Yesterday I scheduled a meeting crammed right up next to my dentist appointment. If you were in my head, you would’ve heard: I know that meeting is going to go over. There’s no way I’ll get to the dentist on time. On the text stream, you would’ve read: “Sure, Monday at 3:30 works great! See you then!” Exclamation points always make you sound confident and cheery.

If we’re lucky, we only go to the dentist twice a year. Yet the appointments are so important that we schedule them months in advance. We get reminder texts, postcards, and voicemails we never listen to. And still, I acted like it didn’t matter.

The dentist is loaded for me. If you’ve been following me, you know I’ve been open about my relapses into disordered eating. Every time the dentist opens my mouth, it feels like he’s opening a stall door to my worst moments—purging, crying, praying. When he scrapes, I feel the digging up of my shame, my piles of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup wrappers.

If you’re someone in recovery from substances, anxiety, depression, people-pleasing,........

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