I had a patient who successfully finished our program and after 2 years of not engaging in any eating disorder behavior contacted me to let me know how she was doing. She saw herself as completely recovered even though she would on occasion have random eating disorder thought. She said the difference between her current random eating disorder thoughts and the eating disorder thoughts she was having while engaging in her behavior is that with her current thoughts she can simply dismiss them and move on with her day. When she was in the midst of her eating disorder she felt compelled to engage in her eating disorder any time she had an eating disorder thoughts. This begged the question of what changed for her that allowed her to dismiss her eating disorder thoughts whereas at one point in her life she did not think that was possible and felt she had to engage in eating disorder behavior?
When I asked her this she simply said she surrendered to recovery. Before I share with you what she meant about surrendering to recovery I would like to hear from you what surrendering to recovery means.
