My Worst Treatment Center Story & How It Helped Me Recover from My Eating Disorder

I first entered treatment for eating disorder recovery in 2020. I unwillingly rolled up to the treatment center, still resistant to the fact that I was struggling despite knowing that I needed some help. It simply wasn’t “that bad yet,” in my eyes. As I pulled open the creaky wooden door of the clinic and stepped inside, I was met with a waiting room that looked like the lobby of an antique motel. I sat myself in one of the mismatched chairs that were dispersed throughout the room, farthest from what appeared to be the hallway to the clinic. Shortly after, I was retrieved by a man who introduced himself as my therapist and brought upstairs to another room, furnished with only an old couch and lounge chair positioned directly opposite to one another. There was something eerie about them, the way they were positioned in the center of the room, walls bare and lights flickering. The therapist motioned for me to have a seat on the couch, and we dug right into it. He asked me questions about why I was brought there, what my home life was like, and what a typical day of eating and exercise looked like for me. He spoke very matter-of-factly as he made his own conjectures about my upbringing, and finally, after about forty-five minutes of interrogation, he let my mom into the room.

His already-cool tone shifted ice cold as my mom positioned herself on the couch next to me. He was rude to her, accusatory even, and I felt myself wanting to shrivel up into my skin. Why was he being so unkind? My mom was worried about me. She was the one who brought me here. She knew I needed help, I just didn’t know how to ask for it. Every other clinic in the area was fully booked, and this was the soonest I could be seen. She was doing everything she could, going above and beyond as she always does, yet we both could immediately feel judgement passed onto her. I gritted my teeth for what felt like hours, and finally, a nurse practitioner retrieved me and led me down the hallway to another dimly lit office. This one looked as if it belonged to an old library, the examination table looking pristine and out of place shoved away in the corner. She instructed me to sit, and handed me an Ensure as I stepped up to take my place on the table. I gripped the supplement beverage, seeing how long I could hold onto it before it became evident that I was not going to drink it.

“Drink up,” she said, not looking up from her computer. “I expect that bottle to be empty by the time we’re done here.”

I hesitated, but did as I was told. We went over my medical history, recent labs, and I was weighed. She then gave me an arbitrary number that would mark me as “healthy,” and I was led back down the hallway to make my next appointment. As I stepped outside, the cold, crisp winter air hit me like the therapist’s icy cold demeanor. I was gutted, in a way. Not only was I made to feel like my eating disorder was my fault, but by extension, I subjected my mom, the very person who cared about me most in this world, to treatment that would make her feel like it was her fault, too. Reluctantly, I returned to his office weekly for appointment after appointment. We felt like we had no other option. I needed to be seen by someone…anyone. His demeanor never changed, his focus remaining on the “why,” behind my eating disorder. It was like he was looking for someone to blame, creating characters out of and villainizing the most important people in my life. By our third appointment, I was diagnosed with complex PTSD; a label I did not want, nor did I feel fit for the reasons he prescribed.

I remember our last appointment vividly. I left crying, as he chastised me for resisting treatment, stating that in doing so, I needed to “go away for a while.” He referred me to a residential clinic, and informed me that he could not work with me anymore. I was too belligerent, for proclaiming that my eating disorder did not have a cause to blame that could be identified through hyper-analysis of my personal life. His delivery, per usual, was stone cold. It felt like I was on a reality show, when the host dramatizes the “and the contest facing elimination tonight, is…” I went home and began packing my things. I was inconsolable. The therapist had told me that they would probably admit me for the remainder of my senior year. No prom, no graduation, no spirit week.

My mom and I arrived early the next morning at the residential center, about an hour away from my hometown. My bags were tucked by my feet, and my legs felt like bricks at the thought of getting out of the car and walking through the glass double-doors. I did not know what waited for me in there, nor did I think that once my mom and I entered, I would get to go home with her at the end of the day. We sat in the waiting room until the registrar was ready for me. As my mom and I walked back to the registration office, I caught a glimpse of a brightly lit room of girls about my age, seated around a table chatting. I could hear their laughter bubbling out through the doorway, and thought to myself for a moment—maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

We worked through my registration and intake, and based on my vitals coupled with my medical history, it was determined that I would be a good fit for their day program. I get to go home with my mom, I thought, tuning out everything else the registrar was saying. I get to go home. Upon completion of my intake, my mom and I were brought into a sprawling conference room where the gaggle of girls I had just seen were seated opposite their parents, breakfasts laid out in front of them in a profusion of brightly colored tupperware containers. We were instructed to bring breakfast from home, so my mom and I pulled out our own tupperware containers and seated ourselves at the end of the table. Her and I sat there relatively quietly, listening to the chatter amongst the non-newbie’s as we choked down our room temperature oatmeal. Everyone was absolutely lovely, and it was really sweet to see the friendships that had formed amongst the patients and parents alike. I think I am going to like it here, I thought to myself, beginning to feel more at ease.

