Three Essential Steps to My Recovery from Disordered Eating

(Adapted from an article originally published August 2020 on the Eating Disorders Resource Catalogue website)

Recovery from disordered eating is an individual journey. I know this because I have witnessed many on this path over the 25 years I worked in the eating disorders field. For this article, the Eating Disorders Resource Catalogue asked me to discuss “three essential steps” of my recovery, which occurred decades ago.

Because I aim to decrease the stigma surrounding recovered clinicians in the eating disorders field, I have openly written about my personal journey in articles and books, keeping the focus in my practice office on my clients and their stories. Putting the spotlight on my own recovery here has felt both vulnerable and enlightening. I hope that some of it resonates and supports your or a loved one’s healing and blossoming.

It is hard to narrow down the process of recovering from disordered eating into just “three essential steps.” In my book Nourish: How to Heal Your Relationship with Food, Body, and Self, I wrote about ten non-linear steps. My discussion to follow shares three steps that were key for me — and for many of the others I have had the privilege to assist on their journeys.

Discovering joyful movement was a very significant step for me in my recovery process. At a panel discussion for the Multi-Service Eating Disorders Association (MEDA) this past year, colleagues and I talked about the topic of identity and recovery. A couple of us had the arts figure prominently in developing our eating disorders and figure prominently in the way out.

For me, dance was that art form. I danced ballet seriously and frequently for twenty years. My eating disorder developed during my adolescence when ballet was a daily passion. I don’t blame the art form for my eating disorder because so many other factors made me vulnerable. That said, shifting away from ballet was an essential step in my recovery journey. Despite this, I was not ready to let go of the dancer part of me. (I tried, and that was a miserable year. It was as if a part of my soul was missing.)

It was key for me to seek out forms of dance that were more improvisational than choreographic. I trained in African Healing Dance…