Building a Life Beyond Treatment: Eating Disorder Recovery and Finding Purpose with Harper Reed

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Harper Reed:
I would go and see my friends and they would have all these beautiful experiences to talk about. They would laugh about this trip that they went on with their friends skiing and someone did something funny, or they had done this interview for this internship and it didn't go very well. Or they would talk about something that they did together last summer. I could tell how much joy that they had talking about it. Then it would come to me and I would just say, "Oh, I had therapy two days ago and it was hard."

Ellie Pike:
That moment when everyone else seems to be living a full, expanding life and all you have to offer is the same hard story on repeat. It's not just about eating disorders, it's about feeling stuck and unsure how to imagine something different.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Harper Reed, an eating disorder survivor turned recovery coach, who shares what it was like to spend years cycling in and out of treatment with little to show. That is until her mindset shifted. Suddenly, recovery transformed from something she knew she needed to do, into a process she actually wanted to take on. Along the way, we talk about how grief, anxiety and loss shaped her relationship with control and how small, tentative steps like reconnecting with friends, learning how to approach unstructured time, and building experiences outside of treatment helped her imagine a fuller life.

While our conversation centers on eating disorder recovery, it's one that will resonate with anyone feeling stuck in a rut, disconnected from meaning, or unsure how to move forward when motivation feels thin.

You're listening to Mental Note Podcast. I'm Ellie Pike.

Thank you so much for being here. I think it's really amazing that you're now giving back in the recovery community, but that you have certainly had your years of struggling, and going to treatment, and trying to figure out what finding recovery looked like for you. One of the reasons I invited you on this episode is because oftentimes I think we can paint this picture of; this is what my eating disorder looked like, and now this is what recovery looks like, without really explaining the middle. The middle part is so messy and so challenging. I think that you have a great way of describing what those small steps were that just added up to a giant change in your life. I'm looking forward to digging in with you.

Harper Reed:
Thank you. Yeah. I'm excited too.

Ellie Pike:
So just to get us started, I'm wondering how your eating disorder developed in the first place.

Harper Reed:
Growing up, I always struggled with a lot of anxiety. I didn't know it, at the time, what that was, but I just knew that I felt really anxious a lot of the time, and now I can identify it looking back on it now. About halfway through my high school years, I had a couple medical things come up that kind of affected my health, but then also my oldest brother ended up passing away in my junior year of high school. That obviously brought up a ton of grief and really heightened a lot of my emotions within my anxiety, and depression, and all of that stuff.

As you can imagine, during that experience in my life, I didn't have a lot of stuff that I could control really. There was a lot of family things going on, a lot of school stuff going on, and I just kind of felt helpless in a lot of it. I think that's what caused me to turn towards just unhealthy coping skills and ways to manage my anxiety. That led me to really hyper-focusing on my food. It felt like something that I was able to control in this world of unknown, and it gave me something that I could focus on, rather than focusing all the chaos around me.

For the next little while, that's what I did. I struggled a lot with just overly focusing on my eating and my behaviors, and kind of the struggles that came up with that. Then, eventually, I ended up having to go into treatment. From there, it was kind of just this repetitive experience of going in and out of treatment, and having the same experiences, and kind of just feeling stuck in my treatment journey, and struggling to figure out if I wanted recovery or not, and whether or not that was something I was willing to work towards. That kept me stuck for a really long time.

Ellie Pike:
First of all, I'm so sorry about your loss. That just sounds incredibly challenging when, one, you're developing your own identity as a teenager and becoming an adult. You're going through high school, you're also dealing with your family's grief, and then a lot of transitions, yourself. I really cannot imagine what a toll that took. It just makes sense to me that our brains are going to find ways to survive, and ways to jump into different types of coping mechanisms, whether or not they're healthy for us or not. All of this makes a lot of sense to me, in many ways.

I am curious, because you mentioned the eating disorder did act as a way to help you feel like you were in control and it gave you something to hyper focus on. Do you think you were aware of that, at the time? What did it feel like when you were in your actual experience of using your eating disorder?

Harper Reed:
I wasn't aware of it, whatsoever, at that point. I think whenever all of this happened, when my brother passed and a lot of this chaos came into my life, I really turned inward, because I think a lot of people around me were trying to help, as they do, because they love me and they want to support me, but I was overwhelmed by it, really. And so I kind of started looking for ways to cope with it inward. I didn't notice that that was what I was doing, at the beginning, but I just remember that I would go and spend more time by myself in the library, and I would not go and eat lunch with my friends, because I didn't want to have to have conversations about my grief, and my family, and all of this stuff that I didn't really want to talk about at the time.

