Learn / Discovering New Pathways to Eating Disorder Recovery
Discovering New Pathways to Eating Disorder Recovery
September 9th, 2024| Clinically Reviewed by
Key Points
- Podcast guest Dana Sedlak, LCSW, shared her recovery story and insights on treatment.
- Early intervention and recovering a sense of self can support recovery.
- Parents and loved ones can also be key parts of the journey.
Dana Sedlak, LCSW, CEDS-C, was a wonderful guest on our recent Recovery.com Podcast episode. We were honored to learn more about her personal and professional experiences with eating disorder recovery, advancements in care, and how parents can navigate recovery with their children. Dana’s professional experience has centered around adolescents and their families, which she continues to this day.
You can find Dana’s episode here and hear from our past guests.
A Passionate Eating Disorder Specialist
Dana Sedlak is a certified eating disorder specialist, licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), and a consultant with the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (IAEDP). She’s worked primarily with adolescents at several treatment providers for eating disorder recovery. She strives to help teens rediscover their personal identity, learn healthy coping skills, and feel empowered and hopeful in their recovery.
Dana’s own experience as an adolescent with an eating disorder, and her subsequent recovery, fuels the daily passion she brings to her work.
Dana’s personal experience with an eating disorder began in 8th grade. Mono left her unable to participate in sports, which was a key aspect of her life. She also went through grief at that time, which,
“I would describe it as a perfect storm, right? There were so many different things happening in my life at that time that really kind of set me up for the actual development.”
Mono led her to lose weight and nearly every form of socialization, like school and sports. The grief, sickness, life upheaval, and stress led to unhealthy and unpleasant coping behaviors. Dana says,
“It was very clear that I didn’t want to be doing the behaviors that I was doing, but I had no idea how to stop them.”
Dana bravely involved her family once she realized something was wrong. As someone who loves writing and how it let her voice what she really felt, Dana wrote her family a letter describing what she was dealing with and that she needed their help. They responded promptly and got her into treatment. But even with their quick and loving response, Dana still struggled with imposter syndrome and worrying she was just ‘being dramatic.’ She remembers wondering,
“Maybe it’s not a big deal. Maybe I’m just experiencing something that everybody else in the world or all the other adolescent females might also be experiencing. And so feeling, like, am I being dramatic? Am I making this to be something way more than it is?”
Telling her family about her struggles also meant giving up her coping tool, uncovering her deep secret, and committing to treatment. Dana recalls,
“There was a swift, also, panic, right? Of what did I just do? But then there was a moment of relief, of okay, this is no longer just mine. And someone is going to help me.”
The Importance of Communication and Forming Personal Identity
Dana’s personal story and what she’s experienced as a treatment provider highlights the crucial aspect of communication—between parents and adolescents, treatment providers and patients, and even within ourselves. She suggests parents keep an open line of communication with their kids to catch issues before they arise, get prompt treatment when they do, and validate challenges along the way.
Identity also becomes a crucial issue to address in treatment for adolescents. Dana called out the tendency for teens (and adults) to tie their identity to the sport they play, their extracurricular activities, and their grade point average. While those aspects may be key parts of their personal identity, exploring who they are beyond that can help teens understand how and why eating disorders have become a coping mechanism. Dana says,
“We have to be able to help somebody understand themselves enough to realize, how is this [the eating disorder] helping me? How is this serving me? What is this doing for me–positively, without the judgment around it–to then figure out. Okay, so what are my other options? But if we don’t know that to begin with, we’re never going to figure out other options.”
Social media has also affected how young adults view and form their identity. The positive reinforcement of likes and shares encourages them to develop “suitable” versions of themselves. Managing this can lead to the stress associated with eating disorders or encourage weight loss through unrealistic portrayals of bodies and body image online. Through treatment, Dana strives to make teens feel like they’re living an authentic life true to themselves and who they are. She says,
“I want them to just feel like they’re living a life of purpose that’s true to them. And that’s going to be the biggest protective factor...”
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How Parents Can Help: Early Intervention
By the time a parent notices their child struggling with an eating disorder (unless they’re well-aware of the signs), it can have already progressed to needing intensive lifestyle changes and treatment. Regarding how parents often feel when discovering this, Dana empathetically says,
“There can feel like, there’s a lot of blame and shame in parenting, feeling like it’s a parent’s fault, or that they didn’t see something.” … “I think it needs to be everybody being more educated and knowing how we start to see these early onset signs.”
The earlier intervention happens, the better treatment outcomes become (that’s true for eating disorders and addiction.) An honest and compassionate conversation can be the first step in initiating treatment. When these interventions happen,
“And to me, if we’re doing that, we’re not just preventing eating disorders, we’re preventing a significant amount of mental health issues.” … “You have to be integrated into your own family unit, as best as you can and have the conversations as much as you can, just as a first step, as a preventative, as part of the family culture.”
Relating to this, our host Dr. Malasri Chaudhery-Malgeri adds,
“I think my message to parents who are doing that, is that you’re trying and that matters. And eventually, usually, that will get noticed. So don’t worry, you know, like as long as you’re making that effort and you’re trying and you’re keeping those lines of communication open, that’s great.”
Advancements and Goals for Eating Disorder Treatment
More open communication and a team-oriented approach in the home is a preventative measure Dana sees having vast benefits. She says,
“…how do we eliminate that power struggle as much as possible of, we’re here to help you recover, but that also doesn’t look like me trying to take this thing away from you and getting into that back and forth with you, right? We can kind of both remove ourselves from that and figure out, how do we be a team? Against the eating disorder is what I always try to phrase it as, right?”
Family therapy and education on eating disorders also helps families heal as a collective unit. Many treatment centers, especially ones for adolescents, have started seeing the importance of family care and incorporating it as a vital component.
Coaching has also become a vital tool in long-term eating disorder recovery. Therapists and/or those with lived experience can become certified as eating disorder recovery coaches and walk beside people in their recovery. This keeps the patient connected to support without intensive care, or really the feeling of ‘being in treatment.’
As for what Dana would tell others struggling with an eating disorder, especially teens, she says,
“But taking the chance, even if you don’t know that you want to get rid of the eating disorder, that’s okay. How can we still help you take a step towards feeling better right now? And like I was saying before, the rest will come. You deserve to feel better, you deserve a space to have less pain, regardless of your commitment level.”
Listen to Dana’s Episode Now
We’re grateful for Dana’s time and expertise, and for the illuminating conversations we had with our host Dr. Malasri Chaudhery-Malgeri and co-host Amanda Uphoff, Recovery.com’s Chief of Staff and a woman in recovery from an eating disorder and alcohol use disorder.
You can find Dana’s episode here!
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