Changing the Playlist: How Music Can Support Eating Disorder Recovery
Some days feel like they come with their own soundtrack.
Some mornings feel fuzzy and slow. Other days are restless, anxious, or overstimulating. Sometimes we feel hopeful and energetic. Sometimes we feel stuck. And sometimes our emotions seem to change from one hour to the next.
If you use Spotify or another music app, you probably already understand this instinctively. We create playlists for different moods, seasons, workouts, road trips, heartbreaks, celebrations—and sometimes entire years of our lives.
Think about your Spotify Wrapped from a few years ago. It might instantly transport you back to who you were then, what you were going through, and what you needed at the time.
In many ways, recovery can be like that, too.
When the Same Songs Keep Playing
For someone healing from an eating disorder, certain thoughts, routines, and coping strategies can become part of a familiar internal playlist. Restriction. Perfectionism. Self-criticism. Isolation. Rules about food or movement. The need to feel in control.
After hearing these messages repeatedly, they can begin to sound like facts rather than thoughts. They may even feel familiar or comforting despite the pain they cause.
Recovery asks us to begin noticing what is playing.
Is this thought helping me? Is this still the soundtrack I want for my life? What else could I listen to?
And importantly, recovery doesn’t just mean simply pressing “delete” on everything that came before.
Research examining recovery from the perspective of people who have experienced eating disorders suggests that recovery is about much more than symptom improvement alone. Hope, identity, meaningful relationships, empowerment, purpose, and self-compassion have all emerged as important parts of personal recovery.¹
In other words, recovery isn't just about “quieting the eating disorder”. It’s also about discovering what you want to hear in its place.
Where Music May Help
Traditional eating disorder treatment can include psychotherapy, nutrition support, medical care, family involvement, and other evidence-based interventions. Music should not replace these treatments.
Instead, think of music as another instrument in the recovery toolbox. Emerging research supports this.
A 2025 scoping review examined 21 studies of music-based interventions in eating disorder treatment. Researchers found preliminary evidence of benefits related to anxiety, mood, eating-disorder symptoms, treatment engagement, self-development, and, in some studies, eating and weight-related outcomes.²
At the same time, the researchers were appropriately cautious. Many of the studies were small, lacked control groups, or used different types of musical interventions. So, we cannot yet say that music “treats” an eating disorder.
The research does suggest something more nuanced: music may support some of the emotional and interpersonal work that happens during recovery.
Music Can Give Feelings Somewhere to Go
I’ve found that sometimes the hardest questions in therapy are also some of the simplest:
How are you feeling? What’s your mood been like?
For many, “I don't know” is an entirely truthful answer. Then a song comes on and somehow says it for us.
Music can provide another language for experiences that are difficult to put into words. Research on music-based interventions in eating-disorder treatment has described themes involving emotional expression, self-understanding, interpersonal connection, and engagement with treatment.²
That can add an interesting twist. Instead of beginning with “Tell me how you feel”, or “How would you describe your mood this week?” we might begin with:
What’s a song that represents you this week?
The song becomes a place to start, not the destination. From there, therapy can help us explore what is underneath it.
Creating a Playlist for Difficult Moments: An aid to emotional processing
Recovery also involves learning to experience difficult emotions without automatically turning to eating-disorder behaviors to manage them. Music can give our emotions somewhere to go. A melody, rhythm, or lyric can sometimes capture an experience we haven't yet found words for, helping us recognize and make sense of what we're feeling. Music can also influence our level of emotional arousal—helping us feel energized when we are withdrawn or offering a sense of calm and grounding when emotions feel overwhelming.
Perhaps most importantly, music allows us to experience difficult feelings with a little bit of distance: we can hear sadness, anger, fear, or hope reflected in a song and explore those emotions without immediately needing to fix or avoid them. In this way, music doesn't necessarily change how we feel; sometimes, it simply helps us stay with a feeling long enough to understand what it may be trying to tell us
That doesn't mean music makes anxiety and eating disorder urges disappear. Sometimes it means learning: I’m allowed to feel this and move through it.
