They Say It Takes 7 Years to Fully Recover from an Eating Disorder
I can specifically remember the first time I heard that it takes, on average, “7 years to recover from an eating disorder fully.” At the time, I was sitting in a group therapy session at a Partial Hospitalization Program treatment center in Southern California. The idea of spending the next 7 years counting exchanges, hiding from lasagna, and stepping on scales for blind weighing felt overwhelming, to say the least.
What has been the case over the past 7 years is very different from what 2017 Nia expected or even wanted. I’ve passed through several stages and seasons of life in these 7 years that have each stacked upon each other to form the foundation of a strong eating disorder recovery history.
The Hardest Part of Recovery
For me, the toughest part of recovery was the time I spent in active eating disorder treatment: Residential, Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), and various Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP). Leaving formal treatment to step out into the world on my own was also extremely challenging. Without the direct support of my Instagram community, I don’t know that I would have found the solid footing in recovery that I did.
This was the most difficult time in my recovery because it required so much concentrated effort and patience. I needed to make sure that I was eating food day-to-day and throughout each day, making sure that I wasn't obsessing over my body and refraining from weighing myself. Ultimately, I was really starting to form the stepping stones and the foundation of a healthy and strong recovery process that would last for 7 years and beyond.
In those moments, I did not necessarily know what recovery would look like—what it felt like, what I wanted it to look like, and what it would be like down the road. I was essentially building a road to recovery brick by brick and without the slightest clue or plan of what that road would ultimately look like. I didn’t even know where it was going. It was extremely tough, overwhelming, and just plain hard.
So, I would say that, yes, the most challenging part of recovery was that initial phase where I didn't have much control and as much knowledge and understanding of my relationship with food and body as I did later on.
The Pandemic in Recovery
Another very difficult stage of time for me that came up next in my recovery was during the most intense years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020-2021, I had to re-learn how to take care of myself in a recovery-minded and completely new way. The hardest part was being on my own all day, every day. I didn't live with anyone at the time, and my main human connection outlet was working in an office setting. Working from home with long body doubling sessions over Zoom was very helpful, but it was also very lonely. It was hard not to turn to the behaviors I had once used to stave off and endure excessive loneliness or cope with the stress, fear, and anxiety that the pandemic brought up in all of us. Instead, I had to start finding new hobbies and activities I could do on my own that would keep me engaged and entertained, and that didn’t always involve food or exercise. I ended up turning to resin art, creating content on TikTok, and reading.
I would say that this really was the next defining stage of my recovery where I had to, in a sense, re-learn recovery skills in a brand new situation, a new environment, with new rules and new guidelines. It's not an easy feat, nor one I’d necessarily want to repeat again.
Grief and Ongoing Recovery
In less of a chunk of time and more as an ever-evolving stage of recovery, I have had to learn how to adapt my life to various emotional and physical challenges—in this case, grief. During the last 7 years of recovery, I have lost many people, pets, community members, friends, and more that were close and important to me. Many still are important to me. But through these years, I have had to learn how to adapt to emotional and physical pain as well as challenging interactions and relationships—all the while not choosing to use my eating disorder behaviors or other maladaptive behaviors to cope. Instead, I had to really learn to dig deep into my recovery-minded self to figure out what I could do to serve me as I continued moving forward in my recovery. It was very important to me that I remain in a place of Strong Recovery instead of falling back into old ways, but also, I didn’t always know what I needed to do in order to move forward or stay in that place of Strong Recovery.
Facing grief head-on will teach you a lot about how you cope with hard emotions and challenge you to find new tools. I spent a lot of time processing my feelings and fears in therapy, with friends, and with my community.
Over the last 7 years, I have seen the ways in which recovery has been a game of finding ways to overcome distress tolerance and learning to sit with challenging events. While it’s been tough, it would have been much more difficult without the ability to lean on my community for support. I often found myself leaning on my therapist for support and, through that, finding deeper support within myself that I didn't know existed. This was crucial to my ability to remain in Strong Recovery over the last several years.
Finding My Footing in Strong Recovery
Lastly, owning the words “Strong Recovery” has allowed me to settle in and find my footing. Strong Recovery may look different for me than it does for you, and that’s ok.
I’ve realized that I might never end up in a place of “full recovery” where I never have eating disorder urges, thoughts, or desires ever again. To me, Strong Recovery means that I am in a place in my recovery where I feel stable and sturdy. Where I don't feel like grief or a major life event will rock me to my core and back into my eating disorder at a moment’s notice. I feel strong in what I have learned over the last 7 years and very capable that I can continue to apply what I have learned over the years to come.
If you would have asked me in 2016 what my future would be like, I wouldn't have known the vast possibilities that were ahead of me.
I really did have to build that road brick by brick, not knowing what it would look like or where it would go, in order to get to a place with a sturdy foundation. It also took a whole lot of belief in myself, a lot of building community, a lot of practicing self-love and self-care and relentlessly fighting back against negative body image and weight stigma in medical care. Recovery over the past 7 years has been a journey every single day, and now that I have found my footing, I am very content to stay here.
