Eating disorder recovery: using inspirational guides

Close observation first shows you the rose and droplets. Soon you are on an inner journey.

Inspiring quotes and images can open your mind, invigorate your heart, refresh your soul and inspire your creative path.  You need all this to stay courageous and committed on your path to your eating disorder recovery.

Here are some quotes to help you on your way.  Use them in your journal and in your meditations.  Choose what seems right, familiar or challenging or new and just what you’ve been looking for.  Choose what is being said that you have felt and known but never had words to express yourself.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can,

begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic.”

— Goethe

“The longest journey

Is the journey inwards

Of him who has chosen his destiny.

—  Dag Hammarskjold

“The journey of a thousand miles

begins with one step.”

— Lao Tzu (570-490 B.C.E.)

“We usually don’t look.

We overlook.”

— Alan Watts

“Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

The labyrinth is thoroughly known.

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.

And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence.

And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

— Joseph Campbell

“To know something, then, we must be scrubbed raw,

the fasting heart exposed.”

— Gretel Ehrlich

“I have a feeling that my boat has struck,

down in the depths,

against a very great thing.”

— Juan Ramon Jimenez (1881-1958)

“It’s not the road ahead that wears you out —

It’s the grain of sand in your shoe.”

— old Arabian proverb

“This is a great moment,

when you see, however distant,

the goal of your wandering.

The thing which has been living in

your imagination

suddenly becomes a part of the tangible world.”

— Freya Stark

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old,

seek what they sought.”

— Matsuo Basho

“I will study and get ready,

and maybe the chance will come.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Write these quotes in your journal on fresh pages. Let them guide your writings until the quote awakens something in you. And then journal about what is awakening.

To recover from repetitive constraints of an eating disorder you need to awaken to your new consciousness that is eager to be freed from your own dark depths. Use these quotes as keys to unlock your inner  prison doors. Let your healed and healthy self pour out on the pages of your journal and then into your life.

Joanna Poppink, MFT  Los Angeles private practice psychotherapist, author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder. Website: Eating Disorder Recovery.