Music can offer us support in those moments. The emerging literature includes music-based approaches to help manage anxiety, mood, emotional regulation, and even distress surrounding meals.²
That might mean creating different playlists with different purposes…
A grounding playlist for before a meal.
A calming playlist for afterward.
A “this is really hard, but I'm doing it anyway” playlist.
A playlist filled with songs that remind you of people, places, experiences, and parts of yourself that have absolutely nothing to do with food or your body.
The goal isn't to use music to avoid uncomfortable emotions. The hope is that we can use music to stay present with them.
Rediscovering Who You Are Beyond the Eating Disorder
Eating disorders have a way of shrinking a person's world.
Over time, food, weight, exercise, appearance, numbers, routines, and rules can occupy more and more mental space. Recovery often involves slowly reclaiming that territory.
This is another place where the research on personal recovery is especially meaningful. Studies incorporating lived experience identify identity, hope, meaning, empowerment, self-compassion, and connection with others as important parts of recovery.¹
Music naturally intersects with many of those things.
What did you listen to before the eating disorder became so loud?
What song reminds you of your best friend?
What did you blast in the car at sixteen?
What song makes you want to dance badly in your kitchen?
You Don't Have to Delete the Old Playlist
Think about your most played or repeated songs of the last year.
Some songs might represent fear. Others might belong to loneliness, control, grief, or a particularly difficult period of your illness.
You don't have to pretend those songs never existed.
Instead, imagine creating another playlist—not a soundtrack for some perfect future version of yourself, but one for the life you are building right now.
Maybe you add one song that makes you feel grounded.
Then one that reminds you of someone you love. One that gives you permission to cry. One that makes you laugh. One that gives you permission to rap angrily. One that makes you think, Maybe I can get through today.
Recovery can happen in similarly small additions.
A compassionate thought instead of a critical one. A phone call instead of isolation and use of a behavior. Eating a meal despite experiencing anxiety. Rest when the eating disorder tells you to run. Speaking honestly in therapy when part of you wants to say, “I'm fine.”
One new track at a time.
Eventually, the old songs may still come on—but they are no longer the only music available.
All of a sudden, your library has grown, and you have more choices.
What Would Be on Your Recovery Playlist?
If music is meaningful to you, consider bringing it into your treatment.
Share a song with your therapist. Talk about the lyrics that resonate with you. Notice which music leaves you feeling grounded and connected—and which songs may intensify difficult thoughts, memories, or urges. Create a playlist specifically for moments when recovery feels difficult.
And where available, a trained music therapist can use listening, songwriting, improvisation, singing, and other music-based experiences within a therapeutic relationship. Growing research in this area is encouraging, while also making clear that larger, more rigorous studies are still needed before we fully understand how music-based interventions can best complement eating-disorder treatment.²
Music isn't a cure for an eating disorder.
But maybe it can help us find words when speaking is difficult. Help us reconnect with pieces of ourselves that the illness has squeezed out. Help us tolerate a difficult moment. Or remind us of the life after an eating disorder.
Recovery isn’t about finding the perfect playlist; rather, it's about realizing that the one playing today doesn't have to be the one you listen to forever.
You are allowed to skip a track. You are allowed to add something new.
And you are allowed to create a soundtrack for the person you are becoming.
Research References
1. Wetzler S, Hackmann C, Peryer G, et al. (2020). A framework to conceptualize personal recovery from eating disorders: A systematic review and qualitative meta-synthesis of perspectives from individuals with lived experience. International Journal of Eating Disorders; 53(8):1188–1203. The review synthesized 20 studies and identified supportive relationships, hope, identity, meaning and purpose, empowerment, and self-compassion as central elements of personal recovery.
2. Heiderscheit A, Gawronska J, Bloska J, et al. (2025). Music-based interventions in the treatment of eating disorders: a scoping review. Frontiers in Psychiatry. The review identified 21 studies of music-based interventions in eating-disorder treatment and found promising psychological and behavioral outcomes, while emphasizing that stronger controlled research is still needed.
