With different modes of care come different modes of living: Embodied Cartographies of Eating Disorders Care and Recovery

Abstract

In this dissertation, I take up the question of how women who were diagnosed with an eating disorder experienced the processes and outcomes of undergoing treatment within a contemporary Spanish context. I explore the care articulated within treatment systems, how it feels, and how it shapes later recoveries. I examine when systems fail to hold people in recovery and how to better support them in their trajectories towards wellness. I also investigate how recovery looks and feels like and how their experiences challenge dominant discourses about what it means to recover. To this end, I conduct interviews with ten women (24-33) from Catalonia, Spain, about their experiences navigating eating disorders treatment systems and their recoveries. Participants explored feeling mistrusted, and their personal needs disregarded during treatment but also expressed feeling seen and validated. Surveillance prominently featured in participants’ stories both during treatment and once in recovery. The multiple and diverse ways participants live their recoveries points toward the need to render visible other, more realistic stories about what it means to be recovered.