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“I’m Fine” Might Be Hiding a Psychological Injury

Tue, 02 Sep 2025 14:56:07 GMT

After a car or truck accident, many people walk away thinking, “I’m fine.” Maybe you didn’t break a bone. Maybe the scans came back clear. Maybe you’re back at work, at least physically. But underneath it all, you don’t quite feel the same.

What’s often missed in personal injury recovery is that emotional trauma can linger long after the physical injuries fade. And because emotional injuries don’t leave bruises or show up on an MRI, they’re easy to overlook—even by the people experiencing them.

In this post, we’ll explore how psychological injuries after accidents can affect both adults and children , why people often believe they’re “fine” when they’re not, and why almost everyone should at least complete a psychological intake to get a clear picture of their emotional health.

How Trauma Shows Up in Adults

Adults who experience accidents frequently downplay their emotional symptoms. Sometimes it’s out of pride, sometimes out of fear, and sometimes because they genuinely don’t recognize what’s happening. But research shows that up to one-third of accident survivors develop PTSD .

Common signs include:

Panic attacks while driving or riding in cars. You may feel your heart race, palms sweat, or your chest tighten when you’re in traffic or even approaching a stoplight.
Nightmares or insomnia. You might replay the accident in your mind when trying to sleep—or avoid sleeping altogether.
Irritability and mood swings. Little things start to set you off, and you feel like you’re not yourself anymore.
Avoidance behaviors. Maybe you’ve stopped driving certain roads. Maybe you don’t want to ride with others. Or maybe you’ve even turned down job opportunities because they require too much time in a car.

The truth is, these aren’t just bad habits or “overreactions.” They’re real trauma responses —and they can seriously affect your life, work, and relationships.

How Trauma Shows Up in Children

Children experience accidents very differently from adults. Even if they weren’t physically injured, the fear and shock of the event can leave lasting marks.

Signs of trauma in children can include:

Clinginess or separation anxiety. Your child might suddenly refuse to be apart from you or a caregiver.
Tantrums or new fears. They may melt down before getting into a car, or show fear in situations that never bothered them before.
Sleep issues. Nightmares, bedwetting, or refusing to sleep alone are common.
Behavioral regression. Even toddlers can develop PTSD, and it may look like a step backward in development—thumb-sucking, bedwetting, or baby talk.
School problems. Trauma can make it hard for children to concentrate, leading to poor grades or conflict with teachers and peers.

The heartbreaking truth is that many families don’t realize these behaviors are linked to trauma. Without help, children can carry these patterns into adolescence and adulthood.

Why People Say “I’m Fine” When They’re Not

It’s incredibly common for accident survivors—both adults and kids—to claim they’re “fine.” Here’s why:

They’ve never needed therapy before. If you’ve always been resilient, you may believe you should just bounce back.
Stigma. Many people—especially men—see counseling as a sign of weakness.
Fear of a label. Some worry a diagnosis will “follow them around.”
Bad past experiences. If someone was forced into therapy as a teen, they may assume all therapy is unhelpful.
Normalization of symptoms. People think poor sleep, irritability, or fear of driving are just normal after a crash.

The problem is, untreated trauma rarely fades on its own. Instead, it often gets worse, affecting relationships, work, health, and overall quality of life.

Why a Psychological Intake Matters

Almost every accident survivor should have at least a psychological intake assessment —whether they think they’re struggling or not.

Here’s why:

It documents your symptoms early. This creates a record you can compare over time.
It measures impairment. A trained clinician can spot patterns you may not notice yourself.
It validates your experience. Many people feel relieved when they hear, “This is normal for trauma—and it’s treatable.”
It catches silent sufferers. Sometimes the people who insist they’re “fine” are the ones who need help the most.

Just like you wouldn’t ignore a lingering cough or chest pain, you shouldn’t ignore panic attacks, nightmares, or unexplained anxiety. A short intake is a simple, low-commitment way to find out what’s going on.

Making Treatment Easy: Our Telehealth Advantage

At River Shores Counseling , we know the hardest part of seeking help is often just getting started. That’s why we’ve built our practice around accessibility and compassion.

Here’s what we offer:

Telehealth therapy statewide (Florida). Log in from home, work, or anywhere you feel safe.
Appointments within two weeks. No months-long waitlists—help is available quickly.
Bilingual Spanish-speaking counselors. Trauma care should never be limited by language.
Specialists for children and adults. We work with toddlers, teens, adults, and families impacted by trauma.

You don’t have to fight traffic, take extra time off work, or sit in a waiting room. Counseling comes to you, securely and conveniently.

The Bottom Line: “Fine” Isn’t Always Fine

Car accidents change lives in ways most people don’t expect. Even when the body heals, the mind can still carry the scars.
Saying “I’m fine” may be a way of coping—but it can also mean, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

If you’ve been in an accident—or if your child has—you owe it to yourself to find out if there are emotional injuries hiding beneath the surface. A simple intake assessment can give you clarity, and counseling can give you the tools to heal.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

River Shores Counseling is here to help. With trauma-informed therapy, telehealth convenience, and quick appointment availability, we make it as easy as possible to get started.

�� Call us today at 904-737-3232
�� Email: admin@rivershorescounseling.com
�� Visit: www.rivershorescounseling.com

You don’t have to carry this alone. Healing starts here.

Helping Traumatic Brain Injury Clients Heal at Home: How River Shores Counseling Makes Recovery Easier

Thu, 08 May 2025 13:23:47 GMT

Recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or concussion isn’t just about physical healing—it’s about learning how to navigate life again. At River Shores Counseling, we specialize in providing behavioral therapy for individuals with TBI and concussion, and we do it in a way that works best for our clients: online and from the comfort of their own home.

Whether your injury happened recently or years ago, the challenges can be ongoing—memory issues, forgetfulness, sensory overload, disorganization, or safety concerns. These symptoms can make everyday tasks feel overwhelming.

That’s why we offer a therapy approach that meets people where they are: at home, online, and focused on practical solutions they can start using right away.

Why Online Therapy for TBI Makes Sense

Traditional therapy often requires travel, time off work, and a structured environment that can feel exhausting or even impossible for someone with a brain injury. That’s where online therapy becomes a game-changer.

