Your treatment needs
If you are at immediate physical risk, you need inpatient treatment.
If you are not making progress in outpatient therapy, you need something more intensive.
If you’ve been doing great for months and have an established support system, you can decrease your level or frequency of treatment.
… but, is there such a thing as “touch-up” treatment?
In the spirit of my remission and relapse post, I’d like to emphasize the many shades of gray between the two extremes. You don’t wake up one morning to have fallen off the recovery cliff overnight (though it seems like that for some people). You can be doing “great,” or “overall good, but not quite as great as I could be,” or “eh, have been better,” or “having a tough time,” or “really struggling.” Often I think you are conscious of when you are starting to slip.
Additionally, I think that there are a lot of people who never reach a state where they are symptom-free. They still struggle with disordered thoughts, some food rituals or food fears, occasional purging, bad body image, guilty over not exercising, etc. (not all of the above — that would be significant. but a couple of the above).
Individuals in both of these cases are looking for “touch-up” treatment (as a friend of mine calls it). You’re not looking to go back to following a meal plan and to counting everything that you eat… or to spending 12 hours a week in an IOP program talking about stuff that you worked through five years ago. But is a 50-minute session with a therapist every week really going to really normalize your eating, or finally get you past that fear of gaining weight, or get your worsening anxiety and depression under control?
… or, does it take going back to meal plans, exchanges, ED groups, journaling, and all of that to reach your treatment goals? You’re working on the stubborn issues that weren’t resolved even back in the day when you did have intensive treatment… would an outpatient therapist be able to help push you past them now?
… and if “touch-up” treatment isn’t possible… is that why so many people get worse before they get better? Because they need more intensive treatment to make any progress?
I hope not. I am really rooting for “touch-up” therapy.
Just something to think about.
wow, i love the new layout
How many times can you touch up before the cracks just won’t be painted over anymore? When you have to totally strip down the wall and start again entirely. But then what if even that doesn’t work? and you realise that the problem is neither paint nor technique, its the wall, it just cannot be painted.
I’m not sure, if there comes a point where we have relapsed and recovered so many times, is anything aside from a frontal lobotomy or a time machine actually going to help?
I’ve just lost interest in therapy altogether now. I have all the tools to get better, its the motivation which has up until now been lacking. All the refresher courses and soul searching in the world can’t fix someone externally. I think we just have to hope that enough of the common sense has snuck through, and set up camp without us knowing. Maybe I am just on a mission to prove that it can be done, that treatment is not the only way.
Love the new look BTW
Maybe we can use what what is out there to meet the “touch-up” goals
That’s what I’m rooting for.
Thanks for all the compliments on the new design! I can’t believe I kept the old one for so long.
Lola, I like your analogy to the wall and the paint. Now you have me thinking about houses with fire damage (I have watched way too much of the Home & Garden channel lately). But with fire damage, you can go to just repaint the wall… only to realize that the whole wall underneath needs to be replaced. (hopefully this is not the case with anyone’s recovery!)
I know a lot of people (myself included) who are very jaded and disenchanted with the recovery process. I have to wonder though… would this be different if you could put together any kind of support or treatment? I think a lot of the frustration is with traditional treatment — therapy, meal plans, groups, etc. I believe that you have all the tools… but what external something would it take to get where you want to be? What would be ideal?
Hi, this is a great post – “touch up” treatment can be useful for all the issues that take us in to therapy but particularly the ones you discuss in your blog. It’s too easy to think that treatment is all-or-nothing.
Loving the new layout as well by the way – very classy
BTC