Then I just turned towards isolating quite a bit. I stopped hanging out with friends for a long time. Like you said, at the beginning of this, I had no idea that's what I was doing. It kind of wasn't until I went in to be evaluated by a psychiatrist that it was even like popped in my brain that this could be a possibility. I just thought, when you're in your high school years, your parents are very aware of what you're doing, and so when they brought me in to see a psychiatrist, I was just thinking, "Oh, they're just stressed out in this very unsafe or scary time, and they just want someone else to tell them that I'm doing fine." It wasn't until after that evaluation, when they showed a lot of concern, was I finally thinking I have probably gotten myself into quite a situation without even knowing it.

By that point, I was so overcome with those eating disorder behaviors that I didn't even realize that I wasn't going to be able to stop them by myself, because it just had become a part of me that I didn't even know was an issue. So whenever they asked me to start the treatment process and recover from it, I was then like, "This is something that I need." I felt like I needed in that moment. That's when it kind of woke me up of like, "Oh, I might need some help with this, even if I didn't even know it was an issue."

Ellie Pike:
When you say it was something that you needed, you were talking about your eating disorder. I didn't want to give up my eating disorder, because it's become such a reliable coping mechanism.

Harper Reed:
Yes. I think at the beginning I wasn't even able to identify like, "Oh, I need my eating disorder." It was more of, this is the habits that I've been using, for however long, to feel like I can participate in real life. Now that you're asking me to take these away, why is this so hard? Why are these eating habits, you're trying to take them away from me, A, and B, why am I having such an issue with this? It would be just small little problems, but before I knew that it was eating disorder behaviors, I was so confused why it felt like so heavy to get rid of it. That was like a big wake-up call of I might not have as much control over this as I thought I did.

Ellie Pike:
That's exactly what I was thinking in my mind was, as it was developing, it was something to hyper focus on and to control, but in the end you realized it was actually very out of your control. You felt like you needed it so much so that it felt really hard to get rid of, or hard to even accept the knowledge that you might need to let go of it.

Harper Reed:
Yeah. I remember whenever I first started treatment, I was like, "Oh, this will just be like a little short stint of kind of resetting my brain and then everything will be fine. Just bring me an awareness of things that need to change." I just was in, again, I have been saying a wake-up call of there's a lot to unpack here. It's grief, it's mental stuff, it's behavior stuff, and it's all wrapped up and intertwined. Yeah. I just didn't know all this stuff that I'd been struggling with, and what the recovery road was going to look like.

Ellie Pike:
We'll talk for sure about what the day in, day out of having your eating disorder versus also day in, day out of recovery, what that looked like. Before that, looking back in hindsight, what do you notice was the purpose behind your eating disorder? I want to clarify, I've gotten in trouble for this before where people are like, "There is no purpose to it." Maybe a different word or a therapeutic word someone might use is what's the function? What's it doing for you? There's a reason it's there, and there's a reason it's not easy to let go of.

Harper Reed:
Yeah. Like you said, there was no conscious purpose behind my eating disorder. Otherwise, I think I would've worked on it in probably a healthier way, rather than using these unhealthy coping skills that ended up hurting me in the long run. I do think it helped to quiet a lot of my anxiety, because in high school and college, it was hard for me to control. I think these behaviors helped for me to focus on something else, rather than all these things that were creating so much discomfort. I think it just became ... I struggle a lot with OCD as well, and so I think this became some kind of like, I don't know if I want to say obsession, but I felt like I had to do these certain behaviors in order to feel like I was in control of my life. That became the purpose behind my day-to-day living, was I have to do these things in order for my day to be okay.

Ellie Pike:
Well, I mean, as we all know, it's really complex, but I think that that really does provide some really good insight. When you think about what your day-to-day life looked like when you were in your eating disorder, can you describe a little bit of what that felt like? And then you mentioned that you went to treatment, and you can share some about your treatment experience too.