At River Shores Counseling, our virtual therapy model allows clients to:

Attend sessions from the safety and comfort of home
Avoid the fatigue and risk that comes with driving or navigating busy environments
Practice new strategies in the actual spaces where they live—kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms
Work at their own pace with a therapist who understands TBI and customizes support to fit their needs

Behavioral Therapy for Brain Injury: What We Focus On

TBI and concussion recovery often involves challenges with:

Memory
Planning and organization
Sensory sensitivity
Safety concerns
Emotional regulation

Our therapists use behavioral and environmental strategies to support these areas in real, tangible ways. Let’s look at some of the most effective tools we help clients use.

Executive Functioning & Memory Support

Daily routines can fall apart quickly when you have trouble remembering or focusing. That’s why we start with tools that bring structure back into daily life:

Visual Schedules: Charts or posters placed around the home that show daily routines step by step
Checklists for Everyday Tasks: For things like cooking, personal hygiene, or locking the door—plus tricks like taking a photo of your stove or door to check later
Labels on Drawers and Cabinets: So you don’t have to open everything just to find one thing
Phone Reminders and Calendar Alerts: These help with medication, appointments, and keeping on schedule
Clear Bins and Visible Organizers: Reduce decision fatigue and keep essentials within view
“Anchor Spots” in the Home: A specific bowl for your keys or a hook for your purse can prevent hours of frustration

These strategies work because they reduce the mental load, letting your brain focus on healing—not constantly trying to remember what’s next.

Home Safety Strategies After TBI

Brain injuries can make judgment, coordination, and attention unpredictable. That’s why we help clients set up their homes to be safer and more secure.

Here are a few of the tools we recommend:

Appliances with Auto Shut-Off: Use a microwave or toaster oven instead of a stove to avoid accidental fires
Furniture Placement Adjustments: Clear walking paths to reduce tripping and bumping into furniture
Cabinet Locks: For cleaning supplies or medications that could be dangerous if used incorrectly
Lower Water Heater Temps: To avoid accidental burns in the shower or sink
Emergency Contact Lists: Posted in easy-to-see places for quick access when needed

Safety isn’t just about avoiding accidents—it’s about reducing stress and building confidence in everyday activities.

Managing Sensory Overload at Home

People with TBIs often describe feeling “flooded” by sounds, lights, or visual clutter. We help clients create a more calming home environment that supports healing, not sensory overload.

Here are some of the changes that make a big difference:

Switching to Soft Lighting: Dimmers, lamps, and warm-toned bulbs help avoid the harshness of overhead lights
Clearing Clutter: Removing excessive decor or extra items reduces visual chaos
Using Weighted Blankets or Headphones: These create a calming effect during overwhelming moments
Designating a Calm Space: A small, quiet spot like a closet or guest room with soft lighting and minimal noise
Coping Tools: Fidget items, noise machines, or sensory kits help reduce anxiety and give your brain a break

The River Shores Difference: Compassionate, Customized Support

Every brain injury is different. That’s why we never take a one-size-fits-all approach. At River Shores Counseling, our therapists:

Have experience working specifically with TBI and concussion clients
Provide customized strategies based on the client’s symptoms, home environment, and goals
Use real-time video sessions to see how tools and strategies are working in the actual space
Offer ongoing feedback and encouragement to make adjustments as needed

We also work closely with caregivers, case managers, or legal teams if appropriate—helping to create a full circle of support.

Who We Work With

We support a wide range of TBI clients, including:

People recovering from car accidents
Clients with concussion-related symptoms months or years later
Individuals experiencing post-traumatic cognitive challenges
Clients referred by physical therapy centers, neurologists, or rehab centers

Our services are ideal for:

People who can’t or prefer not to travel for appointments
Those who want to apply therapy techniques directly in their own home
Clients looking for a real-life, skills-based approach to recovery

Why This Matters: Life After Brain Injury

We often hear from clients who feel lost, anxious, or stuck after a brain injury. They’ve recovered “medically,” but everyday life still feels out of control. That’s where behavioral therapy helps.

By creating structure, improving memory systems, and reducing environmental stress, we help clients:

Feel more confident in their daily routines
Reduce accidents and stress
Build habits that support long-term healing
Improve their quality of life

Healing from a brain injury doesn’t stop at the hospital. It continues every day—at home, in real life.

Ready to Get Started?

If you or someone you know is struggling after a TBI or concussion, River Shores Counseling is here to help.

We offer secure, online therapy with experienced clinicians who understand what brain injury recovery really looks like—and how to make it easier, step by step.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation or refer a client ( 904-737-3232 or email at admin@rivershorescounseling.com )

When Physical Injuries Lead to Psychological Trauma – The Importance of Counseling for TBI-Related PTSD

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:35:31 GMT

Rachel was a young, vibrant woman who loved nothing more than hitting the open road in her car. One sunny afternoon, she was driving home from work when she was hit by a car that ran a red light. Her car was totaled, and she suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left her with severe headaches, memory loss, and difficulty concentrating.

Thankfully she recovered from her physical injuries, but the most devastating consequence of the accident was the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that Rachel developed in the weeks and months that followed.

Driving aside, merely sitting in a car would make her extremely stressed. She found herself reliving the accident over and over, unable to shake the fear and anxiety that had taken hold of her.

Rachel’s incident is not rare. This is actually a common scenario for people who have experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

In this article, we'll explore the connection between TBI and PTSD, the ways in which counseling can help, and why it's so important to include counseling as part of the treatment plan for those with TBI-related PTSD.

Let’s start with what TBI and PTSD are.

TBI (Traumatic brain injury) is a severe injury caused by a sudden blow or jolt to the head. It can occur as a result of a wide range of accidents, including auto accidents, sports injuries, assault, and premises injuries.

Auto accidents are one of the most common causes of TBI, as the force of impact can cause the brain to move within the skull, resulting in injury.

Falls are also one of the most common reasons. According to CDC , almost half of the reported hospitalized traumatic brain injury cases are from falls.

Sports injuries, such as concussions, can also cause TBI, especially in contact sports like football and hockey.

Assault is another common cause of TBI. Examples are getting in a fight, a blow to the head, or suffering from domestic abuse.

