Truths Helping Me Through Eating Disorder Recovery
Over the past several months, I have received a lot of messages on social media asking me to speak about eating disorders, particularly in relation to autism, but I haven’t really felt able to speak about it. Becoming unwell last year took me by surprise, and I think it’s hard to balance eating disorder recovery with sharing things responsibly online. But, now I’m a lot better than I was, I am sharing little bits and pieces here and there.
I have scribbled down a lot of thoughts and quotes in my journal over the past six months, some of which I have repeated over and over again in my head as I embarked on a journey of recovery. I have always found comfort in words and this battle has been no different. Today I wanted to share some of the words that I have clung to for hope, because I hope they might be comforting to others struggling.
“Perhaps the thoughts calling for you to destroy yourself are not your thoughts at all. Perhaps they belong to your illness, not you, and perhaps the more you starve them of your attention, the quieter they will become.”
“Spending your days at war with your body, following rules that suffocate you, refusing yourself permission to rest, is no way to live at all.”
“Getting better will never happen unless you choose to fight for yourself over and over again. And you are the only one who can fight for you.”
“If you are waiting for some kind of permission to recover, that permission will never come. The eating disorder will just constantly shift its goalposts until it has destroyed you. It will never be satisfied.
There is no trophy for suffering and no badge of honour for being unwell. ”
“Fixate on the future version of yourself that you desperately want to become, the version of you that has absolutely nothing to do with your illness. Everything you want to achieve in your life can’t be done with an eating disorder.”
“You are so much more than your weight and there is so much more to life than constantly thinking about food. Those thoughts will never quieten and your mind will never feel free until your body feels safe again.”
“There’s a difference between the pain of recovery and the pain of an eating disorder. One is temporary - the discomfort of change that’s leading somewhere better. The other is permanent and just gets worse - the slow erosion that deepens with time.”
“There is no ‘choosing recovery’, it’s choosing to live.”
“You didn’t choose an eating disorder because you wanted to be thin. You were trying to survive. Trying to cope the only way you knew how. Your eating disorder helped you survive. But now it’s keeping you stuck. You’re allowed to find safety elsewhere. You’re allowed to want more than just survival.”
If you’re on this journey, hold on to whatever pieces of hope you can find. You have to try your hardest because you deserve to be well.
Love, Emily x
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