A Review of Life without Ed by Jenni Schaefer and Thom Rutledge
Life without Ed has become a classic in the eating disorder recovery world. It is a great book that is co-written by a woman in ED recovery and her therapist. Each chapter helps you get inside the mind of someone with an eating disorder and help you see the torment that she lives with regularly in her mind. There are also some suggestions throughout the book from her therapist about exercises to do to help you challenge your own ED thoughts and behaviors.
My favorite part of this book, however, is the basic analogy throughout that an eating disorder is like an abusive boyfriend named Ed. Like most abusive relationships, the relationship between Ed and someone with an eating disorder starts out positively. You may start this relationship feeling positive and optimistic. You are listening to Ed, spending time with him doing what he suggests, getting thinner and maybe getting attention for your changed looks. It seems like Ed is the best… at the beginning. Then, like a lot of abusive relationships, Ed becomes more controlling, more dangerous, and pretty soon, you are sacrificing what matters to you to please Ed. You are spending less time with your friends and family, spending hours obsessing about what you are eating (or not eating), exercising, or finding ways to purge. You may start lying to your friends and family as a way to have time to engage in your eating disorder, explain why you are not going to events, where all the money is going, or otherwise having to make excuses for your behavior. You often feel ashamed of your behaviors and your inability to stop these dangerous and harmful behaviors. You promise yourself that you’ll stop, you’ll leave Ed after he hurts you, but then he promises to change, to make things better for you, and to help you change your body for good this time. You go back to listening to Ed and doing what he says is best for you. You stop listening to yourself and trusting your own intuition and ability to take care of yourself. You have listened to Ed so long, you are convinced you really are no good without him and you believe the horrible things he says in your head. You can’t find your own true voice. You are lost.
This is where recovery comes in. You do have the power to leave Ed--for good and not look back. I resonate with the idea of externalizing your ED behaviors as Ed, or some other “bad guy” in your head because I think it helps with the ambivalence that is typical for people in recovery. I have never met anyone with an ED who doesn’t both want to get better (to stop the harmful behaviors or to be able to live according to their values and beliefs again and not blindly follow what Ed tells them to do) but who also wants to keep some of their ED behaviors and not have to deal with the idea of their body changing and learning more healthy coping skills. Recovery is hard. It takes a long time. It can challenge everything about how you think, act and feel. It can also completely set you free. Learning to find your true voice again and learning to kick Ed our of your head is one of the most powerful and positive things you could ever do. Therapy can help you learn to identify healthier ways to cope, to find your identity not in your eating disorder, develop a healthy relationship with food and with your body and learn to truly love yourself.
If you are struggling with an eating disorder, try writing out some of the thoughts in your head that are clearly in Ed’s voice (e.g., “You shouldn’t eat that” or “You don’t deserve to eat that”) and then try to access your wisest voice and find ways to talk back to Ed. It may seem like Ed is so smart and able to have arguments for every situation, but when you start challenging Ed, you’ll find he really only has a few messages he gives-- he just says them over and over again with slightly different wording. If you keep practicing, you will get better at arguing back and eventually get better at ignoring those messages and telling Ed that his opinion is just not needed or wanted. Your internal voice will get louder and your ability to listen to your wisest self will improve and your life will get significantly better. If you are ready to try recovery and see the beauty in a life with more freedom, contact us. We want to help you kick out Ed for good.