Premises injuries, such as slip and fall accidents, are also common causes of TBI. These types of injuries can occur on the job or on another business's property and can be caused by a range of hazards, such as wet floors, loose carpeting, and faulty equipment.

TBI can result in a range of physical, cognitive, and emotional impairments that can persist long after the injury occurs.

On the other hand, PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) is a mental health condition that can occur after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, including several of the ones mentioned above. It can persist for extended periods, leading to severe psychological problems in the long run.

Common symptoms of PTSD can include flashbacks of the event, anxiety, depression, irritability, hypervigilance, and difficulty sleeping, among others. In some cases, TBI can cause or exacerbate existing PTSD .

The physical symptoms of TBI, such as headaches, dizziness, and fatigue, can make it challenging for individuals to manage the emotional trauma of PTSD.

At the same time, the emotional symptoms of PTSD, such as anxiety, depression, and hypervigilance, can exacerbate the cognitive symptoms of TBI, such as memory loss and difficulty concentrating.

Often, in the cases of Traumatic Brain Injury, all focus is put on healing the physical injury. However, it is crucial to understand that counseling is also an essential component of treating both TBI and PTSD, especially when they occur together.

In traditional counseling, a therapist helps the patient address their emotions and feelings related to the traumatic event. This type of therapy is particularly useful for people who have experienced a TBI and developed PTSD because it helps them understand and process their emotions related to the injury.

Counseling can also help patients identify and address negative thoughts or beliefs about the injury or themselves, which can contribute to the development of PTSD.

Behavioral therapy is another type of therapy that can be useful for people with TBI-related PTSD. Behavior therapy focuses on changing specific behaviors that are causing negative thoughts or emotions.

This type of therapy focuses on changing harmful behaviors and patterns by providing positive reinforcement for healthy behaviors. In this context, this type of therapy can help patients identify and change behaviors that are making their PTSD symptoms worse.

For example, a patient who is avoiding social situations due to anxiety related to their injury may work with a therapist to gradually expose themselves to those situations and learn coping mechanisms to deal with their anxiety.

Similarly, Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) are all effective forms of counseling that a trained professional can use to treat TBI-related PTSD.

CBT helps individuals change negative thought patterns and behaviors, while exposure therapy involves gradually exposing individuals to the source of their fear in a controlled environment. EMDR(Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy that uses eye movements to help individuals process traumatic memories and experiences.

Counseling is particularly useful because it can help you identify and address co-occurring mental health conditions that may be contributing to your PTSD symptoms. For example, a patient with TBI-related PTSD may also be experiencing depression or anxiety that is exacerbating their PTSD symptoms.

Seeking counseling from an expert can help you overcome your PTSD and return to a healthier and more satisfying life. Given its profound impact, it is important to consider counseling with traditional physical therapies for individuals with TBI and PTSD.

This holistic approach can help individuals manage their symptoms more effectively, learn life-lasting coping mechanisms and improve their overall quality of life.

TBI and PTSD are two severe and debilitating conditions that – if left untreated – can have long-lasting effects on an individual's life. When they occur together, they can be particularly challenging to manage.

If you identify the symptoms of TBI-related PTSD in yourself or your loved ones, seeking counseling services and working with professionals who have experience treating these complex conditions can help you recover and live a better life.

While the journey toward recovery may not be easy, overcoming the challenges and achieving a fulfilling and satisfying life with the right support and guidance is possible. Remember, seeking help is a sign of strength, and there is no shame in reaching out for the support you need to heal and thrive.

Tags: TBI , Traumatic Brain Injury , Psychological Trauma , Trauma Counseling , TBI Counseling

Do you have Big “T” or Small “t” trauma – they are both harmful!

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:26:30 GMT

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you come across the term PTSD?

For many of us, the answers include going through harrowing life events like war, natural disasters, physical or sexual assault, or any other catastrophe.

After all, people only develop PTSD who have experienced a severe life-threatening event, right?

WRONG! Research suggests that developing post-traumatic stress disorder may not always depend on the severity of the trauma or accident.

PTSD is a serious life-altering condition that shapes how we feel and show up in the world.

Furthermore, individuals who have experienced trauma are at a much greater risk of developing mental illnesses, substance abuse problems, eating disorders, and other behavioral issues.

As general awareness around PTSD and trauma is increasing, it is time to understand the true definition of this term and all its implications. The information we have may be incomplete or inaccurate, which may lead to those who have PTSD go misunderstood or mistreated.

Trauma comes in numerous forms and affects people in different ways. Knowing what to look for can help you or your loved ones deal with the effects of trauma more effectively.

Let’s first go through the word trauma in PTSD and how we categorize it. Trauma means any distressing event that affects a person’s ability to cope or function.

But there is a difference between Big “T” Trauma and Small “t” Trauma.

Big T Traumatic events are what we usually associate with when we think of PTSD. These more severe extraordinary events leave the person feeling hopeless and powerless and are often easily recognizable as major disturbing occurrences.

A fatal car accident, sexual abuse, physical assault, combat, or war are all instances that fall under Big T.

On the other hand, Small t Trauma comprises less severe events that may not be as alarming or life-threatening as Big T on the surface. These are every day or less pronounced occasions that don’t involve violence or disaster but can cause significant psychological damage.

Small t Traumas are often overlooked because of their less violent nature, but research suggests repeated exposure to Small t can cause more emotional harm than a single Big T event. So, they are not to be taken lightly.

Small t events are not primarily physically threatening; they can be ego-threatening or morale-threatening as they may create intense feelings of discomfort, helplessness, and having no control over one’s life.

Some common causes of Small t can include:

Living in a high-conflict family.
Losing a job or financial worries.
A challenging friendship.
Prolonged stress about something.
Losing a loved one or a pet.
Bullying or harassment.
Being disrespected.
Being involved in an accident.
Being involved in an athletic injury.

These incidents may fly off the radar when considering the prevalence of PTSD in a person because of their less intense nature, but they are equally damaging in their effects.

Take the example of an athlete. Studies have shown that athletes are more prone to PTSD than regular people. An average of 1 in 8 athletes have PTSD. How?

