A woman asks: Would a boyfriend be a good support system or do you recommend that I find a female to confide in? I'm ready to finally get over my bulimia."

Answer:

A support system is more than one person. It's a whole system of people, activities, classes, treatment professionals, spiritual centers, etc. who support your eating disorder recovery.

Sometimes people get confused and think that support means agreeing and supporting whatever they think or want or whatever their perception is in the moment. But if you have an eating disorder, sometimes your perceptions are distorted. Your emotions can go haywire. Your thinking can be confused or unrelated to reality.

The people in your recovery support system will support your efforts to get clear and reality based. Yes, they will help you with structure when you are flailing emotionally or mentally. They will do their best to help you find a way to experience soothing so you can learn to soothe yourself.

But you might not like what they say if you are in the grip of eating disorder thinking or emotions. A good support system will be clear and firm about healthy and necessary boundaries, reasonable expectations, honoring commitments, following through on your word, being honest and perhaps most difficult, postponing immediate urges.

A good supportive system will offer you alternative explanations and perspectives on an issue that you feel is black or white and requires your immediate reaction. A good support system will give you a safe place to go, healthy activities to do, learning and creative exercises to grow by.

A good supportive system will tolerate you when you are in an irrational state that you believe is rational. Yet that support system will not be pulled into your unrealistic passions that you believe are completely justified. (You are most likely to feel this kind of unralistic passion when you are slowing down and finally stopping your eating disorder behaviors.)

A good supportive system does not support your eating disorder or your e.d. thoughts and feelings. A good support system supports the genuine you and supports your health and recovery.

A boyfriend or a girlfriend or a relative can't do this. They can love you, but they don't know about the real experience of living with an eating disorder. They don't know the suffering, pain and creative defenses you experience when you are doing your recovery work. In fact, they may try to help you by soothing you and, without realizing it, offer you suggestions that lead right back to your eating disorder. If you accept this help you move back to your eating disorder life. If you recognize the dangers of their suggestions you may get angry with them. Either way leads to pain and suffering where everyone involved can be hurt and bewildered.

So, building your support system requires that you begin to learn what recovery means to you and gather people around you who support that recovery.

A psychotherapist who knows about eating disorders can be a positive bases where healing begins and where you can learn to build an authentic support system beyond your therapy appointments.

Overeaters Anonymous and eating disorder support groups can be part of your forming support system. A spiritual practice with people who may know nothing about eating disorders but who do know about honoring body, mind and spirit can help.

So can a yoga class and other classes like art, writing, gardening, sculpture. They give you a place to go and put you in contact with people who are working to develop their skills and talents. Such activities can provide you with much needed structure and foster development in the right hemisphere of your brain.

A good support system does not give you a place to hide. It does give you a place from which you can grow and heal.

Creating your genuine eating disorder support system is a wonderful and necessary endeavor to help you on your recovery path.



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