Andrea Roe talked about the ED voice in her Q&A last week. Andrea said:

One of the biggest aha moments during my recovery process was really getting and feeling that I was not my eating disorder. For the longest time, it actually felt like I was my eating disorder and my eating disorder was me. It felt like "it" was my identity.I didn't know who I was without it. I had forgotten.

And whenever I heard the voice in my head telling me I wasn't good enough, needed to lose weight, etc. ... I'd ask myself if that was the "real me" that was talking, or if it was the eating disorder speaking to me. I had to learn to separate these two voices - mine and the eating disorder voice. And when it was the eating disorder talking, I had to learn to fight back, talk back and disobey its commands. I had to learn to take control back over my life - after all, it was MY life, not the eating disorder's.

Trying to drown out the voice of ED also resonated with several readers. Melissa wrote:

The idea of being totally free is very motivating but I guess I am still at a point of being skeptical. I feel like these voices will always be there. I will just get better at not listening and having a stronger voice myself. I'm glad to hear that someone has done it though. It really makes me try that much harder, even just for today, to have a healthy day.

Another reader, guest, wrote:

I, too, struggle with separating the ED voice from my own, and have not yet been able to do it completely. It is inspiring to read about someone who truly knows what the struggle is like, who overcame it and is happy and healthy. Thanks, Andrea, for sharing your story!

Shannon Cutts also writes about the eating disorder voice in her book, Beating Ana: How to Outsmart Your Eating Disorder & Take Your Life Back (see yesterday's review here and learn more about her pro-recovery organization, MentorConnect, here). She discusses how she finally separated ED's voice from her own. Today, I want to share some of her techniques - in addition to others' - in hopes that they'll help you start to silence your ED voice and hear your own, loud and clear. Shannon writes:

I got a point where the eating disorder spoke to me at every moment, in every hour of every day. I was never allowed a moment's peace. At this point, I began to realize how invalid the eating disorder voice's comments were and how pointless it was to listen to anything it had to say. I realized none of its commentary was helpful, accurate, or based in reality, because even if  it did have something of value to say, I could not hear it through the emotional paralysis caused by its alternately vicious or poisonously kind tones.

1. Create a new voice. The ED voice may be so pervasive that you've forgotten what you even sound like, what your voice truly is. In a Q&A for Weightless, eating disorder survivor Kate Thieda said:

By the time I got treatment, I had been fully entrenched in eating disordered behaviors for over eight years, and that can't be undone overnight. I had no voice left-my life was completely dictated by my eating disorder, and everything I did was to satisfy what it told me to do.

Shannon suggests creating a new voice that's strong, resilient, reassuring, empathetic and kind, a voice that picks you back up when the ED voice rears its ugly head.  "You may have to literally create the voice from scratch, using your imagination about how you would like to be treated (not how you think you deserve to be treated or how the eating disorder voice tells you that you deserve to be treated) or how you would treat someone else who was suffering like you are."

2. Eat. Eating is one of the toughest parts of eating disorder recovery. "Don't eat that, you'll get fat!" or "No one is home, you can throw up." These may be the messages your ED voice shouts every time you sit at the table to eat, every time you feel the pangs of hunger in your stomach, every time you've finished eating.

But eating helps to feed your brain and restore normal function. And it helps shut up the ED voice. It helps you get smart, as Shannon calls it. As she writes, you start to refeed your brain "with accurate information about the origins, causes, and possible solutions for overcoming the disease so that when the ED voice speaks we are less likely to listen and react."

Still, you may be thinking that the ED voice is too strong. So was Shannon's.

Because her ED voice seemed omnipotent, she started to silence it in subtle but key ways. She developed a system. First, she bought books on the nutritional benefits of food, and would read them every time she ate. After much practice, her thoughts turned to food's benefits and eating healthfully. When it was time for lunch at work, she also picked a "food model," a person whose eating habits she would follow. She had two requirements for her model: 1. a person she genuinely admired for her heart and who inspired her to recover and 2. a person Shannon knew didn't have an eating disorder and whose weight remained stable.