Everyone has heard the phrase about things having to get worse before getting better. However, it doesn’t say MAKE things worse so that they can get better. It doesn’t exactly work like that. I see a couple of different situations where people “try to get out of the eating disorder by going [further] into their eating disorder”:

“I’m not deflecting because I’m avoiding something deep. I’m deflecting because I’m avoiding something shallow.” – House, MD
One of my biggest treatment pet peeves is when professionals ask non-deep “deep” questions. For example:

What does it mean to feel?
How did it feel to be in that space?
How does it feel to be in this space now?
What does it mean for you to not be in that space anymore?
How do you experience that process?
What would it mean for there to be grey in your world?
How does it feel to have …

You think that the only truth that matters is that truth can be measured. Good intentions don’t count. What’s in your heart doesn’t count. Caring doesn’t count.
–Moriarty, House M.D. No Reason

The belief that “things don’t count” has always been a huge obstacle for me in recovery. Maybe originally I used the eating disorder to physically communicate something that I couldn’t verbalize… or maybe it was a manifestation of an unspoken problem that had to surface somehow. Or maybe I just had the biology + trauma = anorexia equation …