How To Recover From Anorexia: Tips From An Eating Disorder Therapist in Rockville, Maryland

By Megan Samuels, LMSW, Eating Disorder & Trauma Therapist

Anorexia is a type of eating disorder that comes with a preoccupation with weight, fear of weight gain, and restriction of food intake.  Oftentimes, someone struggling with anorexia may have a lot of food rules or rituals.  This may include needing to eat meals at certain times of the day.  Food rules may also include not eating foods that are classified as carbohydrates.

Anorexia can be a debilitating eating disorder that can leave individuals feeling “stuck” or “trapped”.  For someone struggling with anorexia, you may have parts of yourself that want recovery and other parts that identify more with the eating disorder.  

Many individuals with eating disorders struggle with “not feeling sick enough” and it’s important to note that anyone struggling in their relationship to food and their body is 100 percent “sick enough” for therapy and support.

The Eating Disorder Center, based in Rockville, Maryland has a team of therapists who specialize in helping teens and adults to recover from anorexia, we have in office appointments in Rockville, Maryland serving Bethesda, Potomac, Gaithersburg, and Olney, and virtual eating disorder therapy in Maryland, Virginia, Florida and New York. We also offer recovery coaching with our coaches worldwide.

As an eating disorder therapist on the team, in this blog, I am going to outline four helpful tips when working towards freedom from anorexia.  I encourage you to use these exercises with your treatment team, to allow space for processing and growth in a therapeutic and healing setting.

Tip #1: Parts Work

When working with clients struggling with anorexia, I find it helpful for clients to engage in parts work to acknowledge and explore different parts of self.  Parts work can also be helpful to calm internal conflict.  Often, there may be an inner critic part of self, saying things like, “You are not good enough.”  Some questions to consider when you notice the inner critic voice present are to ask yourself if this part sounds like someone you know, to think about how old this part is, and to check in with the part to see what it needs.

Some of the work in therapy is then allowing the inner critic or eating disorder parts of self to explore their behavior and thoughts and to work with other parts of self to come up with more adaptive alternatives to getting their needs met.  It’s likely that when the anorexia developed, that eating disorder part of self was serving a purpose, whereas when people begin to seek help for an eating disorder, that is usually because the eating disorder behaviors are not adaptive anymore and are causing problems in other areas of life.

Tip #2: Distress Tolerance

Recovery from anorexia may feel really scary and uncomfortable.  Anorexia keeps individuals confined to a certain set of rules and rituals that it deems appropriate.  Part of the recovery work is deviating from those rules and rituals and trying new things.  New things can be scary, especially when you may have an eating disorder part of self telling you not to do that new thing.  

For example, someone struggling with anorexia may have a food rule that they aren’t allowed to eat after 7pm.  In the recovery process, your therapist or coach may help you challenge that food rule, by slowly working up to being able to eat after 7pm.  Being able to challenge food rules shows the eating disorder that it doesn’t always have to be in control.  

In order to challenge these food rules, distress tolerance is needed.  This allows you to feel the big feeling and still keep going towards decisions and actions that reflect your recovery values.  In other words, if eating past 7pm is going to create a lot of anxiety, think about how you plan to tolerate the feelings of anxiety while eating past 7pm, while not using other eating disorder behaviors or maladaptive coping skills.
Unpacking, processing, and finding coping tools for managing body image distress is also a crucial part of therapy.

Tip #3: Function

Another tip for finding freedom from anorexia is taking time to explore the function behind the eating disorder behaviors.  Eating disorders are often covering up something else underneath.  For example, the restriction that you are currently experiencing may be a way of coping with unresolved anxiety or trauma.  Once you are able to identify what is underneath, you can begin to explore and process it further with your therapist.  

Tip #4: Challenging Fear Foods

Challenging fear foods is oftentimes an important piece of recovery from anorexia.  Using an evidence based therapy modality, Exposure Response Prevention (ERP), the therapist will work with you to develop lists of foods that challenge food rules or rituals that your eating disorder has created.  The goal is to decrease the distress around the food.  Some food exposures may look like eating pizza in session with your therapist, and practicing distress tolerance and mindfulness skills to stay connected with your body.

Practicing parts work and distress tolerance skills is no easy task.  And luckily, you don’t need to figure this out on your own.  At The Eating Disorder Center, we have therapists and coaches who can help guide you through recovery from anorexia!  You don’t have to feel trapped anymore.

Schedule a free 15 min consult for eating disorder therapy in our office in Rockville, Maryland or virtually in  MD, VA, DC, NY, FL, or recovery coaching worldwide.
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The Eating Disorder Center is a premier outpatient eating disorder therapy center founded by Jennifer Rollin. We specialize in helping teens and adults struggling with anorexia, binge eating disorder, bulimia, OSFED, and body image issues. We provide eating disorder therapy in Rockville, MD, easily accessible to individuals in Potomac, North Potomac, Bethesda, Olney, Silver Spring, Germantown, and Washington D.C. We also provide eating disorder therapy in Arlington, Virginia and virtually throughout Virginia. Additionally, we offer eating disorder therapy virtually in New York (NYC), Florida, and California. We provide eating disorder and EMDR trauma therapy in Rockville, Maryland and virtually throughout Maryland. We provide eating disorder recovery coaching via Zoom to people worldwide. Connect with us through our website at www.theeatingdisordercenter.com