Harper Reed:
Yeah, absolutely. Whenever I first started developing my eating disorder, we kind of talked about how it didn't feel super conscious and deliberate, but I do remember closer to starting treatment, how isolated I felt. It was very overwhelming, to where I didn't really participate in any other part of my life. I was just so overwhelmed and fixated on what I now know are my eating disorder behaviors, that I didn't really have space to enjoy other parts of my life. That kind of continued on throughout my treatment experiences.

I struggled with going in and out of treatment for a while, and that process began to be very mundane, and expected, and repetitive, and unfulfilling, really. Since I'd been in and out of treatment so much, I kind of knew exactly what to expect. For the most part, I didn't have very much time in between those stays within treatment. So for a long time, my whole life was treatment, was a meal and a snack routine and schedule, and sessions, and going to the psychiatrist, and meeting with the nutritionist, and going to see the doctor. While all of that is really, really important, during the treatment process, it didn't feel super fulfilling in my life.

Experiencing that in and out of treatment constantly kind of led me to identify a lot with my eating disorder, and so that was my whole world. Day to day, that was all I really focused on and I hadn't built an identity outside of that, so that was all I could really see. Whenever I would go in and out of treatment, I remember a couple of times I would go in and I would sit down with the psychiatrist and she would say, "Well, you're back." I would say, "I'm back." She would say, "What happened? What's wrong this time? What caused you to relapse? What are you struggling with? How can we fix this? What can we start with?" I would always get frustrated. I would say, "I don't know." I would say, "If I knew, I probably wouldn't be here." I would always say, "I don't have a solid answer for you. All I can ever think of is I don't feel like I have a life that I'm willing to recover for. I haven't had the time, and the experience, and the ability to build a life outside of treatment, outside of my eating disorder that I feel like is worth recovering for."

Because like I said, I've been in and out of treatment so much that I haven't gained any other experiences in what you would say the real world outside of treatment, to where I felt like I had any identity out of it.

That was kind of the only answer I could ever think of, whenever I would be asked that question. I always knew in the back of my mind that if I was going to recover, I need to somehow build that identity and that life experiences to where I felt like I wanted to stay recovered for those things.

Ellie Pike:
That sounds really hard, especially when life keeps moving for your friends, everyone else in the world. They're applying to college, going to college, all of those pieces, and here you are in this rotation of trying to find eating disorder recovery, but not necessarily for yourself yet. When you were in treatment at Eating Recovery Center and staff, or peers, or anyone would say like, "I know you can do this. I know you can recover." What would you do, at that point, or how would you respond?

Harper Reed:
Yeah. I do remember people talking to me about the possibility of me recovering. They would say it with so much hope of like, "I know you can do this. I know it's hard, but you can reach recovery, and you can have a life outside of this." I can still remember that instant feeling of frustration, and my wall go up, and becoming super defensive, and protective over my eating disorder. This was something that I had, whether I knew it or not, dedicated a lot of my time and energy towards developing my eating disorder and I felt a need to protect it and defend it.

A lot of the time, anytime I went into treatment, I already knew, stepping foot into it, I was terrified to listen to the people around me. I was terrified that this was going to be the time when they actually convinced me that my recovery was worth it, that recovering was going to be worth it and that I wanted to work towards it, because I was so deep into my eating disorder and I saw it as myself. I kind of felt like their hope and their motivation to help me felt like a attack to who I was. That was a really scary feeling.

Ellie Pike:
I can only imagine, because even just thinking of how young you were with your eating disorder, I mean, you probably had it for what, like a quarter of your life already.

Harper Reed:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Ellie Pike:
That is a huge thing to try to unlearn, right? You have unlearned it and you continue to unlearn it. I would love to know what it is that made you turn that corner where you realized you did want recovery, and why.

Harper Reed:
Sure. During this whole experience, I was struggling with relapses throughout most of what would have been my college career. I had taken a few college classes, but I was never able to kind of commit to it, and I always ended up going back and forth. It wasn't really until what would have been my senior year, so all of my friends were in their senior year, that it kind of shook me up a little bit.

I noticed that all of my friends had all of these beautiful experiences that they were getting to live through. They were experiencing college classes. They were taking finals. They were going out on dates. They were going to these football games where they met all these wonderful people. They were starting internships. They were building these lives that I was so envious of, that I knew nothing about. I didn't have any of those experiences, whatsoever, and that gave me a lot of shame. I felt very isolated in kind of what I was going through at that moment, because while it was very important that I was in treatment, and that's where I needed to be, in that moment, it didn't feel like I was contributing to my life really.

