Eating Disorder Recovery Quotes That Have Helped Me
Updated: Jan 2
There have been a few outstanding quotes that have exquisitely, perfectly landed in my soul and my heart. Some ED recovery quotes have destroyed me emotionally, not because they negatively impacted me but because they withheld so much meaning that my sensitive little heart broke with the power it withheld to change my life for the better, potentially, and significantly.
The perfect anorexic is dead.
Most of my eating disorder has centred on this strange fixation with the concept of perfection. I think it started with a large part of my life that was an empty void… My inability to fill the role of a perfect daughter. Constantly, I lacked what it was to be enough, just as I was. According to my father, my existence carried a big abyss labelled ‘not enough’. I lacked the ability to show enough love, to be grown up enough, to be polite enough, to be grateful enough. And oh, was it made known. It is one of those things that I can only see in its entirety in hindsight. At the moment, I couldn’t see how gaping this abyss was or how bold the title was. Although I didn’t have a label for what was going on, I felt it, initiating fundamental feelings of self-doubt, self-hate and insecurity. This difficult component of my childhood was not small. To me, my labels protruded due to the frequency and intensity with which they were pointed out. I missed out on a feeling that others consistently achieved in their home and family life: the satisfaction of a job well done, a pat on the back, an A-okay. I had to seek my own measures to strive for the needs I wasn't having met. So of course I chased anorexia. It was the only perfection I'd found to be attainable. But in having lived my life with anorexia, one that's given me that sense of perfection I so desperately needed, I also know that you never really reach that perfect point unless you're in the grave. Because it will always feel most perfect when the number is the lowest, and that lowest point is so sick that your body can't be alive when it becomes attained.
The time when you feel ready to recover is a time that will never come.
For some people, this time does come. It’s a time when they can’t stand their miserable lives anymore or they can't stand the effect their chosen pathway is having on their beloved friends and family. Up until the point of hearing this quote, I felt frustrated with the notion that despite the horrific negative consequences of anorexia, I hadn't reached a point that led me to want to leave it behind enough to chase recovery. It’s been too strong. And I think for longer-term anorexics, this quote is very enlightening because the time when one is ready doesn’t come for everyone. This is such a catch-22 because the people dancing on a knife’s edge with death are the least likely to feel ready to recover. But this quote allows these dancers to remember:
There's no tomorrow if there's no today.
Your eating disorder is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything.
This quote helped me because it displays how narrow your world becomes in chasing a sliver of a pie versus the magnitude of the world that awaits you when you neglect it. This quote shares everything you could be and everything you aren't. This quote shares the beauty life holds. This quote shares just how much you lose, everything you miss out on and everything in between.
But something else I love is the inspiration the quote allows for, imagining everything your world could consist of if you just surrendered to this truth:
You've begun to live a life that has become you, instead of a life where you're becoming.
Your eating disorder is lying to you.
Anorexia can feel so true, so real. You believe its rules. You believe in its promises. Because for the first time in your life, you have something that's effects leave you feeling unstoppable, special and successful. But what's great quickly turns into something incredibly destructive. What was once something enticing becomes something debilitating. So it's helpful to remember that just because it tells you that if you do x,y,z, then x,y,z will happen, there is no guarantee. I've had so many enlightening moments where I've challenged anorexia and my fear of weight gain hasn't only not happened, but I've, in fact, continued losing weight. Our bodies don't work off the rigid system that anorexia lays out for us. Our bodies are too inextricably complex for the likes of eating disorders. So having this short, concise quote can be helpful for the moments in which anorexia's fears cripple one.
What quote speaks to you? What one shifts your perspective? What quote leaves you with a sense of hope? I pray that just one of them allows you to feel relief from the monsters that are eating disorders. You undoubtedly and certainly deserve it, Shopaholics.
Kisses,
COS x
Comments