Recovery and insurance has failed me greatly.

I have always been very sure that I more than likely have OSFED, because the way my ed presents, is shifting back and forth between 3 different phases of different behaviors. I have anorexic like phases, bulimic like phases, and binge eating disorder like phases.

Don't get me wrong, I love my ed therapist. She's really good, she exceeded my expectations.

But the outpatient ed program I'm currently in, is the only one I can access now and at any point in the foreseeable future.

I'm on medicaid which covers almost nothing and I cannot afford to self pay. If I had the money to self pay for any medical treatments, I wouldn't be on medicaid!

I was looking for somewhere to get professional help for my ed for literally a year. And kept getting rejection after rejection after rejection because "we don't accept medicaid"

I looked with the "medicaid" filter on for several sites and never got in contact with anyone on those outdated lists.

The medicaid plan's own site said there is no therapists that accept medicaid in my entire county and that they only cover ed trearment at the county mental health clinic, which wasn't possible for me to seek treatment from as I was indefinitely denied all services from the county mental health clinic.

I contacted project heal who offered me services and I accepted asap, but to this day have still never heard back after confirming accepting the offer, so i assume they never found a pro bono service in the area :/

It took me a whole. year. to find just one place that finally said "yes we accept medicaid"

and to this day, they are still the only place in my entire county that hasn't denied me and accepts medicaid.

So it is not possible for me to get another ed therapist.

This is truly the only ed program I can access now and at any point in the foreseeable future.

But that's not why it failed me. No.

I had an active ed for 9 years, and a whole eight years passed before I even considered/entertained the idea of recovery. For seven years, I was simply not interested. I simply did not want to recover. I didnt want help so I never tried to get it.

However, around year 4-5 I was considering seeking help for binging. Because the binging episodes were becoming really distressing as i was beginning to feel I was losing control. Before year 4-5 I kept believing it'd be the last time I binge and I'll get back on track. I still kept fooling myself with this lie but finally started to feel my control was slipping away from me more than ever. But the reason I didn't seek help was because of my restriction side. I was too scared that if I went into ed recovery they'd try to make me give up everything, including restricting/purging. I simply did not want to stop restricting or purging. I only wanted to stop binging. So I wasn't willing to take the recovery risk, and I continued trying to manage my ed behaviors on my own.

On year eight, I finally got distressed enough by my ed entirely (all of it, including restricting and purging now) that I started seeking help.

But again, it took me a year to be able to access help, so help didn't come until year nine.

The reason I went into recovery and was finally ready to give up *all* ed behaviors including restricting and purging was because I finally realized that if I wanted to stop binging, I'd have to stop restricting and purging as well. That restricting and binging was feeding into each other and creating these binge/restrict cycles. I came to believe restricting and binging couldn't exist alone so to stop one behavior I had to stop them all. And I was so desperate to stop binging and had gained so much weight from a recent prolonged binge phase that I was finally ready to make the sacrifice. I was finally ready to give up my entire ed in exchange for being able to eat like a nornal person and end the mental war.

Also, this was, quite literally, the only reason I had for ed recovery. Was to just stop ed behaviors and stop manipulating/fooling myself. I had no other reason as my ed hadn't caused any external damage in any area of my life. I never developed not one physical health problem from my ed. It didnt negatively impact any of my relationships. In fact, I was so high functioning and so good at hiding my ed the entire time that several people never even knew I had an ed. Never suspected a thing in the entire 9 years.

So anyway, here's why ed recovery failed me.

What I didn't know was, when they formally diagonose you with an ed, they do NOT consider a single piece of your historical context. They only consider current behaviors. And since I had just came out of a prolonged binge phase that caused weight gain when I entered ed recovery, I was misdiagnosed with a binge eating disorder. And my ed therapy almost only focused on binge eating. My restriction & purging behaviors were briefly mentioned sometimes, but the binge eating was the main focus.

And ed therapy ended up proving my recovery belief **wrong**

because after some time in ed recovery, I did the impossible. I stopped binging. I have been "sober" from binge eating for a long time now. Not only that, but the food noise and binge urges have completely stopped.

I geniuenly feel "cured" from binge eating now, so much so I literally don't even have a loss of control bingy voice anymore.

So clearly, ed recovery worked very well for what I was being treated for. Which was binge eating.

So how did recovery fail me you ask?

Because the restricting and purging went untreated as they weren't diagnosed and often weren't considered or were considered compensatory to binging.

I brought it up several times but no matter what it was always treated as compensatory.

And while I fully recovered from binge eating, I also fully relapsed into restricting and purging.

Recovery taught me that it actually *is* possible to heavily restrict without a single binge, proving me *wrong*

And even better, recovery stopped the food noise/mental distress across *all* aspects of my ed, so I no longer felt deprived when restricting and no longer felt stressed from purging. It became automatic routine with no stress. Just like brushing your teeth or showering.

Even if I bring up how little I'm eating or how allowing myself food freedom is too much, it goes unaddressed, as another reason is found for it, such as financial difficulties or not knowing how to moderate food after overeating and not knowing what counts as "too much" so it is excused.

And the restriction side of my ed is very happy. Sarisifed. With the binge urges and mental distress all gone, it's never flourished this much before.

The stress is so little that I don't even spend my days drowning myself in thinspo or watching ed media anymore. I dont fantasize about being skinny anymore. I just patiently wait for that day to come. I dont need to 'encourage' the restricted side of my ed at all since it's just simple, automatic routine now. I don't even think about it much anymore. I just do it without much thought put into it. Only reason I'm thinking about it this much to write all this about it right now is because I just had a therapy apppintment today.

But now I'm faced with this dilemma. My current ed program is clearly failing to meet all of my needs and treat my entire ed. But my current ed program is the only one that exists to me since it's the only one that took me and the only one that ever will take me for the entire foreseeable future.

So my choice now is, do I continue it and continue thriving in restriction, and risk that ending badly, or do I stop it and have no access to professional help at all again and risk the binging coming back again?