Because I remember anytime I would be outside of treatment for however long, I would go and see my friends and they would have all these beautiful experiences to talk about. They would laugh about this trip that they went on with their friends, skiing, and someone did something funny, or they had done this interview for this internship and it didn't go very well, or they would talk about something that they did together last summer. I could tell how much joy that they had talking about it. Then it would come to me and I would just say, "Oh, I had therapy two days ago and it was hard." That was pretty much all I could contribute.

Again, I think that that was important for me to talk about, but it didn't feel like I was on the same page as any of my friends. It didn't feel like I could contribute to the conversation, whatsoever, and that made me feel very insecure about where I was in my life. I think that that also played a part of me feeling like I didn't have a life worth recovering for. So I would find comfort in my eating disorder again because that's the only place I felt fully understood and safe.

Kind of back to, it was senior year, and I could see all of my friends were getting ready to graduate. They were figuring out what they wanted to do with their life, and they were making plans to move all these fun places, and to try these new jobs that they were excited about. I felt probably for one of the first times a lot of jealousy towards them. I could see like all the joy in their life and something changed in me a little bit, to where I started to want that a little bit. I was really tired of the constant cycle of knowing what to expect every single day, and being in and out of treatment, and having constant groups, constant meals, constant sessions and just the mundane part of that.

Once I started kind of changing my mindset of that, "Oh, I'm never going to recover, if I don't decide to do it for myself." Because for all of these years, I had never wanted to recover. I was focusing on, "Oh, my parents wanted me to recover," or, I can't go to college unless I show my family that I can take care of myself. These were all external motivations that I thought would get me through it, but I always ended up back where I was. For the first time, I really realized that nobody is going to do this for me, and if I want to create any of those memories, whatsoever, I have to get myself through this.

That's really where it started to change. It wasn't an overnight, 100% I'm all in on recovery, but it was just that one little mindset shift of, "I'm going to have to do this."

Ellie Pike:
I feel like that's incredible, because you were able to take external motivation, realize it wasn't helping you. You can't recover for someone else. It's someone else's motivation for you, but it's not your own. Then just one day at a time realizing I have to choose this. What were some of the barriers that you had to overcome as you were trying to seek out recovery? Can you put a little bit of a picture to it for us?

Harper Reed:
Yeah, absolutely. In kind of the first stages of really committing to my recovery was, like I said, deciding that this wasn't going to happen if I just relied on everybody else. I really had to make the conscious effort of, I'm going to do something different in this treatment process. I need to show up for myself better. I need to speak up, because there's a lot of times in treatment, if you've done it enough, you get comfortable in it kind of. You know the safety, and the security, and the schedule, and just the expectations of it. I kind of had to switch my perspective of, if I want this to be the last time I'm here, then I need to do something different, otherwise I'm just going to end up back in this steady routine that I am not growing from.

I did my best to just stay focused and not really pay attention to any of the outside factors that could have kind of changed my perspective on my recovery. I also remember, whenever I was first discharged out of treatment, I was terrified because in treatment your days are filled. Whether you're staying there, whether you're doing PHP where you're there for however many hours, 12 hours, or whether you're in the outpatient program, your day is full. You have a certain amount of, not classes, you have a certain amount of groups, you have a certain amount of sessions, all this stuff, so you're booked.

I always remember when I would leave treatment, I would be like, "Okay. I have 12 hours of my day to fill at home by myself, where I don't know what my hobbies are. I don't know the things I enjoy. I haven't talked to my friends in a while and I don't know where to start." That was always a very scary feeling of you go from all this structure and the security to stepping down and then you're like, "Now it's my job. It's my job to build this time." That was very intimidating.

I also remember that I started kind of reintegrating back into my friends and my social world, especially because during their senior year, this was kind of towards the end of their senior year, so a lot of my really close friends were moving home. They were a lot of my really strong support system that had kind of carried me throughout the whole thing. They really knew me inside and out. They knew the things I struggled with, my joys, all of this stuff. Whenever I came home so scared and so just didn't know what to expect, they kind of took me under their wing and I'll always be grateful for it.

