---
title: Obstacles to Eating Disorder Recovery
description: destructive communities
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date: 2012-08-14T14:28:02Z
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I believe in what I'm doing - providing genuine methods to heal from eating disorders that honor the individual. As I do my psychotherapy work, and outreach to let others know of my work, I discover new obstacles to recovery.

My challenge is to break free from my traditional ways of speaking and writing. I need to go more to the core - not the core of the eating disorder - but the core of the obstacles that prevent people from getting on their recovery path.

Once a woman enters my practice, committed to her recovery, I am confident that whatever challenges arise, we can weather the storms and keep heading toward full recovery. This may seem grandiose, but I have 25 years of experience behind me that shores up my confidence.

Entering my practice with commitment to heal is beset with new obstacles today. Communication with others across space and time is wonderfully easy with our technology. You can access information of all sorts, and misinformation too. You can receive support for your recovery. You can receive support for maintaining your illness.

Pro ana and Pro mia sites are notorious for supporting illness. Their destructive message is blatant. But other forms of group support are also destructive. They disguise themselves as supporting recovery when, in fact, unknowingly and with love, they too support illness.

Living with an eating disorder means living with pain, fear, terror, rage, indignation and an inability to sort through the stimuli that comes from living in a complex world. Support that attacks the complex world and seeks to make the individual comfortable and safe does not support recovery. It may contribute to creating an environment necessary for healing work to begin. But too often I see people seeking the safe haven as the goal without understanding that once in a safe or more safe environment the healing work must begin.

This means to me that I need to present information that seemingly has little to do with eating disorders directly, but has everything to do with understanding and honoring self and development in the world as it is.

What do you think your obstacles to recovery really are? Do you run to safe havens and fast answers? Are you impatient or feel like failure if you don't experience immediate relief?

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