Dialog 1

Assignment: Journal dialog between healthy self and eating disordered self.

Eating disordered self (E.D.): You got your feelings hurt the other day so you should hide food to make yourself feel better.

Healthy self (H.S.): No I shouldn’t. I can’t be hiding food if I want to go to [the step-down house].

E.D.: You don’t have to tell anyone. Besides, if you hide food you can get back at the person who hurt you. They could get in trouble for not watching more carefully.

H.S.: I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, and no one would even know I did it unless I told. If I hide food, that doesn’t affect the other person at all. They go on living their life oblivious to what I did. I’d only be hurting myself.

E.D.: But if you hide food you’d feel so much better. It gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you feel skillful because you can get away with it so easily. That would be so much better than feeling sad and hurt like you do now.

H.S.: Should you really get a sense of accomplishment from something that comes so easy to you? Isn’t self-discipline about doing something hard? If that’s the case, then not hiding food would be real self-discipline, because that’s what’s hard for you. And anyway, I don’t have to feel hurt. I could go to the person and tell them they hurt my feelings. I’m sure they have no idea they did.

E.D.: If you tell the person what they did, that will make them feel bad, which will just make you feel even worse.

H.S.: It might be hard at first, but in the end you’ll be able to get everything resolved without hurting yourself. Hiding food will only make people not trust you. You don’t want that. Choosing to not use your eating disorder behaviors is a step forward in recovery.

E.D.: What if you don’t want recovery? Your eating disorder gets you attention. Having to go up to people to tell them they hurt you is scary and hard. It’s so much easier to just keep the pain to yourself. And if you hide food, that gives you an excuse to start a conversation with someone to talk about what’s really bothering you. That’s how you get attention.

H.S.: There are other ways to get my needs met besides hiding food. All I have to do is allow myself to be vulnerable and open with others. Sure it’s hard at first, but it just takes practice. The end result will get me just what I want – the satisfying feeling of being cared about without having to hurt myself.