The Grief We Don't Talk About: Why Mourning Is Central to Eating Disorder Recovery
An Interview with Jessica Aronson, LCSW-R, CEDS-C, ACSW, CGP
Most people think eating disorder recovery is about changing behaviors around food. While restoring physical health is an essential part of healing, recovery often asks something far more profound: letting go of a coping strategy that once helped someone survive. That process is rarely talked about in the way it deserves to be. At its heart, it is a process of grief.
Recovery can involve grieving the loss of the eating disorder—not because it was something a person wanted, but because it often served an important purpose. For many, it provided a sense of safety, predictability, or control during times of overwhelming emotional pain. Recovery also invites mourning for years spent disconnected from oneself, relationships affected by the disorder, missed opportunities, and the painful realization of needs that may never have been fully recognized or met. Rather than signaling that healing has stalled, this grief often reflects that it is moving forward.
This conversation brings together two complementary perspectives on that journey. My practice focuses on helping individuals navigate grief, anxiety, depression, and life transitions through mindfulness, nervous system regulation, and body-based approaches that foster greater self-awareness and emotional resilience. Jessica Aronson Therapy approaches healing through an integrative framework that combines eating disorder treatment, trauma therapy, attachment work, and somatic psychotherapy. As a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist and Consultant (CEDS-C), Jessica Aronson, LCSW-R, ACSW, CGP, has dedicated her career to helping individuals understand that lasting recovery extends far beyond symptom reduction.
Although our clinical specialties differ, we share a fundamental belief: healing does not come from avoiding painful emotions but from developing the capacity to experience them with safety, curiosity, and support. When grief is met with compassion instead of fear, it can become a catalyst for growth—helping people reconnect with themselves, deepen their relationships, and build lives that are no longer organized around survival, but guided by resilience, meaning, and hope.
The following conversation explores why grief is not a detour from eating disorder recovery—it is one of its most transformative pathways.
Steph Bayan: Many people think eating disorder recovery is primarily about changing behaviors around food. Why do you believe grief is actually one of the most essential—and overlooked—parts of the healing process?
Jessica Aronson: Eating disorders certainly manifest through food and body, but they rarely begin there. They develop as adaptations to overwhelming experiences, trauma, attachment disruptions, emotional pain, or environments where a person's needs could not be fully expressed or met. In many ways, the eating disorder becomes a relationship—a trusted partner that offers predictability, protection, safety, and a sense of control when life feels unsafe.
Recovery asks someone to loosen their grip on something that has, paradoxically, helped them survive. That process naturally evokes grief. Clients aren't simply grieving the disorder itself; they're grieving the function it served, the years spent disconnected from themselves, relationships affected by the illness, and often the realization of what they deserved but never received.
Rather than viewing grief as a setback, I see it as evidence that healing is unfolding. When people can mourn what was lost, they begin making room for a more authentic relationship with themselves.
Steph Bayan: Eating disorders often serve an important psychological purpose. What are people truly grieving when they begin letting go of the disorder that once helped them survive?
Jessica Aronson:
They're grieving far more than behaviors. They're saying goodbye to a way of navigating the world.
Many clients describe feeling as though they're losing a companion, a partner—one that was always present, even when it caused immense suffering. A relationship to go home to at the end of the day. Others grieve the identity they built around perfectionism, achievement, caretaking, or being "the strong one." There can also be tremendous sadness for childhood experiences, developmental milestones, relationships, and opportunities that were overshadowed by the illness.
As clinicians, we sometimes focus on helping clients shrink the power of eating disorder behaviors and symptoms. Equally important is helping them discover what those symptoms were protecting. When we approach that question with curiosity instead of judgment, grief becomes less frightening and more meaningful.
Steph Bayan: Both of our practices recognize that healing is not solely a cognitive process. How do body-based and somatic approaches help clients access and integrate grief, trauma, and emotional experiences that may exist beyond language?
Jessica Aronson:
Our bodies often know long before our minds do.
