Guarantee? My informed consent form that clients sign before working with me states that no guarantee comes with psychotherapy. Yet psychotherapists and clients strive together for healing and recovery. Five phases of the work create the strongest possibility for success.

Despite the lack of a guarantee, clients have hope and willingness to work as do psychotherapists. The client puts energy and commitment into her work because she wants health, freedom and happiness. The psychotherapist puts energy into the work because she’s seen healing and recovery in others and has a growing framework of what makes recovery possible.

When the psychotherapist sees the commitment of the client's energy, the psychotherapist’s commitment and energy for the client’s well-being grows and vice versa. Therapy is a partnership on the healing journey.

Belvoir Fortress Secret Passage

Suppose I said, "Stop looking for eating disorder recovery." I'm a therapist in Los Angeles who's been specializing in eating disorder recovery for decades. Would you think I've given up or lost my mind?

Or would you perhaps think that maybe I've discovered something? Are you curious and even ready to explore a mystery that could surprise you by giving you the life you've yearned for?

An eating disorder forces a person into the body. The sensations of eating, starving, purging, exercising, and chewing on sweets or salt pull a person away from internal experiences of emotion and thought. The person plunges into raw sensation or keeps that plunge in reserve, always knowing the plunge will take her away from what she can’t bear to experience.

Choices of how she will use her time are based on the sensational needs of the body to thwart awareness. Yet she will despair over her behavior, her body and the quality of her life. She wants happiness.

Facts based on reality, not preferred reality, but actual reality, become difficult to grasp. Happiness is fleeting, sporadic and often not recognized when it occurs. Recognizing what is meaningful grounds her in reality and can provide satisfaction throughout her life.

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child." Carl Jung

If, when, you look back at a stressful time in your life, check to see where even only moments of warmth and kindness touched you. If you find those moments, remember and build on those gifts to your soul that helped you survive.