Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives by Aimee Liu

Author:Aimee Liu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

Finally, I try to be patient with myself, because recovery is a process.

NOTES TO SELF, LETTERS TO ED

The Benefits of Journaling and Letter Writing

By Lucy Serpell

Many people with eating disorders find writing journals and personal letters to be a useful therapeutic tool. In these private writings you can tell your truth without fear of criticism or invalidation. You can release your thoughts, then examine them objectively on the page. In this way, you can help to distinguish the words that ED puts in your head from the voice that belongs to the healthy, true you.

You might start by keeping a diary of thoughts, feelings, and situations that occur when you eat, drink, restrict, or exercise. When you’re in ED’s grip, eating, skipping meals, bingeing, and overexercising are usually accompanied by powerful thoughts and emotions. Tracking these links in writing not only can reveal the thoughts and feelings that trigger ED, but it can also help you change your responses to those thoughts and feelings. For example, if you notice that you often respond to anger by bingeing, try writing through the anger before turning to food, and then see if the urge to binge is still as strong. Use the act of writing to think through other ways you might express or relieve your anger that are less destructive—and perhaps more effective than ED.

You can also write letters to bring ED into perspective. Try writing to your eating disorder, first as a friend and then as an enemy. It’s helpful to write the two letters separately so that you can concentrate fully on the good things and the bad things that ED has given you. Once you’ve written them, have a good look at the results, sharing them with your therapist if you have one.

Start by looking at the pro-ED letter, which may reveal your reasons for maintaining the disorder, as well as the “benefits” that must be given up in recovery.

A few questions to consider:

What are the most powerful attractions of the eating disorder?

How do they make you feel?

What would it be like to lose those effects?

Could you get the positive effect of the eating disorder some other way? (For example, if one of the good things about the eating disorder is the feeling of being good at something, could you get this benefit from something else in your life, such as a hobby, relationships, work, or study?)

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