A baseball player could dislocate his shoulder because of swinging the bat too far. Although this is a common injury and the shoulder gets relocated easily in most cases, the intense temporary pain could instill fear in the player and shatter his confidence in hitting. This fear could continue for a long period leading to a decrease in performance or the player not participating because of the injury, leading to PTSD related to batting. Other players watching the ordeal or hearing about it may develop fear related to their own shoulders, thus triggering PTSD in them as well.

The same is true with driving cars or any of the other causes mentioned above.

For this reason, less severe traumas often go unreported or unnoticed.

What are some common symptoms of a person experiencing PTSD from less severe traumas?

Both Big T and Small t traumas share some common symptoms, such as:

Re-experiencing the trauma where the memories of the incident replay in the form of nightmares and flashbacks as if it is happening all over again.
Emotional reactions in the form of anger, frustration, fear, anxiety and guilt.
Avoiding thinking about the trauma and thus using unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance abuse to cope with it. This is usually the most prominent symptom of PTSD.
A distorted image of the world and how you view yourself. Seeing yourself as weak or inadequate.
Hyperactive nervous system and having emotional responses where you feel on edge every time, such as mistrusting everyone’s intentions, feeling danger, being easily frustrated, or losing interest in sex.

Every person has a unique level of resilience – their ability to handle stress. What is not so severe for one person may be highly distressing to the other, which impacts their ability to cope with the trauma and function properly, leading to the development of mental health problems after an accident or event, so much so that there’s a 70% correlation between PTSD and Substance Abuse.

It is also observed that if you perceive that your or someone else’s life is in danger, you can also develop PTSD.

So, the key to understanding the impact of less severe trauma (Small t) in the development of PTSD is examining how an event affects an individual rather than focusing on the event itself and adopting a personalized approach for helping each person resolve their trauma and return to normal functioning.

If neglected and left to fester, your trauma can make it difficult to function normally, and its harm can seep into every area of your life.

Therefore, it is crucial to recognize the symptoms of PTSD and seek professional help when your trauma starts disturbing your peace in life.

In many cases, seeking a trained behavioral therapist and mental health counselor can help you get rid of your PTSD symptoms and start moving towards a happier life. Getting treatment for PTSD can help you regain your sense of control and learn lifelong healthy coping skills that help you not only positively deal with your stressors but also improve the quality of your life significantly.

How is ARFID different from Anorexia?

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:11:46 GMT

Did you know that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate out of all the mental health conditions?

Yes, you read that right.

Eating disorders like anorexia are four times more likely to result in lethal consequences than the major depressive disorder.

And do you know what makes them so deadly? Despite being so dangerous, people sometimes don’t consider eating disorders as urgent or high priority as they do other severe psychological conditions like borderline personality disorder or suicidal tendencies.

So, eating disorders – despite having the most damaging consequences on your health – are often undiagnosed, untreated, and are dismissed as something that’s not serious enough to require immediate professional assistance.

People usually think that an eating disorder is just a phase that you eventually snap out of, but in reality, it’s a deeply complex condition that rarely goes away on its own.

Eating disorders are complicated, real, and life-threatening medical illnesses that have been confirmed by the National Institute of Mental Health .

A lack of knowledge is often the reason why people don’t acknowledge their eating disorder and get proper treatment on time.

So, let’s go over some important details so you can get a better understanding of things and approach your eating disorder with the right mindset.

Eating disorders is an umbrella term that consists of a host of conditions where a person has developed an unhealthy and dangerous relationship with how they see food and their body.

Anorexia, Bulimia, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder(ARFID), Binge Eating Disorder(BED), Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED), are some of the most common eating disorders that – although they belong to the same category – have differences in their symptoms, and most importantly, how they are treated.

As eating disorders are not as common as other mental health disorders, most general practitioners don’t have enough information to guide people toward the right form of recovery options.

Misdiagnosis is a common hurdle that keeps people from getting the proper treatment as a GP might often find it hard to pinpoint the exact eating disorder a patient is experiencing.

Misdiagnosis has the potential to result in severe harm.

In most cases where an eating disorder is not identified correctly, it puts the person’s health at risk, can delay recovery, and sometimes calls for treatment options that are harmful and irrelevant to the person’s scenario.

To better understand why the right diagnosis matters, take the example of having flu. It could be just the normal flu, or it could be a symptom of a different virus entirely, so diagnosing the symptoms properly is crucial, and misdiagnosis can often lead to irrelevant treatment and harmful consequences later on.

Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) and Anorexia nervosa are often confused and misdiagnosed the most among the different eating disorders.

So, what makes them different, and how can you tell them apart?

Anorexia nervosa, commonly known as Anorexia, is an eating disorder where you have an unrealistic perception of body weight and a strong fear of gaining weight or becoming fat.

People suffering from Anorexia have an extreme obsession with their food choices and body image to the extent that it starts to become a psychological disorder, so they start relying on all kinds of unhealthy ways to stay thin or lose weight, such as calorie restriction, compulsive exercising, fasting, or self-induced vomiting.

Anorexic people deny their hunger, make excuses, or refuse to eat. They adopt rigid eating routines and restrict themselves to eating only small amounts of food out of the fear of gaining weight or looking fat.

A person suffering from anorexia may malnourish themselves to such an extent that their body could stop performing its functions properly, and organs may start experiencing failure.

On the other hand, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) is characterized by a person’s inability to meet nutritional needs without having any problems with their body image. Instead, the only problem they have is with the food itself and how it feels.

They only rely on a specific group of foods, and the denial of other foods could be due to several reasons.

For example, it could be due to the smell, color, taste, or texture of food. They may only eat foods with certain sensory qualities and avoid everything else.

They may avoid certain foods out of the irrational fear that consuming them can lead to choking, vomiting, nausea, or pain swallowing, so they avoid them altogether.

The biggest difference between ARFID and Anorexia is that people who are suffering from Anorexia malnourish themselves out of the fear of looking fat or having body image concerns.

Whereas people suffering from ARFID malnourish themselves because they only resort to certain types of food and deny eating anything else. They also don’t maintain a rigorous exercising routine or resort to dangerous ways to purge their foods like vomiting, or us using laxatives.

