Why Ambivalence Is a Normal Part of Eating Disorder Recovery (Not a Sign You’re Failing)
September 17, 2026
If you’re in recovery from an eating disorder and some days you want it more than anything, and other days part of you wants to hold onto the eating disorder too, you might have started to worry that this means something is wrong. That you’re not trying hard enough. That you’re not “really” ready. That everyone else in recovery feels certain and you’re the only one who doesn’t.
You’re not the only one. Wanting recovery and not wanting it at the same time is one of the most common experiences in eating disorder treatment, and it has a name: ambivalence. It isn’t a sign that treatment isn’t working, and it isn’t a character flaw. It’s an expected part of the process, and understanding why can take a lot of the shame out of it.
What ambivalence actually looks like
Ambivalence in eating disorder recovery rarely feels like a clean fifty-fifty split. It’s messier than that. It might sound like wanting to feel more energy and connection in your life, while also feeling safer and more in control when you’re restricting. It might mean genuinely wanting to stop bingeing, while also relying on it as the only way you currently know how to cope with a hard day. It can mean grieving the loss of a behaviour that has organised your life for years, even while you know it’s hurting you.
These feelings can exist in the same person, sometimes in the same hour. That’s not a contradiction to resolve before you can move forward. It’s the actual material of recovery work.
Why this is clinically expected, not a treatment failure
Eating disorders develop for reasons. They often start as a way of coping with distress, gaining a sense of control, managing difficult emotions, or responding to messages about bodies and worth that most of us absorb from a very young age. Whatever the eating disorder is doing for someone, it’s doing something. That’s part of what makes it so hard to let go of, even when it’s also causing serious harm.
Research on motivational interviewing in eating disorder treatment describes ambivalence as a normal feature of the change process rather than a barrier to it [1]. In the stages of change model, which is widely used in eating disorder services, people in the contemplation stage are described as recognising there’s a problem while still being uncertain about committing to action, sometimes described as “sitting on the fence” [2]. This isn’t a stage to rush someone through. It’s a stage to work with.
If a clinician treated ambivalence as a problem to eliminate as quickly as possible, they’d be working against the grain of how change actually happens for most people, not just in eating disorder recovery but in any significant behaviour change. Pushing someone to declare full certainty before they feel it tends to increase resistance, not reduce it.
Ambivalence is not the same as being unready
It’s worth being clear about the difference between ambivalence and a lack of readiness, because they get treated as the same thing and they aren’t.
Ambivalence is being able to hold two true things at once: part of you wants to change, and part of you is scared to, or isn’t sure how, or isn’t ready to give up what the eating disorder provides. You can be ambivalent and still be actively engaged in treatment, still be making changes, still be moving forward. In fact, most people who are doing meaningful recovery work are ambivalent at least some of the time.
A lack of readiness looks different. It tends to mean someone isn’t yet able to engage with the idea of change at all, sometimes because they don’t yet see the eating disorder as a problem, sometimes because other things need to be in place first, like safety, support, or capacity. Readiness can shift over time, and it isn’t fixed either.
The distinction matters because if ambivalence gets mistaken for unreadiness, someone might be told, directly or indirectly, that they need to feel more certain before they deserve support. That’s the opposite of what’s helpful. Waiting for total conviction before reaching out or continuing treatment can mean waiting a very long time, because for many people that certainty doesn’t arrive until well into the recovery process, if it ever fully arrives at all.
How a dietitian works with ambivalence, rather than around it
In practice, working with ambivalence means not pretending it isn’t there. A motivational interviewing approach doesn’t try to argue someone out of the part of them that’s unsure, or talk them into a version of certainty they don’t actually feel. Instead, it makes space for both sides.
That can look like exploring what the eating disorder currently offers someone, honestly and without judgement, alongside what recovery might offer instead. It can mean noticing what someone actually says about their own values and where they want their life to go, and gently reflecting that back, rather than supplying motivation from the outside. It can mean sitting with the discomfort of “I want this and I’m scared of it” without rushing to resolve it into something tidier.
This is different from a purely directive approach that tells someone what to do and expects compliance. It’s also different from being purely neutral or passive. A dietitian working this way is actively engaged, curious about what’s underneath the ambivalence, and paying attention to the person’s own reasons for change, because those tend to be far more durable than reasons imposed from outside [1].
This approach also fits with a weight-inclusive, non-diet way of working. The goal isn’t to get someone to comply with a plan as quickly as possible. It’s to build a way of eating, and a relationship with food and body, that the person can actually sustain, which usually means working through ambivalence rather than steamrolling past it.
If you’re newer to this, our post on why letting go of restriction is the hardest part of working on binge eating goes into a related idea: that the behaviours we’re trying to shift are often doing something for the person, which is exactly why ambivalence about giving them up makes sense.
What this means for you
If you’ve been holding off on reaching out for support because you don’t feel one hundred percent sure you want to change, or because some part of you still isn’t ready to let go of the eating disorder, it’s worth knowing that this doesn’t disqualify you from getting help. Ambivalence isn’t a waiting room you need to sit in alone until you feel differently. It’s something that can be worked through in the room, with support, rather than before you get there.
You don’t need to have it all figured out. You don’t need to want recovery every single day, or even most days, to make it worth starting the conversation.
Getting support
If any of this sounds familiar, you don’t need to have it all sorted out before reaching out. Support is available both in person at our East Brisbane practice and via telehealth, wherever you are. If you’d like to talk through what recovery support could look like for you, you’re welcome to book a discovery call. Uncertainty is a completely normal place to start from.
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References
[1] Macdonald, P., Hibbs, R., Corfield, F., & Treasure, J. (2012). The use of motivational interviewing in eating disorders: A systematic review. Psychiatry Research, 200(1), 1-11.
[2] National Eating Disorders Collaboration (NEDC). Stages of Change. Retrieved from nedc.com.au.
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