Six Years of Anorexia Recovery, One Session
A woman in partial recovery from anorexia describes how a clinical trial session changed her relationship with her body.
I've been in treatment for anorexia for six years. Weight-restored for three of them — not in danger anymore. But the mental part of the illness, the voice, the body image, the constant calculation, had barely moved despite years of intensive work.
I enrolled in a clinical trial specifically for eating disorders. My facilitators had specific training in eating disorder work. I spent three sessions with them before taking any medicine.
In the early phase I met fear. Not the eating-disorder fear, but something older — a terror of taking up space, of being too much, of existing as a burden. I had encountered this before in therapy but never directly, without cognitive distance.
In the middle of the session there was a moment where I perceived my body differently. Not as enemy or as project, but as home. A place I had never let myself be. I cried for what felt like a very long time.
I left the trial with something that has not fully left: a capacity to feel safe in my body that I genuinely did not have before. The voice is still there sometimes. But I now know it isn't me.
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