An emotionally painful recurring image of a frightened child described in a comment on my site stays with me.  I'm responding here  because this type of imagery affects many people in or near doing deep recovery work. Eating disorder behaviors create a false promise of rescue. What follows are ten tips for genuine resolution.

The commenter wrote:

if I could just rid my mind of the image of myself as a little girl..it's a constant image...I am alone, I am scared and I am silent. It feels like Please login or register to see the full article

I believe in what I'm doing - providing genuine methods to heal from eating disorders that honor the individual. As I do my psychotherapy work, and outreach to let others know of my work, I discover new obstacles to recovery.

My challenge is to break free from my traditional ways of speaking and writing. I need to go more to the core - not the core of the eating disorder - but the core of the obstacles that prevent people from getting on their recovery path.

You can heal your way, develop your way, grow your way out of an eating disorder.  Solid recovery from an eating disorder is not about fighting the disorder and winning.  That gives an incorrect impression that you remain the same and the eating disorder leaves.  Solid recovery occurs when you no longer need your eating disorder to cope with the stresses and challenges in your life now or in the future.

To make that happen, recovery work involves developing your mind, heart, body and soul from a fragile and insubstantial state to a more mature and capable condition that is your authentic you.

The New York Times, in the April 25, 2011 issues, ran a pessimistic article that risks leaving readers with the idea that you cannot recover

Touching story of felt abandonment on Babbling Cats2.

"I feel like I'm being abandoned by [my therapist].  This is what I don't get.  She obviously thinks I'm not doing well at all and need more help, or something.  So why, when someone is "not well"  (her words, not mine) would you, a T, stop working with the person?  If you're in the field to help people, why would you abandon them when they apparently need you the most?  This is what I don't get.  It's like, "You're doing badly so I can't work with you anymore."  She didn't say that, but that's what it's like.  Does that make sense?  Also, if she knows that things we'll just get worse without her, why would she fire me?  These people are supposed to be helping people, not letting them go when things go a little south."

As a psychotherapist working with people with eating disorders, here is how I answer her question.

This new NASA image of our sun is like an inspirational mandala, particularly designed for you to help you in healing from your eating disorder. It shows us the fiery wonder of our personal star.

It's a mass of seething explosions, yet it holds its shape and position in space.  It consists of powerful forces that could destroy anything of mere human creation yet is the source of life for all of us on this planet.

You also contain inner seething fires.  If you have an eating disorder you