What If I Miss My Eating Disorder?
It’s one of the hardest things to admit out loud, especially when everyone around you expects you to feel “better” now that you’re in recovery.
But the truth is, it’s completely normal to miss your eating disorder.
Not because you want to return to the pain or restriction, but because it once felt like safety. It gave you structure, identity, and a sense of control in a world that often felt unpredictable or overwhelming. Letting it go can feel like losing a part of yourself.
The Grief No One Talks About
Recovery is often framed as a triumph: you fight the eating disorder, and you win. But what happens after the battle is over?
For many people, there’s grief. You may find yourself mourning the rituals, routines, or even the attention that came with being unwell. It can feel confusing - how can you miss something that hurt you? (If you’ve ever left a toxic relationship, you’ll understand this feeling on a deep level!).
But grief doesn’t always mean you want to go back. It means you’re recognising the role your eating disorder played in helping you survive.
Understanding What You’re Really Missing
When clients tell me they miss their eating disorder, I often ask, “What did it give you?”
Maybe it gave you a sense of achievement or purpose. Maybe it numbed your pain or helped you feel in control when everything else felt chaotic. Naming what you miss allows you to understand what needs are still unmet.
The goal isn’t to shame those feelings, but to translate them and find new, healthier ways to meet the same needs.
Grieving as Part of Healing
Recovery asks you to build a life that no longer depends on your eating disorder to feel safe, purposeful, or enough. That means allowing space for grief, confusion, and even nostalgia. These emotions don’t mean you’re failing; they mean you’re healing.
You’re not saying, “I want my eating disorder back.” You’re saying, “I want to feel safe, special, and cared for again.” And those are profoundly human needs.
Learning to Rebuild Your Identity
Without the eating disorder, you may feel uncertain about who you are. This is the tender work of recovery: reclaiming the parts of yourself that got lost, and discovering new ones that were never allowed to emerge before.
Over time, you can begin to trust that safety and belonging don’t come from control, but from connection. You can still honour the part of you that needed the eating disorder, while gently reminding yourself: I don’t need it to survive anymore.
Support Your Healing with the Coaching Workbook Bundle
If you’re navigating recovery, body image challenges, or emotional eating, the Coaching Workbook Bundle offers gentle, therapist-designed tools to help you reconnect with yourself and rebuild from the inside out.
This bundle includes five digital, fillable and printable workbooks covering:
Body image and self-acceptance
Emotional eating and self-compassion
Stress management and nervous system regulation
Intuitive eating and food freedom
Health at Every Size (HAES®) principles
Each workbook includes guided reflections, CBT-based exercises, and practical prompts to help you heal at your own pace, with curiosity, not criticism.
