Getting healthy, putting faith into a treatment team and a future that you can’t even imagine, takes incredible strength – but the payoff is absolutely unbeatable.

Many times, especially early in my work with someone who is in recovery, be it from depression, anxiety, or in eating disorder recovery, I find myself trying to “sell” them on getting healthy. It’s so hard for someone who has felt down and potentially malnourished for so long to imagine that the hope of recovery actually applies to them. “I’ve seen people recover from a very similar place,” I say, hoping that my expertise lends some credibility to the healthy self inside them. “I know you didn’t always feel this way,” I say, encouraging them to recapture their former selves. “That is the disease talking,” I say, urging them not to take their hopelessness so seriously. It is nearly impossible to imagine that the dawn will come when the darkness of night has been so long.

And yet today, in more dramatic ways than typical, I saw that hope and that future take on concrete form. All in one day, I learned that three (!) of my amazingly strong, brilliant clients got into the colleges of their choice. The joy literally could not be contained, spilling out into the waiting room. Days, weeks, semesters of pent up anxiety suddenly dissipated, promises of (in this case) eating disorder recovery coming to fruition, hope reborn in an instant. It turns out, that recovery is in fact worth it. It turns out that facing your fears and “going all in” often turns out well.

Getting healthy, putting faith into a treatment team and a future that you can’t even imagine takes incredible strength, but the payoff is absolutely unbeatable. Ask yourself, if you went “all in” by letting go of shame, self-judgment, and fear of vulnerability, what might you be capable of? I dare you to find out what your recovery looks like…