorders
by Jenni Schaefer

“Can you ever be fully recovered from an eating disorder or are you always in recovery?”

People often ask me this question. I have tried to come up with the perfect answer --- one that would make everyone happy and that would fit into every recovery model. Since there is no perfect answer to this question, this article has been on hold for months.

I was talking with my therapist about it recently, and she asked, “Why are you afraid to claim your experience?” She said that no one could argue with my personal experience, with what holds true for me. Referencing the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, she reminded me that I must practice rigorous honesty. So here is my truth:

Years ago, I learned in therapy to treat my eating disorder like a relationship rather than an illness or a condition. I actually gave my eating disorder a man’s name, Ed, which is an acronym for “eating disorder.” I learned that to be fully recovered, I needed to change my relationship with Ed completely. My goal was not to get rid of Ed, but it was to change my relationship with him. The bad news was that Ed might never go away, but the good news was that I could be recovered whether or not he went anywhere. (The best chance I had for Ed going away was for me to stop trying to make him do anything.)

I couldn’t change Ed, but I could change myself. I could become accountable for my own actions. I learned to separate from Ed and to disagree with him. I learned to disobey him. I discovered that Ed was like a muscle that gets stronger with use. The more I obeyed Ed, the stronger he became. But as I learned to disobey him, he atrophied --- just like a muscle does from lack of use. The stronger I became in my recovery, the more Ed atrophied.

I focused more and more on what I think and what I believe, ultimately to the exclusion of Ed. So I have had the experience of Ed not being around anymore. That was not the goal, but it has happened for me. I consider it a nice bonus!

Food is not an issue in my life. I do not walk on eggshells around food. I am not afraid that I might relapse when I go through stressful events in life. I have already been through several of these, including a broken engagement, a family member’s battle with cancer, and losing a friend to anorexia. Turning back to eating disordered behaviors during these difficult times did not even cross my mind. In fact, Ed did not speak to me at all. I am recovered.

Recovered means that I love and nurture my body. It means that instead of living in fear, I experience joy, peace, and love. It means that I have given myself permission to explore my spirituality and have connected with my higher power.  It took almost ten years for me to get to this point of freedom. I can’t pinpoint the exact month or even the year that it happened.

What I can say for certain is that after making the leap to fully recovered, it became important for me to claim it. Looking back, I can see that as long as I kept referring to myself as being “in recovery” from my eating disorder, I was giving Ed a place in my life. I was defining myself in terms of an illness, which was a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. As long as I believed Ed would haunt me, he did. So I stopped believing it.

Now here’s the twist. There are many people out there who are at the same place as I am in regards to their eating disorder, but they say that they are “in recovery” as opposed to being “recovered.” They think the moment they say they are recovered is the moment they will relapse. So they prefer to use the term “in recovery” to remind themselves that life is a process and that there is always room to grow. Of course, an important part of my “recovered” life encompasses this same self-awareness and growth. You might be thinking that this is all a lot of semantics.

You might be right. A friend in recovery from alcoholism and an eating disorder actually uses both terms: “in recovery” and “recovered.” He says that he works a recovery program daily and is thus “in recovery.” But he also quotes the Big Book and says that he is “recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body.”

Semantics or not, we all must figure out for ourselves how we define freedom. When we are alone and grounded, we must uncover what feels best to us, what keeps us healthy and strong. I can’t force my vision on anyone and vice versa.

We all must claim our own truth. I just claimed mine.

Recently appointed to the Ambassador Council of the National Eating Disorders Association, Jenni Schaefer is a singer/songwriter, speaker, and author of Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too (McGraw-Hill). She is a consultant with Center For Change in Orem, Utah. For more information: www.LifeWithoutEd.com.

Comments

[Laura Collins]

As usual, Jenni, you've hit on the truths of the matter. I'm continually interested and enlightened by the way you see through the 'positions' we all take on issues and get through to the way it matters.

You are the philosopher laureate of eating disorders!

[Sarave]

Your book is great. Everything you have gone through is amazing. But I do wish you could have written it also for those who suffer from bulimia. Being one that overeats constantly (and can not stop) it was hard to read "Living Without Ed" as I don't need to force myself to eat.. I just eat all of the time (then purge). However I have learned some tips from your book that I hope can help me. Thanks for sharing your story.

[Louise]

hello Jenni i loved your book, every time i read a page i was having the same problems, i already finish it but im still in recovery....its been hard...soo hard...and sometimes im weak and sometimes i feel strong like a rock... disobeying and disagreeing is hard sometimes i do both sometimes i do one...but im still fighting i dont want my life to continue like this and i want to get back allmy dreams andallmy hopes...

[Annie]

You are such an amazing person jenni. i read your book during my third major relapse with my ed. it helped me so much so thanks.
in regards to the blog i think im still in recovery. i still think about ed and sometimes i even want that back just a little bit but i never do anything bc i know its not worth it. but ur right. i would like to say im recovered but i dont really know right now.

[Dani]

True that. I found this by googling recovered vs. in recovery.

I remember way back when I first got into recovery 7 years ago, getting pissed off - even though I wasn't in AA! - because people would talk like the desire to drink (substitute your own poisons here of course) would always be with them, EVEN THOUGH I learned that the Big Book says that if you work the steps it's totally lifted. I don't know why I got so annoyed about this, except that (1) I was a raging codependent and thought everything was my business, and (2) if working the steps on my own problems wasn't going to totally lift them then WHY THE HELL WAS I HERE?

Fast forward 6 or 7 years: I've been led very strongly back to the Big Book again, this time to read what it says to do and just do it. It's amazing how complicated we can make things! The stuff I'm doing now is so simple and clear and so incredibly powerful, bringing me to the point where I could say I was recovered from codependency and compulsive debting and childhood abuse and mean it.

And as I listen to (and read transcripts of) some hardcore AA folks explaining the Big Book and the fifth tradition (that, essentially, our goal here is to help other people with X problem find out what worked for us), I keep hearing this idea that we can call ourselves "recovered". One guy - a sassy brash Texan - flat-out said "If you're calling yourself a recovering alcoholic, maybe you'd better go back and finish the steps!"

Hell, I remember when it was terrifying to me even to think about saying I was a "grateful recovering codependent", or whatever variation I heard people use. But I kept hearing this, so today I went and searched the Big Book for the word "recovered" (thank god for all the sites that just let me search it online), and omg - in chapter after chapter, it said it! It flat-out said "We are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body"... "above 150,000 recovered alcoholics"... "recovered immediately"... "have recovered"... "nearly all have recovered"... "you as a person who has recovered"... "who have since recovered"....

It was just so inspiring and amazing to see it there, in writing from 75 years ago, confirming it. We can recover from all the ways we compulsively harm ourselves. It doesn't mean that we stop working on ourselves; we get to keep this as long as we keep on taking the steps that got us there, and our lives just get better and better. We can be happy, joyous, and free.

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[Elizabeth Miller]

I really enjoy this article about the different types of recovery. I honestly believe that the recovery process is a lifetime commitment that takes a lot of effort and determination. Any habit or addiction will always be with you but focus and control can help to overcome them.