the wall is really the exit

Sometimes our children come to us for help when an eating disorder threatens to drag them down. More often, parents have to take decisive action to stop the slide.

But it seems almost every patient eventually hits a wall. Where even if they want recovery - and especially if they don't - the anxiety and the discomfort and the anger get worse before they get better.

The wall, as some parents describe it, seems like a crisis. But really, that wall is actually the exit. As frightening as this escalation in anxiety and anger is, this is our chance to break the pattern of up and down and break through the wall that keeps them in the eating disorder.

My recent advice to a parent as she faced the wall:

"During my daughter's initial recovery I often felt that she was in a hurricane - blinded and in pain and almost deaf from the wind and debris. I felt I was calling to her from a distance and asking her to follow the sound of my voice - to trust me even when nothing made sense and her senses were telling her to run, run anywhere but where she was.

Be that voice."

Comments

  1. I absolutley loved that advice. Hands down the best advice. And "The wall is the exit" Having gone through the wall and now standing at the other side together with my daughter I know it is true. ms

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