What is an Eating Disorder?
What is an eating disorder and how does Ocean Recovery treat eating disorders?
Eating disorder is a mental illness that revolves around a constellation of symptoms with obsessions about body, body image, body weight, and food. You can be anywhere on the spectrum of an eating disorder, be it anorexia or bulimia. Bulimia-purging can be laxative abuse, over-exercising, throwing up, or compulsive overeating. A person can also have disordered eating, which is not as severe as the obsession with food that a diagnosable eating disorder is, but still hinders having a successful life.
Studies show that about 60 percent to 70 percent of women in treatment for substance abuse have primary eating disorders; and that not treating an underlying eating disorder when somebody’s in treatment for substance abuse puts the client at high risk for a relapse.
A vast majority of drug rehab treatment facilities either don’t treat eating disorders or have the point of view that, first we’ll deal with the substance abuse and the client can deal with their eating disorder later on their own. Our experience has shown us that the client tends not to ever address this issue. They continue to use the eating disorder to manage all the feelings that come up because they’re not using substances; or they give lip service to counselor asking about their eating disorders, saying it is not a problem any longer. Some facilities may have an eating disorder group or a nutrition group and claim eating disorder treatment; but rarely will they offer real eating disorder treatment. We refer to eating disorders along with drug and alcohol abuse issues at co-occurring disorders.
What we have at Ocean Recovery that’s different than any other treatment center that I’ve worked at is a real commitment to tackling the eating disorders. So many of these girls come in claiming that they’ve worked on their eating disorder in their past and it’s no longer an issue, because as they start using substances, the eating disorder gets submerged and it doesn’t feel so pressing or they’re not acting out in eating disorder behaviors, or they come in denying that they have an eating disorder when indeed they’re active in an eating disorder.
So first, through serious assessments, we find out that they have an eating disorder. We work really hard to get them in the eating disorder track. Every meal is monitored. We are following them to the bathroom so that they can’t use their purging behavior. We monitor their physical activity. We monitor their food intake.
We have eating disorder groups. We have eating disorder specialists. We have food group where they get to go out to dinner and use their skills and their tools. We require clients to go to 12-step OA and get an OA sponsor and work the steps of OA on their eating disorder. So it’s a real commitment to working on their eating disorder and their chemical dependency issues at the same time.
At Ocean Recovery, if a women is in the eating disorder track, the kitchen is locked; there’s no access to food during the day, except at mealtime; the meals are monitored by a staff member; they are taken grocery shopping; and the meal outings all help them to develop the skills that they need when they go home. Also, two of the girls each night cook their own dinner. During the community meetings during the week, they do meal planning for dinner; and they learn cooking skills, meal-planning skills, grocery shopping skills, so that they can manage when they leave here.
Well we know that a big part of the eating disorder is a family systems issue as well; and encourage the family to visit often and have family sessions with our trained family therapists who’ll meet with the family often while they’re here to work on the underlying dynamics that need addressing.
What we know is that it generally takes longer than 90 days to work on two vicious diseases like substance abuse and eating disorders. And that many of the girls choose to stay around Ocean Recovery in our sober living in a step-down process where they continue to have more experience with the outside world and transition, and still attend many of the groups that we have here in one-on-one counseling with a nutritionist and a therapist. It generally takes from three to five years to fully recover from an eating disorder, and to continue working on chemical dependency issues; not that that has to be done at Ocean Recovery.
If it the recovery process is at Ocean Recovery, there’s a tremendous amount of support. We also are aware that a lot of people need to get back to their lives. And so what we do prior to discharge is set up an after-care plan where the client can be surrounded by services, whether they need to go back to college or their family, or a marriage; so that wherever they are in the country or the world, we are going to make sure that the client is prepared for to continue to work on their eating disorder and their chemical dependency issues.
Our treatment philosophy in treating eating disorders is:
- Learning body acceptance
- Learning that the constant obsession about food and weight is a distraction from feelings.
- Learning how to put feelings into words; learning that it’s okay to have needs; learning to fill up the emptiness inside with a real sense of self; and that the constant preoccupation with good food and bad food and dieting and weight loss is just an escape from feelings.
The nutrition program here can be very difficult initially. Someone with an eating disorder will learn to contend with this because it includes all foods. Really learning how to form a relationship with your body and food is at the core of healing from an eating disorder.
The goal is simple when a client leaves Ocean Recovery, they have really developed the tools that they need to manage their feelings without using either – their chemical dependency or their eating disorder – to manage their feelings. This is the key to successful recovery.
