Treading the Rough Road of Recovery - My Second Treatment Stay

Three months after her first inpatient treatment experience, Deena’s progress was wiped out by a swift relapse, causing her to return to the hospital. Deena and Brian had already spent their nest egg on her first hospital stay, thus relying on their family to help fund Deena’s second stint at healing her eating disorder.   

Overwhelmed by Deena’s second inpatient stay, Brian shares the mixture of guilt and freedom he felt, knowing he was not responsible for fixing her problems for her. Thankfully, Deena’s second facility took a much different approach than the first, including hands-on cooking education and long-term support. 

Years later, Deena confesses how she embraced a fake-it-to-make-it attitude throughout treatment and eventually no longer felt the need to fake anything. She understood her triggers and what caused her behaviors around food to shift, making a recovery more manageable when she finally returned home 7 months later.   

In this episode, Deena and Brian walk us through their individual experiences during Deena’s second treatment stay and why they believe you should always believe recovery is possible. 

 

You’ll also hear:

• Relapse is part of recovery
• The mental and emotional weight of being a caregiver for an addict 
• Why long-term care is critical for recovery 

 

Must-listen moments: 

[00:02:07] As a family member, when you finally get somebody to that treatment facility, it's not an easy thing to do. Treatment is scary. Treatment sucks. 

[00:08:22] It's not like you sit down with an addict and go, ‘I think you need help,’ and they go, ‘Yeah, I think you're right,’ and they get up and get help. I mean, that just doesn't happen, and that's not the reality of it.

[00:24:31] I think it's so important to have long-term care…but long-term care, you really need to be able to change those patterns in your recovery, to make your recovery last.

 

Mentioned in this Episode: 

https://www.montecatinieatingdisorder.com/

 

We’d love to hear from you via email at eatthatfat@gmail.com