You do NOT need to be sick for people to see you. You do NOT need to be sick to be loved. You do NOT need to be sick in order to feel noticed or not alone. It is okay to let go of the sickness, because I promise you will STILL be loved by people, you will STILL be seen by others, you will STILL be cared for, just in a different way. And even better, you will learn to SEE and LOVE and CARE for yourself. Which I will tell you, is truly extraordinary.

I remember sitting in my goodbye group, listening to these amazing men and women tell me how I was going to be so successful and happy. Yet, there was this panicked voice in the back of my head saying, “You're WRONG! I can’t!”

We must work with both caregivers and patients in eating disorder treatment. All caregivers have the ability or capacity to help their loved one work towards full eating disorder recovery. Thanks to the lessons of Emotionally Focused Family Therapy, I have more patience and tolerance to explore the emotional roadblocks that get in the way of both caregiver and clinician.

A mother of a child in eating disorder recovery pens a letter to his eating disorder. Find out what she says in this frank, brutally honest blog post.
 

We applaud these celebrities who consistently use their public platform to speak out against body shaming and encourage body positivity. For those who’ve experienced their own struggles with eating disorders, we are grateful that they have honestly and bravely told their story as a way to raise awareness and remove the stigma of mental illnesses.

I have occasionally heard eating disorders likened to a relationship and recovery to a break up. I find this comparison apt. My eating disorder caused me tremendous grief, and breaking up with my eating disorder also caused me grief. Here are three things that I found helpful during this grieving process.

As we enter a new year full of new hope and new possibilities, we’d like to share this sweet letter written by a former ERC patient. Her words show us all how important recovery is.

I find as time marches on and your child recovers, you are left to your own thoughts, sometimes for the first time in months. Finally, you have time to assess the emotional toll an eating disorder personally has taken on you. Moving forward for everyone is healthy and living in the present not the past is essential for familial healing.

Eating disorders can lead to serious medical and psychological complications when left untreated, making prompt treatment critically important. Loved ones caring for those with eating disorders are often well aware of the sobering statistics: Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental health issues, in the U.S. alone, ten million men will suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime, and twice as many women (20 million) as men will be affected. In turn the Joint Commission has updated a number of other standards for eating disorder treatment providers - standards that Eating Recovery Center has long championed from the beginning: Using evidence-based assessments, treatment options and resources, hiring highly effective clinicians and staff members, providing care based on safety and quality, monitoring and reporting health outcomes in patients, and being transparent about the cost of treatment, and more.