My Experience in Bulimia Recovery

Blog Contributor: Hilary Koo, CHES

When I was a child, I had my whole life planned out. I had personal goals, social plans, and career aspirations. Having an eating disorder that would eventually land me in rehab was never a part of my life plan. But as they say, we plan and God laughs.

Though I had issues with food and eating starting as a young teen, it wasn’t for another decade that I was formally diagnosed with bulimia in my senior year of college. Up until that point, I thought living with an eating disorder was the hard part, that once I got into recovery, everything would be perfect.

Little did I know, giving into an eating disorder is the easy part. The hard part begins when you commit to, or even just contemplate, recovery.

Ups, Downs, and Staying the Same

Recovering is a scary process. And no one tells you that in the beginning. I spent two of the last three years in and out of treatment facilities, and never have I ever had to work as hard as I have these past few years. The real struggle begins the day you decide to get better.

There is another misconception that recovery is linear all the way through, that it is a gradual process where you eventually arrive at point B. I speak from experience when I say that while I’ve had linear moments, I’ve also had plateaus and both exponential improvement and decline.

Recovery is not a straight line; rather, it zigzags and curves all over the place, and no two recovery stories are alike. Accepting that recovery is messy relieved a lot of my frustration, grief, and shame about not being perfect at it.

Always Moving Towards a Healthier Self

Over the past three years, I have also realized that there is no stagnant “Point B” to be reached; it is, instead, a moving target. I used to think that simply an absence of bingeing and purging was the very definition of recovery. Little did I know, stopping eating disorder behaviors is only the first layer of the onion.

The real healing begins when you address the shame, sadness, anger, trauma, or whatever it may be that underlies and propels the self-destructive behaviors. Unless you deal with these core issues, the eating disorder is likely to rear its ugly head again, sometimes in another form.

Learning to Cope In a Positive Manner

I learned this the hard way by experiencing what professionals call a transferring of addictions. Instead of bingeing and purging, I engaged in other self-destructive behaviors like self-harm. At that point I realized that there is always work to be done in recovery.

There is always another level to reach, another rung of the ladder to climb. Recovery is an on-going process that I will have to keep up with for the rest of my life. The good news is that it does get easier, and what once felt like an immense amount of work is now a manageable load.

Community Discussion – Share your thoughts here!

What is your experience with the highs and lows of Bulimia recovery?

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The opinions and views of our guest bloggers are shared to provide a broad perspective of eating disorders. These are not necessarily the views of Eating Disorder Hope, but an effort to offer discussion of various issues by different concerned individuals.