One of the principles I emphasize is helping clients stay with their bodies—not in an overwhelming way, but by gently noticing sensations, cues, impulses, and shifts in physiology. Those experiences provide invaluable information about what the nervous system has learned and what it now needs.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, EMDR, and attachment-focused work all recognize that trauma is not stored simply as a story. It's carried in implicit patterns of protection, movement, sensation, and relational expectations. As clients begin noticing these experiences with curiosity and support, they're often able to access emotions that words alone could never fully express.
Healing happens not only through insight but through new embodied experiences of safety.
Steph Bayan: In your work, how do trauma and attachment histories shape both the development of eating disorders and a person's capacity to experience grief safely?
Jessica Aronson:
Trauma fundamentally influences how we experience safety, connection, and emotion. If someone learned early in life that vulnerability was dangerous or that emotional needs went unmet, their nervous system naturally develops strategies to protect itself.
Eating disorders often become one of those strategies.
Attachment experiences also shape how people relate not only to others but to themselves. Interestingly, I often observe that a client's relationship with their eating disorder mirrors their relational patterns. There may be dependency, fear of abandonment, self-criticism, mistrust, or a longing for security.
Healing involves creating new relational experiences—both within therapy and internally—where emotions, including grief, can be experienced without becoming overwhelming.
Steph Bayan: Recovery frequently involves mourning lost time, relationships, opportunities, and even aspects of identity. How do you help clients move through these profound losses without becoming overwhelmed by them?
Jessica Aronson:
Psychoeducation is incredibly empowering.
I spend a great deal of time teaching clients about the autonomic nervous system, the Window of Tolerance, physiological responses to stress, and Stephen Porges' work on the Polyvagal Theory and social safety. When clients understand that their bodies are responding exactly as they were designed to respond, shame often begins to soften.
Rather than asking clients to "push through" grief, we help them build the capacity to move in and out of difficult emotional experiences while remaining connected to themselves.
Grief becomes tolerable when the nervous system experiences enough safety to stay present with it.
Steph Bayan: For clinicians, knowing when and how to invite grief work can be challenging. What helps you determine when a client is ready to engage in mourning as part of treatment?
Jessica Aronson:
Readiness isn't about the absence of distress. It's about the presence of resources, the relationships and practices that support social safety. A strong and safe relationship with someone's therapist supports healing and holds space for someone to grieve.
I'm paying attention to regulation, flexibility, curiosity, and whether a client can notice emotional or physical experiences without immediately becoming flooded or shutting down. We continuously titrate the work, allowing clients to move toward grief and then back toward regulation.
Healing is rarely linear. It's rhythmic.
Our job is not to accelerate mourning but to create the conditions where grief can unfold at a pace the nervous system can integrate.
Steph Bayan: My work often reminds clients that grief doesn't have to represent an ending. From your perspective, what does post-recovery growth look like, and how can moving through grief ultimately help people reclaim a fuller, more meaningful life?
Jessica Aronson:
One of the greatest gifts of recovery is discovering that life becomes larger than the eating disorder.
Clients begin trusting their bodies instead of fearing them. Relationships become more authentic because they're no longer organized around hiding, pleasing, or surviving. They develop greater flexibility, compassion, and resilience.
Grief isn't something we "get over." It becomes woven into our life story in a way that expands our capacity for connection, meaning, and joy.
When people have the courage to stay present with sadness instead of escaping it, they often discover something unexpected: hope. Not because the past disappears, but because they are no longer living in service of it.
That, to me, is what recovery truly offers.
Where Our Work Intersects
Although our clinical specialties differ, both of our practices share a fundamental belief: healing begins when individuals develop the capacity to safely experience what their bodies and emotions have been communicating all along. Steph Bayan's work helping clients navigate grief, anxiety, depression, and embodied healing naturally complements Jessica Aronson's integrative treatment of eating disorders, trauma, attachment, and nervous system regulation. Together, these perspectives remind clinicians that grief is not simply an emotional response to loss—it is an essential developmental process that allows clients to move beyond survival and toward genuine integration. For multidisciplinary providers, embracing both relational and somatic approaches creates richer opportunities for lasting recovery. Learn more about Jessica Aronson Therapy at www.jaronsontherapy.com and explore Steph Bayan's work on grief, mindfulness, and body-based healing at www.stephbayantherapy.com.