Following breakfast, myself and the other girls where whisked away, back to that brightly lit room I had passed upon entry. My mom was sent with the other parents to another conference room on the opposite side of the building, where she was to attend a parental support group. As I peered into our conference room, I was met with the warmth of the sunlight beaming through the windows, and the room itself radiated the same warmth. Hand-painted artwork lined the perimeter of the space, markers were strewn about the table, and craft supplies garnished each and every cabinet. Moments after we were seated, a counselor entered the room and sat herself at the head of the table, revealing a beat up notebook from her jacket.

“Today, we are going to be telling our life stories,” she began, motioning to the notebook that was now resting on the table. “I am going to give you 45 minutes. You will spend 15 minutes writing your past, 15 minutes writing your present, and 15 minutes writing your future. Wherever your mind goes, follow it. Write everything you call to mind, leaving no stone unturned. Through this exercise, we are going to learn to process your life experiences, describe your life to date, and discover the person you are becoming.”

With that, she sat back, and motioned “go” by waving her hands in the air. Without letting myself think too much, I began writing. I wrote about the eight year old girl who chose her favorite shirt because she felt it hid her worst features. The ten year old girl who clung to the same undergarments for years, trying to keep her body the same size because she was terrified to gain weight. The thirteen year old girl who waited for her mom to go for a walk so she could print out the entirety of Kayla Itsines’ “Bikini Body Guide” without anyone else knowing. The sixteen year old girl who hated her body so much, that she was willing to lose her life over it. And finally, the seventeen year old girl who landed herself in an eating disorder recovery center.

As time ticked by, I moved from my past, to my present, to my future. Words flowed out of me faster than I could write them all down. I did my best to capture everything I was feeling, but thoughts and emotions flitted so quickly through my mind that I simply couldn’t catch them all. Finally, the counselor softly whispered, “pencils down,” and we all looked up, fixing our gaze on her. She asked us to sit with what we had written that day, making a point to look for patterns throughout our stories. During our next session, we were going to share them with one another, and disclose what patterns we observed in our work. With that, she stood up and crept quietly out of the room, closing the door behind her.

The girls abruptly turned to me as soon as the door was closed. They properly introduced themselves, sharing their year in school and how long they had been in the program. Rather than proclaiming how much it had helped them, many of them spoke about how long they had been cycling in and out, and how they used the program to pick up new eating disorder behaviors from the other girls. Some told me they had been cycling through the program for as long as five years, stating that there is not much of a focus on the mental aspects of eating disorder recovery. Some even said they were worse off than when they were first admitted. Hearing that broke my heart. They were each so lovely, and deserved so much more than to be their youth cycling in and out of a recovery clinic. I squirmed in my seat as I saw visions of the future I had written slipping through my fingertips, feeling unsettled about where I had landed.

At the end of the day, my mom and I reconvened in her Ford Edge, both equally as ready to head home. It was late-afternoon by this point, and we had each had quite the day of counseling and support groups. I nervously shared my feelings of ambivalence about the program, and my mom expressed to me that she had had some similar feelings during her session with the other parents. There was speak on both sides about new behaviors learned through the program, with emphasis on those of which did not move patients closer towards recovery. As much as, admittedly, I was not ready to commit to recovery, it was out of fear and uncertainty; not because I wanted to make my eating disorder worse. If anything, I just wanted to lay in limbo for a while, as making the choice to get better felt terribly daunting to a seventeen-year-old girl, but deteriorating farther came with it’s own set of anxieties.

Ultimately, her and I made the decision not to send me back to the support group, which was in part a decision made by itself due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. I began seeing outpatient dietitians via telehealth, but had yet to find a methodology that challenged the disorder, rather than fear foods alone, and sought to attribute it to something other than an emotional stressor in my life. It seemed that I could never find that “aha” moment, where all the stars aligned and the cause of my eating disorder was painted in front of me, clear as day. I still felt as though there was no one trigger point; there was no one at fault, no one to blame, no deep-seeded insecurity to root around for. Sure, I had my insecurities, anxieties, and general disliking of my features, but each never felt deeply tied to that intrinsic need to shrink my body.

Despite my mom and my best efforts, I still struggled until hitting rock bottom in December of 2020. We had thrown every possible type of therapy at the wall, but nothing stuck. Weighing myself weekly at the doctor’s office and discussing the implications of weight loss only scared me into complacency, not action. Not knowing the “why,” behind my disorder crippled me, as I felt like I could not understand my own brain, let alone rewire it. I didn’t know how to explain to those around me that I wanted to recover. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to live like this. I didn’t want to be devoid of energy, unable to sleep at night as a result of the chest pain that sent aching down into my arms and to my ice-cold fingertips. I didn’t want to eat every meal curled up in bed with a heating pad, hoping that if I contorted myself into a tight enough ball I could spare some semblance of body heat, or restore feeling in my hands and feet. I didn’t want to have to brace myself to turn off the shower, having to scramble to put on the layers of sweatshirts and sweatpants that I had laid out for myself as I braved what felt like the arctic tundra (a temperate 68 degrees). This wasn’t the life that now-eighteen-year-old Kenzie envisioned for herself. She just didn’t know where to even begin to challenge the disorder that consumed her.

