I remember my initial reaction to a concept that my teacher, Brooke Castillo, taught me.
When she declared that life is 50 percent positive and 50 percent negative, I did not want to accept that as true. I didn’t like it at all.
She explained that no matter how successful, rich, or accomplished we become, we will still feel about the same as we do today—good half of the time and not so good half of the time. What?
At first, I wanted to argue against this conclusion. You mean there will never come a time when I can just relax and enjoy my life and be happy every single minute of every single day?
Then I listened to her explanation and realized that what she was sharing was actually very good news. It means that nothing has gone wrong when we wake up with anxiety. It means we aren’t going to die even though our brains try to convince us that we are when our lives don’t go as expected. It means we are human, and we are living in the human condition. Without the downs, we wouldn’t recognize and appreciate the ups. Without the lows, we couldn’t celebrate the highs.
This concept is extremely useful when applied to anorexia recovery. As parents, we want the course of our daughter’s recovery to be a smooth and steady trajectory toward health and well being. Instead, on the journey toward full recovery, there will be bumps in the road, valleys that feel dark and deep, peaks that feel impossible to get to, but so sweet to reach, and times when it seems like we are sliding back down the mountain that took so much time and effort to climb.
Anorexia is much like life. When your daughter arrives at “recovered” she will have had a not-so-straight path to get there. It will be different for her than for anyone before her, and it will happen exactly the way it is supposed to happen for her to become the person she is meant to be.
With this in mind, we parents can ask ourselves some important questions:
Are we looking at the challenges (the 50 percent bad) without acknowledging the progress (the 50 percent good)?
What if she is on the perfect path to becoming exactly who she is meant to be? How does that change how we view her journey?
What if nothing has gone wrong, and we are meant to become better versions of ourselves through our daughter’s anorexia diagnosis and our support of her recovery?
If you are interested in learning more about how I help parents of anorexic teens support their daughter’s recovery, email me at jenni@peacemealcoach.com to schedule a free 20-minute mini coaching session.
