One of the questions I often get asked by my clients is how long it will take for them to get better? Usually they want to know just what the process looks like, the exact steps they will need to take and the approximate date in which they will finally be recovered from their eating disorder. Knowing these answers will help relieve their anxiety and convince them they have control. I wish I could give this to them. I wish I could take away their anxiety and leave them with nothing but certainty and confidence. But I can’t, so instead I will give you this in hopes that you will reflect on it and, in a quiet moment, realize your ability to answer these questions for yourself.
Life is unpredictable, we never really know exactly what will come our way; which things will make recovery easier and which may throw a curve ball in even our best
laid plans. All we really have is the moment and in the moment we have the power of choice: Are you going to focus on recovery and make recovery based decisions or are you not? As Ellen Domm puts it “Each decision you make will result in a positive or negative outcome from which you can learn, and which will lead to another decision.”
This sounds simplistic, and I am not minimizing the journey of recovery, but I also sometimes wonder if in the present moment, we have the luxury of making it just that: Simple. A decision to act in a way that promotes health or a decision to act in a way that doesn’t. In many ways, this is the journey of recovery, a journey of a thousand choices. While not every choice has to be recovery focused, overall we have to choose recovery more than we don’t, and in the end, we have to choose it in entirety.
So rest assured, that if you are begging to know when this will all be over, the answer lies in the moment, not the future. Choose yourself in these moments, especially in the hard moments. Choose wellness, choose recovery, choose moving forward. Choose to be brave and to face the fear because even though it’s extremely hard, making the choice to live a free life, a happy life, is one you will never regret
