What Actually Happens Inside the Recovery Community | Hanne Arts

Last week on a group coaching call, one of the women said something that stuck with everyone:

"I wish my day was not like a jigsaw puzzle that needs to fit together in this specific way."

That one sentence opened up a bigger conversation. About how exhausting it is to have your entire day dictated by rules. About how tiring it is to make everything fit just right. And about how the eating disorder loves this rigidity, while recovery requires the opposite.

Recovery doesn't happen on schedule. It doesn't work like a perfectly-pieced-together puzzle.

It doesn't happen in a perfectly timed coaching session, nor does it magically "click" after module 3, section 4 of the recovery course.

Instead, recovery happens on a Wednesday afternoon when plans suddenly change and you have to improvise. On a Sunday night when the ED is particularly loud and you're questioning everything. On a Monday morning when you're off to work but you've just eaten something that scares you and your brain is spiralling. It happens while you're staring at the fear food thinking, "I know I should do this but..."

It's all the moments where, in the past, the ED may have gotten so loud it felt easier to obey its demands.

That's where the real work happens. In the messy, real-life moments where you have to choose differently.

The fear-food jar

One of the group members understood this perfectly. And yet she had, as so many of us do in recovery, been putting off the action that she knew would get her to where she actually wanted to be.

She'd been avoiding her fear food challenges for weeks.

She knew what she needed to do (of course she did), but knowing wasn't translating into action.

She brought it up in session... and we made it concrete.

She created a fear-food jar. She wrote her challenges on slips of paper, put them in the jar, and committed to pulling one each Sunday. Whatever came out became that week's exposure.

And us, the group — we were well aware. So of course we were checking in too!

She didn't suddenly become more motivated. She was still terrified. But she did it anyway. We all started to look forward to the end-of-week updates, sharing our struggles and wins and tools and strategies to keep us on track too.

And, again, that's not to say it was all sunshine and rainbows. It was a messy start... but nevertheless a start to a new habit she would never have otherwise started at all.

What actually happens inside Reset & Recover

The groups aren't me teaching at you. They're not abstract theory, generic advice, or a bunch of workbooks to work through.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: they're real life. Real struggles and real strategies, with others going through very real and very comparable experiences.

On a group call, we might spend 20 minutes talking about one woman's fear of eating in front of her partner, and how we've all dealt with or are learning to deal with similar situations. We might work through someone's panic after eating a fear food. We might celebrate the wins that nobody else would even notice — but that we do!

We talk about the urge surfing wave, grounding, and the tricks of the eating disorder. We talk about recovery, motivation, and consistency. And we talk about the things nobody else understands: the mental exhaustion, the recovery burnout, and the mental noise.

And that support doesn't end when the call does.

Inside the community forum and the chat, there's ongoing tips and tools and questions and support, right in those moments when you need it most.

A client recently messaged me late at night after eating a fear food she'd been avoiding for months. Well... before and after! I was practically there while she was having it.

Even after the exposure though... the battle wasn't over. The ED still had plenty to say about it.

She was spiralling and almost didn't reach out because, as she put it: "It's late, I should handle this myself."

But she didn't have to. And she did reach out.

We talked through what was happening, helped her get through that moment, and the next morning she kept going. The discomfort passed, and she kept pushing on.

That is what ongoing support means to me. Not having a weekly coaching call and then being left to figure everything out alone.

Ongoing support is knowing you have somewhere to turn when things get messy — including late at night, at the weekend, and when the ED says you "should manage on your own."

One client put it like this, and it's a quote I want to leave you all with:

"I thought I needed someone to fix me and to 'make me recovered.' What I actually needed was to see that other people were stuck too. And that they were getting unstuck, and so could I."

Let that one sink in.

What's included in the Reset & Recover group

• 🫶 Fortnightly live group coaching

• 💬 Weekly private 1:1 coaching

• 📱 Ongoing private + group WhatsApp support

• 🎓 The complete 11-module Recovery Course

• ☕ Monthly Q&As, challenges & community

All designed to help you take the things you know you need to do and actually start living them.

Your next steps

Doors to the new group open October 1st. The group starts October 5th.

5 spaces.

The group is intentionally kept small, because recovery coaching works best when it's personal, and when can I give everyone the undivided attention that their recovery requires and deserves.

If you're ready → Join the waitlist now

Don't let another week go by stuck in the "I'll start soon" loop.