The complications that could arise due to ARFID and Anorexia are very similar and could include:

Severe and life-threatening weight loss.
Slowed brain function and experiencing memory or cognitive issues.
Cardiac problems ranging from irregular heartbeat to heart failure.
Kidney or liver failure.
Osteoporosis or bone loss.
Seizures.
Anemia.
Constipation, bloating, or gastrointestinal issues.
Loss of menstruation in women.
Low testosterone in men.
Infertility.
Hair loss.
Death or suicide.

Although both of these disorders share similar complications and symptoms, they are still very different in the reasons that lead to malnourishment and negative relation with food in each case.

It is also important to note that although ARFID can affect people of all ages, it primarily affects children. ARFID is also the only eating disorder where boys are more commonly affected than girls. However, the same is not the case with Anorexia. Therefore, the approach to treating them is also very different.

For example, people with ARFID have little to no fear of weight gain, so if you misdiagnose an ARFID patient with Anorexia, counseling them with body image issues won’t help them at all as their negative relationship with food stems from some other reason entirely(the food itself).

It is also observed that people with ARFID often have other coexisting mental health conditions as well such as Autism or Obsessive-compulsive disorder.

So, in such cases, the proper treatment for someone affected by ARFID would be behavior therapy and exposure therapy instead of the traditional talk therapy used for treating Anorexia.

And the combinations of treatments can vary as different people may require different approaches depending on their specific circumstances.

Therefore, having a proper certified professional looking over your eating disorder treatment cannot be emphasized enough, and choosing the right person could be the difference between fixing your eating disorder for good or getting the wrong treatment and falling into a much worse relapse.

Keeping the needs and risks of a person with an eating disorder in mind, our team of specialized professionals is determined to help you by providing a comprehensive assessment to determine the exact type of eating disorder and the core issues that are making your life difficult.

After careful evaluation, appropriate medical stabilization, psychiatric help, nutritional rehabilitation, or weight restoration is provided so you can improve your condition and get back to living a healthier and happier life.

Has returning to school after COVID-19 made eating disorders worse in our kids?

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 12:04:34 GMT

The historic COVID-19 is finally nearing its end. While the virus is slowly vanishing from our headlines, it is leaving an equally severe pandemic of mental health problems in its path.

People have been exposed to tremendous stress levels in the past few years.

Fear of death, loss of loved ones, the trauma of the widespread disease, unemployment, financial losses, are just a few of the fears left behind. The world experienced a massive 25% spike in depression and anxiety in the first year of COVID-19. It only got worse in the coming years.

Even if COVID-19 is coming to a halt, we still have a long way to go to shake off the psychological problems that came with it, and instantly adjusting back to our regular lives after all this stress is just not possible.

Especially for those with eating disorders and body image problems, returning to school puts them at significant risk for a perfect storm.

Why? Because schools can contain many conditions that can lead to eating disorders and make them worse.

Let’s look at some stresses of children going back to classes after the lockdown and how it may affect their eating disorder behaviors.

Transitioning to in-person learning after years of online lectures means a new beginning, posing the biggest challenge.

Children missed out on big milestones, lacked peer-to-peer interaction to develop crucial social skills, fell back in their studies, got used to staying home with the whole family all day, every day, and much more.

Remote learning has taken an emotional, mental, and developmental toll on children.

And reopening schools means many new starts all over again for kids because they are no longer used to such a lifestyle.

They may be stressed going back to school after being isolated, might develop separation anxiety because of living for so long with their parents, may be anxious or depressed, and haven't had time to process the effects of the pandemic.

And with all this, they are expected to resume like normal without having time to adjust.

The added stress of wearing masks, not touching anyone, all while trying to keep a safe distance is extra hard. This transition can be challenging and stress-inducing!

Adults can understand and cope with increased stress most of the time, but the same is not the case with children.

Children can easily resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Eating food for comfort is common among children, and increased stress may lead them to develop negative eating habits like binging or restricting, which can later turn into full-blown eating disorders.

For children with a history of eating disorders, this could trigger a relapse.

Adjusting to a new school routine could also mean a complete overhaul of your eating habits. While children were home, they had access to the whole pantry most of the time.

But with physical classes, their eating windows and the variety of foods are limited because you only have access to the food you bring to school or what school offers.

For students with eating disorders, this creates anxiety about their ability to eat intuitively throughout the day. In addition, those in recovery may have negative feelings of guilt and shame around eating in public which may cause individuals to restrict food further.

Social media usage skyrocketed during the pandemic.

This almost 24/7 access to negative, unauthentic, perfectionistic social media feeds can foster fake, elusive, and unrealistic standards of beauty that are impossible to achieve.

And children had a lot of free time and social media influence to instill such beliefs in themselves.

There is a strong correlation between social media usage and negative behaviors related to eating and body image.

When children return to school with a more distorted body image due to excessive social media usage, they may feel even more insecure about themselves.

Social media shows us a highly filtered version of reality that people often tamper with to show what they want others to see and not how things truly are.

Teens are also bombarded with harmful marketing tactics online that promote the “perfect body” and various body-shaming messages every day.

Even the most good-looking people have physical flaws, but they use highly edited photos to make themselves appear flawless.

Children usually don’t see things this way. They start comparing someone else’s highly edited photos with their real-life selves and develop insecurities about their looks.

Returning to school with such a mindset makes things even more difficult for someone with an eating disorder.

If you gained some weight throughout the pandemic (which was normal for everyone), your peers might remark on your added weight because you were previously associated with being thin.

This can also pressure you to do something about your weight and do it fast, leading to developing shortcuts and relying on harmful eating habits.

Fitting in during middle, high school, or even college can be a pretty exhausting experience. To look better, some groups may promote eating disorder behaviors like dieting, losing weight, and emphasizing your looks and body image.

Some students may resort to dieting, intermittent fasting, and excessive exercising to quickly achieve their physical goals, which is a precursor to eating disorders.

Other than social critiques, sports in school can also greatly emphasize body weight, size, or shape.

Bullying is also a serious issue in most middle or high schools that may force some children to adopt negative eating behaviors. If children are made to feel bad about their body weight or how they look, they may revert to their old ways of coping by abusing food.

Bullying, body discrimination, and negative remarks can spark disordered behavior and emotional distress in children as young as nine.

