Chapter 7

This section focuses on hope and being hopeful as you develop self-care strategies. Remember working toward recovery is hard work, it takes time, good friends, family and trusted health care professionals.

Hope and Being Hopeful

In the midst of recovery, you may feel tired and hopeless. You may also be discouraged, stuck in the cycle and chaos of the eating disorder. This is important to acknowledge that living with an eating disorder involves emotions. Remember, a well-nourished brain is necessary to do the hard work of recovery. Therapy may be delayed until the team is confident you are eating and drinking fluids.

This book does not discuss all the human emotions identified by researchers (Brown, 2022). Yet, we identified from our experiences that it was important to discuss experiences of hope as well as experiences of feeling hopelessness and living in despair (Brown, 2022). It is important to understand that there is hope and that you can feel hopeful as you strive for wellness. You can live with an eating disorder and still find hope for the future. You can work toward recovery alongside trusted family, friends and health care professionals. You are not alone, ask for support.

“I would never claim to be recovered, but I am like most others, managing my symptoms. I am aware of my triggers, I can process the emotions and thoughts that recur. I can challenge my behavior and my thoughts. I am not the person I once was, but I am far better than I ever imagined that I could be, I am hopeful”- Hannah

“I am aware that at times I was grieving for what was, or what I thought life would be like, I found praying and journaling to be of benefit” -Janet

Creation Space

1. Can you describe or sketch what makes you hopeful when living with an eating disorder?
2. Have you spoken your truth today?
3. What do you feel hopeful about today?
4. Can you tell when you feel hopeless about your eating disorder?

Hope

In this section, I will open with a meaningful quote by Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl:

“Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” (Viktor E. Frankl cited in Muldoon, 2020).

 Frankl’s book Mans Search for Meaning (1984) has always been an inspiration for me. This book was especially meaningful when I struggled to be hopeful. This book served as a constant reminder to me  that I was worthy of breathing and living. One quote is significantly meaningful to me: “turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action” (Frankl, 1982, p. 162).

I believe hope is within each of us. In reality, I also know that when you live with an eating disorder, it is easy to feel little to no hope at times (Stavarski et al., 2018). Yet, when caring friends, family and trusted health care professionals provide caring support, our suffering can, as described by Frankl, inspire you to take responsible action to overcome your suffering. During recovery, a health care professional may ask you to complete an assessment on your hope and spirituality levels. For example, your health care professional may ask you to complete a tool such as the Spirituality Self-Rating Scale (SSRS) and or the Herth Hope Index (HHI). These tools help us pay attention to what underpins our hope. By evaluating our levels of hope and spirituality, we can begin to develop interventions to increase our levels of trust, hope and spirituality and allow us to share and talk about our emotions and perspectives including how we see the world, what we yearn for and what we hope for each and every day (Kuhnke, 2024).

Creation Space

1. What do you think about hope, being hopeful, having hope, and feeling hopeless?
2. Do you feel hopeful about life in general?
3. Do you feel hopeful about the present?
4. Do you feel hopeful while living with an eating disorder?
5. What does hope look like for you if you drew or created an image?

In my journey, hope for me was as small as a grain of sand, almost invisible, buried deeply in wanting to live (Janet). I hoped and was hopeful that I would be stronger and yet at times, feeling hopeful seemed very far away and elusive. Colla and colleagues (2022) state there are 26 theories and definitions of hope. In this journal, our intent is to lean into the definition of hope that supports each of us by drawing from strengths from within and from without. This may refer to your “beliefs, wishes and actions taken” [and may be] “linked to [one’s] faith and tends to have an emphasis on the fear of the unknown and of the unseen” (Buchanan, 2021, p. 43). Colla et al. (2022) describe hope as being complex and linked to your living situation, your academic and schooling, and your self-esteem.

“I hid the trauma and resumed my daily life. I had so much pain, fear, and shame, but I hid it all, hoping that one day, I would trust myself to share my own story. I hoped for the day when shame and guilt would take a backseat to empowerment and hope”- Hannah

If you are interested you can learn more about your hope and your present perspectives on hope by completing the twenty questions about hope. You can find this tool online. In this scale, Dr. A. T. Beck (1978) asks clear questions about hopelessness. As well, Snyder and colleagues (1995) have created a tool focused on adult hope scale, again this can be found online for free (Positive Psychology, 2022). Finally, Brene Brown’s (2022) book, Atlas of the Heart give rich descriptions of hope.