from giving yourself an excuse. Now that you know your eating disorder has biological/psychological/social roots, you can use that information to release any lingering feelings of guilt you might have and direct your energy toward doing what it’s going to take to recover. You just need to be aware that recovery isn’t going to be simple, because the problem itself is complex. There is no one single factor that caused your eating disorder, and there won’t be one single strategy that leads to recovery. I remember the mother of an amazing young woman in one of my groups saying that she simply couldn’t understand why her daughter still wasn’t getting better; she had taken her to see a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a nutritionist and a physician who specialized in treating eating disorders. To the mother’s mind, since she was doing all the right things, her daughter should have been showing drastic improvement. I said to that worried mom what I say to everyone in my support groups: eating disorders don’t develop overnight, and getting better doesn’t happen overnight, either. Everyone slips and falls and gets up, then maybe even trips and falls again. But eventually those trips and falls become less and less frequent, and recovery then becomes a reality. It takes time, and it’s a journey that doesn’t follow a straight path.