Besides directly targeting your looks, school environments can also be unusually perfectionistic.

Good grades, social acceptance, and sports wins are highly emphasized. When children return to school after the pandemic and can’t catch up with their losses, they may slip back into disordered eating to regain control over their lives.

Children are not alone in this mental health pandemic, as parents may also suffer some anxiety about school reopening. Children may become clingier and more nervous during this transition, thus becoming harder to handle. In such troubling times, it can be hard for parents to project confidence themselves.

This time around, going back to school can be especially challenging for children with eating disorders and body image issues.

However, things don’t have to be this way.

Becoming mindful of the danger your child may experience and taking proactive steps to prepare them can help them evade many of the abovementioned problems.

Especially if your child already has a history of body image problems or if you experience unusual eating patterns, then it’s important to provide them with proper care and guidance before things escalate.

Seeking professional help for your child before they embark on their school journey can be extremely beneficial to help them manage their underlying mental health problems and equip them with helpful strategies that can save them from falling into the pitfalls of eating disorders.

Does intermittent fasting really work, or can it cause an eating disorder?

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 11:56:12 GMT

If you have ever Googled “How to lose weight fast,” you have surely come across intermittent fasting as an easy and quick solution to shedding some extra pounds.

But is it really safe? Is intermittent fasting healthy, or can it lead to the exact opposite?

As the name suggests, intermittent fasting is a fixed period every day where a person does not eat. It means no meals, no snacking, and only consuming calorie-free liquids like water, coffee, green tea, all within a predetermined fasting window.

This fasting window can be anywhere from 12 hours to 16 and even 20 hours a day. Depending on your preference, you can even branch out and fast only certain days a week.

Unlike conventional weight loss techniques like dieting that tell you what and how much to eat, intermittent fasting primarily focuses on how long and regular your fasts are and not that much on what you eat during the eating window.

The proponents of intermittent fasting claim that restricting your food intake during the fasting window can promote weight loss, improve blood sugar levels, and reduce the risk of heart disease.

Because of the simplicity and no restrictions on what you can eat, intermittent fasting has become the talk of the town in recent years for wellness and weight loss purposes.

It is easy to become mesmerized by a seeming shortcut and easy-way-out to lose weight and achieve health at the same time, but it can cause us to focus on short-term gain and forget to look at the other side of the picture and how it can negatively affect us over time.

Intermittent fasting can be hard to stick to and may even lead to dangerous health problems such as eating disorders.

One of the biggest reasons why intermittent fasting puts you at risk is because it makes you vulnerable to forming an unhealthy relationship with food that usually goes under the radar but leads you to develop severe complications in the long run.

Naturally, when you remain hungry for extended periods, your body uses some of its fats to generate energy, but at the same time, the hunger center of the brain and appetite hormones go into overdrive. You get a strong biological urge to overeat.

When you reach your eating window after a long day of fasting, you are more likely to indulge in unhealthy eating practices such as consuming too much food in a short amount of time. Over time, binging turn into an eating disorder such as Bulimia Nervosa or Binge Eating Disorder (BED) .

Similarly, you can become malnourished if you do not get the right amount of nutrients in your eating window, leading to all sorts of deficiencies in your body. This can also put you on the road towards developing Anorexia or Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder.

Malnutrition can also affect the regulation of chemicals in your brain that handle mental performance, such as serotonin or dopamine, thus leading to psychological issues over time such as heightened anxiety and depression.

Other than that, what can be some signs of impending eating disorder disguised as intermittent fasting ? The following questions will help.

Are you really distraught about your weight or how you look? Do you feel guilty when you eat something you were not planning to? Do you ignore or try to suppress the bodily sensations of hunger or satiety? Are you out of control when you eat during your eating windows? Is the quality of your life taking a hit due to your eating habits?

If you face such issues, you might be dealing with an eating disorder that can seriously hamper your living if left neglected.

Other risks of intermittent fasting may include slowing down your metabolism, hormonal imbalance, disrupting of natural sleep patterns and circadian rhythms, insomnia, concentration issues, increasing levels of stress hormone(cortisol), hair loss, fatigue, and not to mention the social problems that can arise due to refusing to eat food with others during your fasting window.

Such complications only make it increasingly challenging to follow intermittent fasting as a regular way of living your life .

By doing so, not only do people damage their bodies but can also develop eating disorders as a result of their newly changed eating habits. Believe us, intermittent fasting does more harm than good, both to physical appearance and to overall health.

Intermittent fasting is dieting in disguise - you become obsessed with intake or avoidance of food.

Diets and intermittent fasting do not work because these are temporary food or routine plans that are impossible to stick to for the long term.

You eat less than what feels right, limit yourself to only certain foods, ignore your natural hunger cues, and focus only on looking thin and weighing less as a standard for good health instead of maintaining your physical fitness and living a healthy life.

Often the diets end up doing more harm to your eating habits and health than good, and you find yourself back where you started.

Studies also found that 95% of the people that lost weight using diets regained their weight in 1 to 5 years.

So, if diets and techniques like intermittent fasting do not work, what is the natural, manageable, and consistent way to maintain good fitness and health?

The answer lies in fixing your mindset and addressing emotional problems related to food, body image, weight and eventually focusing on the right criteria of health according to your body and lifestyle, instead of trying to fit yourself into generic diet plans or body image standards that simply do not apply to you.

One of the best solutions for the long term is intuitive eating — to stop calorie-counting and start listening to your body for what it really wants and does not want.

If you have spent most of your life only focusing on losing weight by adjusting your food, you will find this approach much different from what you see in the diet culture. You may still be able to lose weight with the help of intuitive eating, but it is all about the bigger picture of living a satisfying and healthy life than short-term weight goals.

A part of you wants to lose weight and become thinner to be more socially likable, and another part also desires a peaceful relationship with food where you feel balanced and good without having to feel guilty and shameful all the time.

The gist of intuitive eating involves developing a healthy and honest relationship with your body’s hunger cues, feeding it only when it needs to be fed, understanding, becoming aware of, and overcoming the emotional attachments you have with food, and accepting your body’s diversity. You do not try to suppress your hunger, put all of your focus on your weight, ignore certain foods, or boost your metabolism.

