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Re-entering the Work Force After Treatment for Bulimia
Contributor: Leigh Bell, BA, writer for Eating Disorder Hope
Coming back to work was one of the hardest things I did after a six-weeks-long medical leave to do a tune-up treatment. I had been recovered from anorexia for several years but was slipping from stress. Only a few co-workers, close friends who “got it,” knew why I’d left.
This was almost 15 years ago, but returning to the newsroom that first morning, I still recall the fear and vulnerability whacking against my chest faster than my fellow reporters’ fingers clicked the keyboards. Lots of people had questions about where and why I’d gone. And answering them made me nervous. Sweaty hands, sweaty armpits, red-faced, the whole bit. Yet, I was ready. I’d prepared for this with my treatment team from the intensive outpatient center I’d attended daily for almost two months.
This preparation was essential to my recovery, which hasn’t faltered since.
Plan Your Support System
Transitioning from treatment for bulimia to real life is challenging, but it’s also a moment to celebrate another step in recovery. You’re taking the skills you learned and applying them to your own life, making them your own. To help with this task, have a therapist, nutritionist, and psychiatrist, if needed, (and appointments!) lined up before leaving treatment. This may take some work if the treatment center is far from home, but referrals do wonders.
Try to find someone at work with whom you’re comfortable sharing your story. You’ll need some help when you struggle. You’re going to struggle. Get ready for it. There’s a reason why some 40% of people with bulimia nervosa relapse after 4 months of treatment1. Struggling alone or struggling on someone’s shoulder may be the difference between relapse and recovery.
If you’re comfortable, share with this “go-to person” your meal plan or ask him or her to be a bathroom buddy. If you can’t find a go-to person at work, have a support person to call or text when the vending machine in the break room is screaming your name, or you feel full after lunch, or you want to run “blank” miles during lunch.
Instilling Structure and Support Around Food
Treatment intentionally instills structure and support around meals unfound in the real world. Afterwards, you may be eating alone, with others, at home, at work, and not always the same time each day. First, be patient with yourself. And get a meal plan before you leave treatment until you see your local nutritionist.
I repeat: Get a meal plan. A realistic one reflecting your work hours, environment, and flexibility. Make this as easy on yourself as you can. If you have a 30-minute lunch break, lunch shouldn’t take 15 minutes to prepare.
Finding Food You Are Comfortable with
Find food with which you are comfortable and you can eat at work. Protein or granola bars, nuts, dried fruit, crackers, juice, anything. For example, I always-always-always ate at my desk because my work was deadline-driven and crazy busy. But I didn’t like people to watch me eat (we all have our “things”), so I never packed anything that smelled. We all know when anyone in at work, even three floors below us, is eating popcorn or tuna fish.
Here’s the most important thing. Eat your meal plan and don’t purge. If that means you have cardboard and peanut butter for lunch, that’s probably okay. This doesn’t have to be pretty. In fact, recovery isn’t pretty. Get through it. Refine later.
Dealing with Restaurant Lunches
Restaurant lunches. They’re often a necessary bane of working and recovering from bulimia. They can be challenging, at first. The 336 items on the menu but nothing to fit your meal plan. The making nicey-nicey talk while you’re trying to eat, and just recover and, just get through this meal. The way so many other people eat and leave the table and don’t think about it again, while you’re totally wanting to leave the table and head to the bathroom.
It gets easier. It gets soooooo much easier. Become familiar with and get menus from the restaurants by your workplace, decide with your nutritionist what you’ll order there (I repeat: make a meal plan), and when someone at work asks you to lunch or you have lunch meeting, suggest one of the places you’ve snooped.
Releasing the Stress from Work without Bulimia
Work can be stressful. I don’t care if you’re President of the United States or bagging groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. Stress that’s a whisper can be a shout when you don’t have bulimia to release the pressure. Again, be patient with yourself. I wanted to prove to everyone (see, we all have our “things”) my illness didn’t hinder my performance. I could jump back in like I’d never left. And I could. Kind of. Until I couldn’t. I had to scale it back for a while and carefully choose work assignments that wouldn’t bend me over backwards.
Pinpoint your own work stressors before you go back and realize you’ll have to work around them. Take deep breaths. Reach out to your go-person when stress becomes too much. And focus on the positives about work. I mean, look at you. You are recovering. You are working. You are winning. Go get ‘em tiger!
The Family Medical Leave Act
The Family Medical Leave Act went into effect in 1993 and allows eligible employees to take 12 unpaid weeks from work without threat of job loss for the following reasons:
- Birth of child or placement of child for adoption or foster care
- To care for a spouse, child, or parent who has a serious health condition
- For a serious health condition that makes the employee unable to perform essential job functions
- For any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that a spouse, child, or parent is on active military duty
— U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division
Paid Family and Medical Leave
- Most U.S. workers don’t have the benefit of paid family/medical leave.
- The FMLA only covers about 60 percent of the American workforce, and it only guarantees unpaid leave, which many cannot afford.
- Only 13 percent of U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through their employers, and fewer than 40 percent have access to medical leave through employer Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI).
- Only six states have paid-leave laws.
— National Partnership for Women and Families
About the Author:
Leigh Bell holds a Bachelor of Arts in English with minors in Creative Writing and French from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She is a published author, journalist with 15 years of experience, and a recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. Leigh is recovered from a near-fatal, decade-long battle with anorexia and the mother of three young, rambunctious children.
Last Updated & Reviewed By: Jacquelyn Ekern, MS, LPC on May 15th, 2015
Published on EatingDisorderHope.com
