Narrative Therapy and Eating Disorders: Help or Hype?

If you kick around the eating disorder recovery/treatment/research community for a while, you’re bound to come across someone calling their eating disorder “Ed.” In both the popular and scholarly literature around eating disorders, this externalizing and personifying approach has come to be quite popular. At face value, it makes sense to attribute blame for what can be an extremely difficult and painful experience to something other than oneself; it might be easier to “fight for recovery” if you have something to fight against.

But is there any evidence for the helpfulness of externalizing eating disorders? Who is “Ed,” and does “he” (or “she”) hold meaning for most or all sufferers? How might treatment programs make use of this construct in helping to facilitate clients’ recovery?

I will preface this post with a few disclaimers: firstly, I found a lot of solace in personifying my eating disorder early on in treatment … Continue reading →