The best and the hardest part about intuitive fasting is that you eat what you truly want and only when you truly want it. You become more aware of whether you are using or ignoring food as a way to deal with stress, damaged self-esteem, or some other underlying issue, or are over-eating beyond your body’s natural need, etc. \

Research has proven that intuitive eating leads to consistent long-term results. It helps you with less preoccupation with food, lowers the rates of emotional eating and eating disorders, improves your self-esteem and contentment with your body image, and also leads to a significant reduction in anxiety related to food and body image in the long run.

If you are someone who has a desire to lose weight or follow a non-diet approach towards a healthy lifestyle but also wants to develop a satisfying relationship with food, so you don’t feel shameful or guilty, there is an answer. You can find a safe space by getting in touch with an intuitive-eating therapist to help you unpack what’s underneath that desire and find a more customized approach for you to live a healthier and more fulfilling life.

Is it Anorexia or Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:07:33 GMT

Is it Anorexia or Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)?

As parents, it is not uncommon to see your children push away their plates or needing to convince them to finish their veggies during mealtimes.

But sometimes this avoidance and restriction of food can become more persistent and concerning!

What if your child is experiencing distressing thoughts and emotions around food more commonly than others? What if it reaches a point that it starts to affect their physical, psychological, and social functioning negatively?

If you observe such tendencies in your child, it could signal the presence of a severe underlying mental health condition: an eating disorder.

A quick Google search about your child avoiding their foods, having a loss of appetite, or experiencing food anxiety might lead you to conclude that they have anorexia nervosa.

But in some cases, you may see that your child does show some symptoms of anorexia nervosa but does not correctly fit the profile to be considered anorexic.

For example, they may be a fussy eater, have unhealthy weight loss, and have other issues with food, but they do not show any concerns about their body weight, self-esteem, or how they look.

This presence of some symptoms and lack of others can lead to confusion and misdiagnosis.

If your child is a picky eater and avoidance and restriction of food seems to be a more prevalent problem than body image issues, then it could indicate Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) and not anorexia nervosa.

Especially during COVID, the availability of foods and increasing stress might affect your child’s eating habits. It can lead to the development of eating disorders or worsen existing issues.

The causes and symptoms of ARFID may differ, but the consequences may be equally damaging as other eating disorders!

So, how can you know what your child is going through is Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)?

Overall, ARFID is identified by severely restricting or limiting foods based on the foods themselves and not how they might affect a person's body image.

The presentation of ARFID might look as follows:

The primary reason to avoid or restrict foods is because of their sensory sensitivity , such as the texture, color, smell, or how they are cooked or presented.

They have a fear of choking on foods they do not like or vomiting.
They have a general lack of interest in eating without any medical or self-esteem issues. They get full without eating much food, have no interest in trying new food items or and usually have a low appetite.

They have anxiety relating to social events that might require trying new foods.

They have a selected set of foods that they eat, that often gets narrower as they get older. They only demand those foods daily and refuse to eat anything else .

They experience malnutrition, weight loss, delayed growth , and other physical problems that come with not getting proper food and nutrition.

How does this extremely fussy eating differ from anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders?

People with ARFID have no extreme fear of weight gain.

They do not show any signs of extreme distress related to body shape, weight, or size.

They are only concerned with how food distresses or disgusts them and how certain foods might make them vomit in the short term and not how it affects their appearance in the long run.

Because of the significant differences in reasons for avoiding food, the treatment for ARFID differs significantly from anorexia nervosa or other eating disorders and requires specialized interventions to help.

This might also be the reason your child's condition might not improve when you try to get help from a GP or a regular therapist, as they often use methods for treating more well-known eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia, where body image is a primary concern. As causes of avoiding food are different with ARFID, these treatments DO NOT work for ARFID.

Fortunately, with specialized interventions and professional guidance, ARFID can be quickly and successfully treated .

Getting professional treatment can help your child evade tons of psychological, physical, and social problems down the road that come with Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder.

It is important to understand that if left untreated, these issues may follow your children into adulthood as well and might lead to lifelong complications.

In particular, applied behavior analysis can be a miraculous intervention for helping children and adults overcome ARFID.

Here is how individuals with ARFID benefit from behavior therapy:

It helps with cognitive restructuring , where clients learn to identify, get educated, and correct the thinking process that leads to unhealthy and irrational behaviors that interfere with their normal functioning.

Behavioral intervention further teaches them coping techniques to help them manage negative emotions and overwhelming feelings that are the primary cause for avoiding or restricting certain foods.

They get nutrition counseling where they understand their dietary needs and how their food choices impact them from a dietitian that understands how to treat ARFID.

Applied behavior analysis also involves and educates parents and helps them foster a more suitable environment for children to improve their eating habits.

Proper nutritional support and supplements can also be prescribed to help clients get back on track faster.

A complete relapse and recovery plan is constructed, so clients do not give up on their progress and continue to act in healthy ways for the long term.

They get homework assignments that ensure they show active participation and further reinforces their positive progress.

To help treat children and adults with ARFID and develop lifelong skills, we have board-certified behavior analysts on staff.

Keeping the needs of individuals with ARFID and the need to socially distance in mind, our team of experts works through video counseling to help you improve your symptoms and get professional help from the safety of your home.

If you think you may have ARFID or if you observe problematic eating behaviors in your child and are worried that it might negatively affect their physical, psychological, or social growth, contact us to get personalized help

10 signs of ARFID – the eating disorder you’ve never heard of

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:02:16 GMT

10 signs of ARFID – the eating disorder you’ve never heard of

Is your son often turning up his nose during mealtimes? Is picky eating a more common problem with your daughter than other children of her age?

It is not unusual for children to be selective about their foods. But normally, it doesn't take long before they grow out of this behavior and develop healthy eating patterns.

However, for some children, food anxiety can be a more severe problem and is often ignored because parents think it’s “just a phase”.

If your child shows a general lack of interest in eating and has issues with food to the extent that it starts to affect their growth and development, it could mean that they're not just a fussy eater.

Rather, they're going through something more serious—which, if left untreated—can have harmful effects on their lives.

Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) , or in simpler terms, "extreme picky eating," is a food disorder where a child faces issues with food, but their fears around eating are very different from more common eating disorders like anorexia nervosa or bulimia.