I had a couple friends who really knew that I was struggling with the social aspect of my life. I really wanted to rebuild those friendships that I'd kind of neglected for so many years, but I didn't know where to start, because I circled back to what can I contribute? I don't have anything that I feel like I should talk about with my friends. Those select few friends kind of helped me slowly go back into my social life. I was scared to go to like maybe a big event where I'd see a bunch of people and have to talk to them, and they noticed that. So instead I would go out to coffee with them, or I would go on a short walk around the block with them, and just kind of talk and have little experiences that we would do together. Even if it was something so small, it was still something that I could experience that was outside of treatment, that I could talk with to my friends. That gave me the confidence to go back into my social world.

Slowly, but surely, I started gaining those little experiences. Oh, I can laugh with my friend about something that happened last week, because I was present, and I was there, and I remember it. That felt so, so empowering. I felt so much more confident of feeling like I, once again, had something to contribute, and I felt that piece of joy outside of my eating disorder that I hadn't felt in a really, really long time.

Ellie Pike:
It sounds like some of those small experiences helped combat your social anxiety, because you did it in small tidbits and gave you the shared experiences to give you more of a "normal life". Because honestly, going to treatment every day is not a normal life. It's very unusual. That, to me, really rings a bell. Then I'm wondering how you dealt with the lack of structure when it came to eating for your recovery, and fueling your body, and what some of those barriers looked like, and how you overcame them.

Harper Reed:
Yeah. Whenever I first got out of treatment, kind of like I said, I was terrified. I had no idea what to do with my days. All I knew was, whenever I was back in that, when I was at home that I filled my days with eating disorder stuff and constantly fixating on that. I felt like I needed structure in those days, otherwise I was just going to fixate on what meal is next or what session I have in 20 minutes. I wanted to have a more purpose in my life, because as I said before, I wanted to build a life that I felt like was worth recovering for.

I think one big thing that helped me was I really started looking into finding hobbies again, and kind of finding ways to participate in my life again. That helped me really find purpose in my food.

In that time, right after I discharged out of treatment and I had that kind of lack of structure of having the entire day to myself again, I knew that I needed to kind of shift my perspective on my food. I ended up learning a different purpose about my food. I would tell myself, "I know I don't want this food, but if I'm going to play an active part in my recovery and in my day-to-day, I need energy. I may not want to try this meal or try this snack, but I know that this food is going to give me the energy to be present in my life, and show up as the person that I want to be."

Because a lot of the time in my eating disorder, I didn't show up as the person that I really wanted to be. I was present, but I wasn't really focused on the things that really mattered. I knew, in my recovery, if I was going to be the best version of myself, that I was proud of, I needed that energy and I needed that ability to be focused, and nourish my body to where I could be the best version of myself.

1As I learned to put this purpose towards my food, rather than what my eating disorder's purpose was, it gave me a lot of confidence in eating again, of not looking at it as an enemy, but more as a way to take care of myself and a way to be the best version of myself. I also remember around this time I was nannying a lot and this gave me a lot of responsibility. This really helped me find purpose in my food as well, because I knew, I may not want to take care of myself with my eating and my eating disorder might be very loud, but I also know that if I need to be present for these kids, and if I need to show up as my best self, and if I need to keep these kids safe, then I have to also protect myself, and also keep myself safe, and also be present with myself.

That really opened my eyes to why this whole recovery was important. I also knew that I really wanted to be a good example of what recovery was. I knew that, with these kids that I cared about that I was taking care of, I didn't want to be an example of struggling with food, especially with them at such a young age. I wanted to be a good example of how to take care of your body, and how to be responsible, and how to be present, and kind, and understanding, and have energy, and all of those things. That gave me a lot of clarity and a lot of motivation that even if I don't want to do it for myself, there's people around me that need me to do it and that are relying on me. And that helped a lot.

Ellie Pike:
I absolutely like how you've painted the picture of those tiny steps that just add up, because now you are in a different place. You're a working adult and you're a recovery coach. I would love for you to share a little bit about your motivation to be a recovery coach.

Harper Reed:
Yeah, absolutely. Ever since starting my recovery journey, I've always felt very passionate about it. I always want to kind of give an example that recovery is worth it, because I remember whenever people would say that I have a life worth recovering for, or I'm capable of recovery and that wall would go up of me feeling like I needed to defend my eating disorder, which felt like who I was at the time. I remember always thinking, "I can't let them in. They will try to take this part of me away. I don't want that to happen." I was always so scared in recovery of, "Oh, they're going to try to make me recover and I'm scared they're going to convince me that it's worth it." I really struggled to trust a lot of people in treatment.

