Preventing Burnout: Maintaining a balance in your family with ED recovery

Contributor: Courtney Howard, B.A., Executive Assistant at Eating Disorder Hope and Addiction Hope

If you have a family member in eating disorder recovery, you might go into the process eager to help and provide support for your loved one. As time goes on, you and your family will likely feel overwhelmed with the recovery journey and all its inevitable twists and turns.

How can you stay motivated to be a support for your family member without getting burned out? The answer lies in self-care.

What is Self-Care?

Self-care is anything you do to improve your mental health and take time for yourself. This might seem simple, but many people neglect to do this, especially those who focus more on helping others. You might have fallen into this pattern with your loved one in recovery.

It might feel selfish at first to take time for yourself, whether it be reading a book, catching up with friends, or even painting your nails, when your loved one is in pain. It is important to remember that self-care is not selfish. You cannot be truly supportive and present if you are neglecting your own basic needs, either physically or emotionally.

Encouraging other family members to take time for themselves, particularly siblings who might be close to the individual in recovery, can be a vital part of not burning out. Everyone is feeling the pain of your loved one’s eating disorder in different ways, so you will likely need to heal through equally different means.

Avoiding Burnout

You can avoid burnout while caring for someone in recovery by not waiting until you get to that point to engage in self-care. In other words, take time for yourself to preserve your own mental and physical health before you feel overwhelmed, defeated, and possibly resentful. It is also important to forgive yourself and realize these feelings are natural.

There is an often overwhelming pressure in society to be perfect. This can lead to a multitude of mental health concerns, including eating disorders, but also general burnout when you place all of your energy in helping others. You cannot be everything for everybody, so prioritize your life and move forward with this in mind. Do not forget to also prioritize aspects of your life that are unrelated to your loved one’s recovery.

It is common for family members and close friends to carry the burden of their loved one’s struggles when they are in recovery. The reality is that you can be supportive and validate their feelings when they come to you without taking on their problems. This is easier said than done, but knowing your role in their recovery is an important part of your own journey.

Balance in your Family

If your family life is feeling strained or unbalanced, this is natural. You can help reverse this by working together to rebuild relationships and trust that might have been lost throughout the course of your family member’s eating disorder.

The family dynamic will likely change when an individual goes into eating disorder recovery. It will change in different ways depending on whether it is your parent, child, or sibling struggling with an eating disorder. Encouraging all family members to speak their truths and truly feel their feelings as they come up, instead of repressing them, can lead to healthy communication and help each individual’s needs be met.

While family therapy and recovery-focused activities are important, it can also be beneficial to have family outings that are completely unrelated to eating disorder recovery. Bowling or having a movie night might do wonders for your family’s spirits and help maintain a sense of normalcy.

When to Seek Help

If you do not have coping mechanisms to help you through the complex emotions that can come with helping a loved one through recovery, it is important to develop these tools. Mindfulness exercises can be a helpful coping tool to help you refocus and reduce stress.

If you feel that the energy you are giving your loved one is negatively affecting your own mental health, you might want to seek professional help. Eating disorders are emotionally draining for anyone touched by them in any way, and it is natural to not be equipped to handle it on your own. Addressing your need for professional help is another form of self-care.

Community Discussion – Share your thoughts here!

What ways have you found to enjoy healthy self-care in your eating disorder recovery?

About the Author: Courtney Howard is the Executive Assistant for Eating Disorder Hope and Addiction Hope. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from San Diego State University, holds a paralegal certificate in Family Law, and is a Certified Domestic Violence Advocate. After obtaining her certification as a life coach, Courtney launched Lionheart Eating Disorder Recovery Coaching in 2015 and continues to be a passionate advocate for awareness and recovery.

The opinions and views of our guest contributors 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.

We at Eating Disorder Hope understand that eating disorders result from a combination of environmental and genetic factors. If you or a loved one are suffering from an eating disorder, please know that there is hope for you, and seek immediate professional help.

Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on June 28, 2016
Published on EatingDisorderHope.com

Eating Disorder Hope Staff

The EatingDisorderHope.com editorial team comprises experienced writers, editors, and medical reviewers specializing in eating disorders, treatment, and mental and behavioral health.