Dawn Brockett is a masterful storyteller who has crafted a beautiful and eminently accessible memoir about her struggles with anorexia from the healing side of the illness. Most important is her central thesis about control and power. In essence, the confusion is over the need of the anorectic to control something. In my forty years of mental health practice, I have always believed this about anorexia myself. Many well-meaning therapies often intensify the pain, not heal it. People fail to realize that this control is to anorexia as suicide is to depression. In neither case is the dramatic action itself the problem. Yet, in both cases the action is a vehicle or tool to solve a deeper problem. As a medical resident in the late 1980s, I participated in the ‘treatment’ of anorectic young women. Back then, we thought the proper treatment was to ‘fight fire with fire,’ by trying to stamp out the ‘obstinance’ of these suffering young ladies.

We could not have been more wrong.

To those women, I give my own heartfelt apologies. To understand what the real problem is, I fear you will have to read Unrestricted. The benefit, dear reader, is a deeper insight into the inner conflict suffered every day through this disorder. You will also learn that there is hope, and that these demons can and should be quieted.