ABSTRACT
If someone is going to recover from an eating disorder, they really have to find some sort of meaning or purpose. For the authors and for nearly all of their former clients, finding meaning outside of appearance and weight was integral to a full recovery. In this chapter, they explain how they personally used meaning to overcome their own eating disorders. They detail how true meaning gives us a safer source of self-esteem (versus appearance and weight-based self-esteem). Additionally, they provide different strategies to foster and create meaning, and share some journaling prompts meant to elicit people’s potential personal sources of meaning.