I remember one night specifically that changed everything. In preparation to shower off the day, I ditched my typical sweatshirts and blankets and stepped into the bathroom in a sports bra and pair of leggings. I flicked on the light switch, unable to avoid catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror (something I tried desperately to do at all costs). For whatever reason, it was as if every ounce of body dysmorphia was left in my room in that moment, smothered by the pile of blankets that I had just left behind. I had nothing to brace me for what reflected back at me, and I just stood there, mouth agape.

Oh my goodness. How did it get this far?

As I stood there, vision locked on the figure that stood opposite me, all I could see was the road that lay ahead if I wanted to get better. Although this time, I realized I had no other choice. I needed to commit. I showered quickly, practically leaping out of the scalding hot water and into the thick layers of clothing that awaited me, rushing back to my room and grabbing my laptop before settling back beneath the behemoth of blankets. My thoughts were racing, and I was barely able to string sentences together as I typed into the Google search bar;

Real eating disorder recovery

Can I recover from my eating disorder

How do I really recover from my eating disorder

I began to scan article after article, eventually trying new search queries and moving to YouTube when I felt dissatisfied with my search results. In my frantic search for answers, eventually I stumbled upon a video from creator Stephanie Buttermore, titled “I’m Going ‘All-In.’” A sudden sense of hope rose in my chest, and I clicked play.

Stephanie began the video by discussing her fitness and health background, and how the fitness industry had wreaked havoc on her metabolism, her relationship with food, and her body image. She then moved into the concept of ‘all-in’ recovery, and the inner workings of the human metabolism. A scientist herself, she offered an overview of metabolic homeostasis through a biological lens, describing a set of ideas forming the Set Point Theory. As I clicked through her videos, a lightbulb went off in my brain. This was my “aha” moment. I could not heal my eating disorder by trying to find the emotional root cause. There was no emotional root cause, but rather a biological, obsessive-compulsive one. I then began searching for ideas related to the Set Point Theory, quickly leading me to find eating disorder recovery coach, Tabitha Farrar. Farrar had a YouTube channel of her own, as well as a blog and series of books that she had authored. She discussed eating disorder recovery from an evolutionary lens, utilizing Shan Guisinger’s Adapt to Flee Famine Theory and the Minnesota Starvation Experiment to detail the implications of starvation not just on the human body, but the human mind.

Following a few days of research, I showed my mom what I had learned, begged her to trust me enough to stop going to the doctor for my weekly weigh-ins, and to support me in giving this new recovery method a try. My mom, being my biggest advocate and fellow curious mind, believed in me and agreed. She emphasized her unwavering love and support, and that we would be embarking on this journey, together. Whatever it took, I was going to get better. For real, this time. So, I embarked on my own path to recovery—the best decision I ever could have made. Sure, it was harrowing, and there were plenty of days where I wanted to throw my hands up and walk away, but I believed in the science so deeply that I couldn’t. The answers I had so desperately been seeking lay in those evolutionary perspectives, and through a few hard-fought years, I finally reached a place where I could call myself recovered. Thanks to Stephanie Buttermore, Tabitha Farrar, and the unwavering support of my mom, I had beat my eating disorder.

I write all of this to raise a few key points. The first is that, while I did not necessarily have the most success in traditional eating disorder recovery centers, it did help me identify what was missing, although it took a great deal of self-discovery and research. Additionally, it showed me how individualized eating disorder recovery is. Eating disorder treatment centers truly do work wonderfully for some, but it is not the only way to recover. Additionally, not every eating disorder has an emotional root cause. Some are purely a culmination of disordered behaviors coupled with a genetic predisposition that kicks the “survival brain” into action. An automatic response to food scarcity.

There are practitioners out there who take a more biological approach to eating disorder recovery, viewing it through the lens of evolutionary responses to famine. No one approach is more valid than the other, but two constants remain—neural rewiring is a key component to sustainable recovery, and one should never feel like they (or their loved ones) are to blame for the development of their eating disorder. Playing the blame game is no way to try to lay a sustainable foundation that promotes long term wellbeing. Processing trauma is a crucial component to recovery from any mental health disorder, but not when it means relentlessly seeking a sole individual to push accountability onto, and wrongly so. Trauma is so incredibly complex and multi-faceted, and should be treated very carefully through the layers in which it presents. Forcing an explanation or a label onto someone only serves to further compound that trauma, adding extra layers that need not be there in the first place. Sometimes there truly is not a cause for the development of an eating disorder beyond the culmination of circumstance and genetic predisposition, hence the need for evolution-based treatment protocols.

The ultimate message I hope can serve as a key takeaway from my journey is this—never give up. You are not an anomaly. There are a plethora of ways to heal, and just because you feel stuck right now, doesn’t mean you always will be. Like anything good in life, recovery takes time. The more you continue the fight, the more you will learn about yourself and the tools that you need to be successful. I know, it might feel overwhelming right now, but it won’t feel that way forever. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel, and there are always people in your corner who are cheering you on, myself included. You are deserving of a life free from the shackles your eating disorder has placed on you. You are deserving of recovery. You are enough. Never doubt it. I believe in you, just like my mom always did in me.