Fifteen Principles for Eating Disorder Recovery: It may meander or be hidden, but your recovery path is there.

by Joanna Poppink, MFT

Summary

Eating disorder recovery is not sustained by inspiration or reassurance. It is sustained by repeated, deliberate action taken even when motivation wavers, the body feels unsettled, or progress is hard to see. These fifteen principles for eating disorder recovery are offered to reinforce commitment, perseverance, and steady action over time, especially when recovery feels slow or exhausting.

Introduction

Recovery from an eating disorder is rarely quick or linear. For many women, especially those who have been working at recovery for some time, the challenge is not knowing what to do, but continuing when effort outweighs visible change.

The principles below are inspired by Despair Is Not a Strategy: 15 Principles of Hope, a widely circulated essay by Abby Brockman. While these principles emerged in activist contexts, they translate well to eating disorder recovery, where perseverance, steadiness, and repeated return matter more than confidence or certainty.

These are not techniques.
They are not a treatment model.

They are recovery principles you can return to when your body feels agitated, tired, or resistant, and when your mind tells you that nothing is changing. They help you stay oriented when recovery requires continuation rather than intensity.

Recovery often falters not because a woman lacks insight, intelligence, or effort, but because exhaustion or discouragement quietly convinces her to stop. These principles are meant to help you keep going without forcing, shaming, or pretending.

Fifteen Principles for Eating Disorder Recovery

1. Hope Coexists With Other Feelings

You can feel fear, discouragement, grief, and hope at the same time. Hope does not cancel hard emotions or bodily discomfort. It stays with you and gives you enough fuel to keep acting in support of recovery.

2. You Have Power Even When It Feels Impossible

Power is continuing to honor your commitment to eating disorder recovery even when you feel powerless in your body or unsure in your mind. What matters is not how strong you feel, but that you continue to act in alignment with your commitment.

3. Actions Can Be Meaningful Without Producing Perfect Results

An action that does not produce the outcome you hoped for is not worthless. Recovery actions build momentum through repetition and persistence, often long before they feel effective.

4. Success Does Not Always Correlate With Approval

External validation is not a reliable measure of recovery progress. You can rely on your own approval as you continue to choose actions that support health and stability.

5. You Do Not Need Every Part of You to Agree

Recovery involves internal conflict. One part of you wants the protection and quick soothing of the eating disorder. Another part of you wants freedom and a life not governed by symptoms. Over time, you will give less support to eating disorder protection and more support to your freedom. The conflict is present, and recovery continues anyway.

6. Change Is Rarely Straightforward

Eating disorder recovery is not linear. There are setbacks, detours, pauses, and periods of confusion. These shifts and changes still lead you toward recovery, even when it does not feel that way.

7. Keep on Keeping On

You may feel discouraged and close to quitting. That feeling can be the last defense before recovery takes solid hold. You are often closer than you think to your better life.

8. Small Actions Matter

Small actions matter in recovery. A compassionate thought, a mindful pause, a boundary honored, a meal eaten as planned. These actions rebuild your internal world and your capacity to stay present in your body.

9. Change Has Happened Before

Change is possible because it has happened before. Human history and your own experience offer evidence that sustained effort leads to real transformation.

10. Hope Is a Basis for Action, Not a Substitute

Use hope to keep you going, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but always moving toward recovery progress. Action strengthens hope more reliably than waiting for it.

11. Embody What You Aspire To

When you act with integrity toward recovery, you are already practicing the life you are building, even before it feels complete or secure.

12. Total Victory Is Not the Goal

Recovery is not about eliminating every disordered thought or ill-chosen behavior. You have a presence beyond those thoughts and behaviors. Knowing that brings you further along in your recovery and allows choice to return gradually.

13. If You Are Losing Hope

Move forward without hope. You now know, through the evidence of your own experience, that you can create hope through your own steadfastness.

14. Recognize and Account for Negativity Bias

Harsh self-criticism is often an echo of other people’s voices rather than the truth. Bring yourself to inspiration and support, whether that is psychotherapy, a recovery support group, time in nature, reading poetry, or walking a dog. Change your environment so beauty, love, and health take over.

15. You Stand on the Shoulders of Others

Recovery does not happen in isolation. Associate with people who are working their recovery path and with people who are committed to their recovery.

How to Use These Recovery Principles

You do not need to apply these principles perfectly or all at once. Choose one that speaks to you now. Return to it when recovery feels heavy, when your body is unsettled, or when progress seems slow.

Eating disorder recovery is built through returning. Returning to your commitment. Returning to what supports health and life. Returning again, without drama.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are these principles a treatment for eating disorders?

No. These recovery principles do not replace psychotherapy, medical care, or nutritional support. They support perseverance and orientation within recovery.

Are these principles about positive thinking?

No. They do not require optimism or confidence. They support continued recovery action even when hope, energy, or certainty is low.

Can these principles support psychotherapy?

Yes. They complement depth-oriented psychotherapy by reinforcing steadiness, responsibility, and containment between sessions.

Resources

Nightmares and Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating Disorder Behavior as Panic
Depth-Oriented Psychotherapy for Midlife Women
When the Bark Splits
Reversing the Narcissist’s Gaze

 Brockman, Abby. Despair Is Not a Strategy: 15 Principles of Hope.
Originally published on Medium and widely circulated through activist and educational platforms.

 

 

About Joanna Poppink, MFT

Joanna Poppink, MFT, is a depth-oriented psychotherapist specializing in psychotherapy for midlife women, eating disorder recovery, and recovery from the impacts of narcissistic abuse. She is licensed in California, Arizona, Florida, and Oregon, and offers secure virtual sessions. If you sense your deeper self pressing upward and are ready to explore this work, you are welcome to reach out. For a free telephone consultation, write This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit www.eatingdisorderrecovery.net.

This profile of Joanna Poppink was published as part of Revlon’s “Love is On” 2016 Million Dollar Challenge, which highlighted inspiring change makers around the world and raised money for select charities. written by Jonah Weiss

You can describe Joanna Poppink in different ways — therapist, author, naturalist, essayist — but they’re all aspects of the same holistic project of her life’s work: helping women understand and overcome eating disorders.

              Make the call to honor and save your life.

Will you keep waiting for tomorrow to begin your recovery? Tomorrow never comes.

Procrastination is a powerful part of living with an eating disorder. You postpone taking recovery action. When you put positive activities off you are saying that you'll create a new life for yourself in the future. You plan in your mind, as if you can have two lives, this one and the one you'll create when you finish procrastinating.

“The ultimate measure of a person is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King Jr.

And when is it not a time of challenge and controversy? When we are in moments of comfort and convenience, aren't we focusing on what's pleasant in our lives and disregarding pain in the world? We can't focus on pain all the time. That's disabling. We need to nourish ourselves and each other with love and support.

Question: What's hidden under your clothes, under your awareness, under your eating disorder? Answer: the path to your healing.

Vanity, character flaws and psychological weakness are not causes of eating disorders.  

Believing they are undermines a person's appreciation of themselves, fosters shame and inhibits seeking real help. It also creates massive confusion when a person with an eating disorder knows she has a strong sense of who she is yet can't find a way to live while honoring herself.

A kind of circle develops between my patients, my garden and me where we share and appreciate the giving and receiving that is happening naturally for the benefit of all of us.

*pix View from my office window. Patient waiting area is to the right in the shaded area not visible.

Functioning in the world without an eating disorder can be just as daunting as functioning on the moon. Both require new learning and practice.

In social media, where people with eating disorders call out to each other, look for support, try to find recovery, and give warnings to others about what treatment didn't work, the shared pain, fear, and frustration are clear.