EATING DISORDER TREATMENT….THE PRINCESS AND THE PROGRAM

I’ll never forget the first time I was looking into eating disorder treatment. I was about 27 and didn’t have a clue what to do. I had denied the fact that I needed help for 5 years, despite that I knew deep down inside I was pretty screwed up. Choosing treatment to me wasn’t based […]

Eating Disorders Treatment brought to you by RaderPrograms.com

I’ll never forget the first time I was looking into eating disorder treatment. I was about 27 and didn’t have a clue what to do.
I had denied the fact that I needed help for 5 years, despite that I knew deep down inside I was pretty screwed up.

Choosing treatment to me wasn’t based on anything else except the fact that I was trusting wherever I went the people knew what they were doing. I was trusting they could make my problem go away.
Back then I wasn’t connecting that my problem with food was connected to my feelings. I simply thought I had no self control, no power, and was weak to the forces that were my disorder.

I did end up going somewhere that quite honestly was not a place somebody in my state should have gone. I ‘m not bashing the program, but their way of doing things was based more on treating somebody with alcoholism and drug addiction.

My eating disorder took control, and I ended up going AWOL my second month, scaling a fence, and hitching it to the nearest Burger King.

After that I was thrown into a plethora of various treatment centers. I was in some of what was considered some of the best, and I was in what is considered what you would consider the worst.
I have to say that honestly neither one of them mattered, because all of them were lacking one thing…my desire to get better.

It honestly didn’t really matter where I was at when I decided to throw in the towel, for obvious reasons I am really glad that place was Rader, because once I was ready to let go I knew I would. That being said, I also think that being in a place that doesn’t make your disease softer by making it comfy is pretty essential.

I think it’s kind of interesting these days, quite honestly this is purely by observation, that treatment is being treated like getting into an Ivy league school or going to a spa.

I know girls whose parents based their treatment program off of who else was in the program with them. Basically was the majority of the patient populated educated, young, nice.
They examined program after program with a fine tuned comb, touring the grounds of each facility,not even really taking into consideration of how their daughters really felt.

I know other patients who have taken a different route and somewhat based their decisions off of accommodations and luxuries.

Was there a pool, massages, personal chef? Were the towels fluffy, could they bring their pet poodles,how often were shopping visits to Saks 5th Avenue?

I don’t know whether to sit back and laugh, or go take a gallon of pepto-bismo.

Treatment is not an excuse for your disease to get a facials time for your disease to get it’s face slapped.

It’s not getting into Princeton, it’s getting your act together.
I understand people want to be comfortable, but if you want to go to a four star hotel, I hear the Waldorf Astoria is lovely.

I think that there is also a fine line. You don’t want to be getting treatment in the slums of Beverly Hills.

You honestly have to look at it like boot camp.
When a soldier is going through boot camp they don’t treat him fancy.

They don’t do their dry cleaning and serve them butter cookies.

Why?? because they know that the harder they push a recruit the harder he or she will perform.

That’s what treatment should be like, and I don’t think you have to go to any extreme, but you do have to take away any kind of anything that will distract you from working on yourself.

When I was on TV they threw all that at me while I was in a program. I had a DVD player in my room, a personal chef, my personal microwave, an espresso machine.

Ya…well ask all those producers where that got me and them. It totally backfired and it made my desire to stay sick sink in deeper.

You can sugarcoat a lemon, but it still won’t take out the sour.

So if you are indeed looking for treatment, or looking at one for your son and daughter, I don’t recommend basing your choice on one with all the trimmings. Instead focus on what they have to offer at the core of their program. Are they dedicated to their patients, do they provide the necessary structure, will they make you focus on the problem at hand and get to the bottom of what is really going on.

I know for me Rader programs did that for me, and yes I may be bias, but I have good reason to be. If they wouldn’t have pushed and shoved me towards my recovery I would have never gotten where I am today.

Just color yourself Goldilocks and go for a program that isn’t too hot or isn’t too cold, go for a program that is ”just right.”

FULL METAL JACKET–KICK ASS MOTIVATIONAL SPEECH

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peRA28m9uzY

Eating Disorders Treatment brought to you by RaderPrograms.com