Now it's mind-blowing that all these years later that I am in such a different place, that I'm in a place that that version of me never wanted to get to, and never thought was possible, and probably would be frustrated right now, because that's my eating disorder self that I've recovered from. Now I just am fully recovered. I like seeing myself as someone that never thought that it would happen and really didn't want it to happen. I really was scared that it would happen.

Now that it has, I am beyond blessed, and beyond proud, and beyond empowered in my recovery, that I was able to be in such a hard spot, and then work through all of it. And maybe not even realize along the way the progress that I was making and then kind of wake up one day or one point in my life and be like, "That's not a part of me anymore." I'm so proud of all the progress that I made, that I never expected, and for a long time didn't plan on getting to that point. Now it's really exciting for me to see that I am so fully in my recovery that now I really actually love talking about it.

It's a place that I know that I can help people, because I feel so passionate about it, and so strongly about it that I feel like I have good insight. I'm able to be confident about it, and I'm able to do my best to explain it in a way of I've been in that place before and I know how hard it is and how ambivalent you can feel, and how you can not want to recover whatsoever and that's normal. At the same time, you can still reach that point, even if you right now doesn't know if you want it.

That's kind of what I want to do in my recovery coaching. I've done mentoring in the past and I loved it. That really showed me that I wanted to make this a career, because I felt so much joy realizing that I could help people with my experience. All this stuff that I struggled with for so long now has a purpose in my life to where it has built the strength that I have now, and the confidence that I have now, and the purpose, and passion that I have now. Now I can kind of help other people reach that. I can use all of those attributes and characteristics that I have now, and use that to help the people that were in that point that needed just a support, and people to help them through their daily struggles, and helping them, if they needed someone to reach out to, if they were struggling, or have a scary meal with them, or go out for ice cream with them if they haven't done that in a long time and they used to find a lot of joy in it.

It's just really exciting that I can now use all those experiences and all those skills, that I've built, to now help others do the same thing.

Ellie Pike:
Harper, what do you want to be the primary message? If any listener listened to your episode, what do you hope that they take home?

Harper Reed:
I think what I hope that they take home is that it's okay to really struggle with getting on board for recovery. It's okay to feel defensive of your eating disorder. At the same time, it's okay to work towards recovery, and it's possible. Even if you don't see it for yourself right now, you can achieve full recovery and you can build this life that is so beautiful, outside of your eating disorder, that you may not even be able to see for yourself right now, just as in I didn't see it for myself however many years ago. I wasn't sure I wanted it for myself and I felt protective over that version of myself. And now moving towards today, it really does blow my mind and exceed my expectations of how far I've come, and not even realizing like all of the progress that I had made in between and just actually being so proud of my recovery and wanting to share it with other people because I never expected that to be that version of myself.

Whenever I envisioned a five-year plan, that was never a part of it. I think my main message is just it's okay to be ambivalent in the beginning, and you can still recover for yourself. It's possible and you still have the capability to build this beautiful life outside of it, even if you don't see it right that second.

Ellie Pike:
Thank you so much for sharing that, and then for using your own life as an example, because you do normalize it, within your own story, that it's okay to struggle. It's okay to even not know if you want recovery, but your future recovered self might actually feel proud of reaching recovery eventually. I see that in you. I'm just so grateful that we get to share your story with the world. Thank you for being here, Harper.

Harper Reed:
Yeah. Thank you so much. I love that I got to talk to you about it.

Ellie Pike:
As we close, I'm struck by how Harper describes change, not as a sudden turning point, but as a series of manageable decisions. Her story is a reminder that feeling stuck is not permanent, and that lasting purpose can be built slowly. Whether this conversation connected to your own recovery, grief, or sense that life feels repetitive and narrow, I hope it offered you permission to be where you are, to start small, to imagine that more is possible, even if you can't see it clearly yet.

As you move through your week, try asking yourself, "What is one small step that could help me build a life that feels a little more like my own?"

Thank you for listening to Mental Note Podcast. Our show is brought to you by Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center. If you'd like to talk to a trained therapist to see if in-person or virtual treatment is right for you, please call them at 877-850-7199.

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Mental Note is produced and hosted by me, Ellie Pike, edited by Carrie Daniels and directed by Sam Pike. Till next time.

Building a Life Beyond Treatment: Eating Disorder Recovery and Finding Purpose with Harper Reed

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