As a new counselor who is recovered from an ED, I have been doing the “Do I treat EDs” debate in my head. When I was sick, I wanted nothing more than to help others with EDs. But as we all know, it was probably more of a way to say, “You get better, I will stay sick.” I felt it was my calling from an early age because it was one thing I KNEW like the back of my hand.Today, I want to assure that if I make a disclosure about having recovered from an 18-year battle with ED that the client will not immediately start questioning my short height and natural body size thinking I am still active in my ED. I am fully recovered and am quite proud of that fact. Now I am able to read the research and discuss things from a professional perspective… I find that I get emails from old friends or friends of friends anyway and they are wanting me to mentor them as they go through the beginning stages of their own journey. My own therapist never had an ED and she is amazing!!! I give her much credit for leading me to my successes, although I know that I had to be the one to actually do all of the hard work. For me, having a therapist who had recovered worked against me because of her approach to EDs and her strong personality moreso than the fact that she had been there too.

So, for the first time next Saturday I will see a client who has an ED. I did disclose that I had struggled and recovered because it was apparent through our conversations that she had either seen that on my blog somewhere or just made an assumption. She still chose to schedule and even though I work with clients who have other disorders, EDs are the area I feel most confident in treating. We shall see!

Oh and just another thing, having worked in the media for so long, I had/have a public platform and have used it at times to advocate for EDs. This is one of the main reasons I disclose my history because I would hate for a client to see it somewhere else and then feel like I deceived them. Make sense?