Because of these differences in symptoms, ARFID can be confusing, so doctors may not recognize the problem, which may leave your child undiagnosed, untreated, and at great risk for their lives – and the problem might follow them well into adulthood.

It follows that having a good understanding of ARFID symptoms and being able to recognize them is vital to save your child from unhealthy weight loss, malnutrition, social issues, or other problems that may come with Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder.

To help you gauge your child's condition better, here are some telltale signs and symptoms of ARFID.

1. A lack of interest in food

A child suffering from ARFID knows that they must eat, but they have no interest in eating. This lack of interest in eating is not due to fears related to body shape, size, or concerns about fatness as it is in other eating disorders like anorexia nervosa or bulimia.

Your child may complain of having no appetite, but they may have no solid reason other than the food itself to explain why they don't want to eat.

They likely do not have issues with how they look, low self-esteem, or medical or physical problems that prevent them from eating fully. Additionally, they say they are “full” sooner, have typically low appetite, and show increasing indifference to food.

2. They avoid eating certain foods for their sensory characteristics.

Their concerns are more focused on the food itself and not that much on its impact on their body image. For example, their primary reason not to eat food is certain textures, colors, and smells that bother them.

If the food does not have the particular characteristics they desire, they refuse to eat it. This rigidity often also extends to how food is served, such as different foods on a plate cannot touch or should be cut into fine pieces; otherwise, they can't eat it.

3. They avoid and restrict themselves to only certain types of food.

They have a very restricted list of acceptable foods that becomes more limited over time. Almost all of these foods have certain traits, such as a similar texture, taste, temperature, odor, and color.

Other than their desired foods with specific characteristics, they may ignore whole food groups such as fruits, vegetables, and meats because these foods distress or disgust them.

4. They are afraid that foods without specific characteristics might make them choke or vomit.

Their extreme picky eating can occur because they experience distress about certain foods. It is not just a disciplinary issue. They have an adverse emotional or physical reaction associated with the foods, such as fearing that they might choke or vomit if they try to eat those foods.

Again, this fear is not associated with body shape, size, or weight. It's more focused on how they feel about the food itself while eating it.

5. They are very reluctant to try different or new types of food

They are precise with their food selection and refuse to try anything else. Similarly, they may even have rigid standards regarding how a particular food should be cooked, and they may not eat even a desired food if it's cooked in some other way than they want it to be.

For example, refusing to eat a fried egg if its texture gets too hard or turns brown during frying.

6. They experience social problems due to restricted eating.

This food anxiety can stop them from healthily engaging in social activities. For example, your child might refuse to go to a camp with their friends because they are afraid of the food that will be offered and have a lot of trouble eating at unfamiliar places, so they avoid the interaction altogether.

They may refuse to sit at the dinner table or have lunch with their family because of the stress related to the foods they dislike. They may also say they are feeling full when they've barely eaten anything. They experience dread and anxiety during mealtimes.

7. They dress in additional layers of clothes.

As avoidance and restriction of certain foods can lead them to weight loss, they might try to compensate for their skinny appearance by wearing more clothes.

Similarly, they feel cold more intensely as their bodies have difficulties maintaining average temperature due to all the deficiencies, so they may experience muscle cramps and put on extra clothes during winter compared to others.

8. No or delayed growth

As children grow, they get bigger, but in cases of ARFID, your child might not be gaining weight or getting bigger at all.

As they only restrict themselves to certain foods, they can have no or delayed growth compared to other children of their age.

9. Malnutrition, weight loss, and physical problems

Only restricting themselves to certain foods can mean they are missing out on other vital nutrients essential for them to grow properly.

This restricted eating can lead to a host of problems. These include lethargy, a weakened immune system, dry skin, brittle nails, hair thinning or hair loss, stomach cramps, nausea, insomnia, anemia, low blood count, fainting, and very low tolerance to cold.

10. They require additional dietary supplements.

Lack of nutrition can cause a lot of issues that may need interventions other than food to treat. For example, they may lack energy, have a slower heart rate, look pale or unhealthy, feel sick or have constant stomach pains.

Some of these issues can threaten their well-being, so doctors regularly prescribe dietary supplements and feeding tubes to compensate for these gaps in their diet. Unfortunately, even though these supplements can help the malnutrition problem, it doesn’t stop the fears underlying the avoidance of food groups, which means the problem continues.

If you see your child undergoing one or all of these symptoms, it could mean they are suffering from ARFID, and it is important to get them professional intervention as soon as possible to help them recover properly.

Fortunately, behavioral therapies can help children cure ARFID early in childhood, so it doesn't severely affect them for the rest of their lives. But even if your child is older or already an adult, it is not too late to get help and fully recover!

Getting your loved ones timely professional support can be crucial to help them develop healthy eating patterns, resolve their fears around eating, grow healthily, be safe, and evade a multitude of physical and psychological problems down the road.

If this list of symptoms describes you or your child, feel free to contact us for a FREE 15 minute consult and we’ll let you know if you’re on the right track.

Are COVID and back-to-school stress leading to increased eating disorders in our boys and girls?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:48:11 GMT

Are COVID and back-to-school stress leading to increased eating disorders in our boys and girls?

The summer break is over, and children are trying to get back to school.

Back-to-school is usually a time of heightened emotions.

Some kids feel low that their holidays are over, and they must get back to responsibilities. While others are excited or anxious because they now must change their routines, meet new friends, and start new classes.

Either way, it's a time of sudden change in children's lives.

But because of COVID, this year's back-to-school is more stressful than ever, for both parents and kids.

The long pandemic and quarantined way of living have made us accustomed to a lot of new life changes.

The stay-at-home restrictions have changed our relationship with how and why we use the internet.

Children were online more than ever.

While social media helped some pass their time, it had negative consequences on others.

Social media often represents a distorted image of reality where you only see 'perfect' and happy moments in people's lives.

For someone struggling with body image or self-esteem issues, watching others posting pictures of their almost perfect lives can lead to developing insecurities and making unhealthy and unrealistic self-comparisons.

On top of that, the sedentary lifestyle due to quarantine has also led to weight fluctuations in a lot of people.

This can give rise to increased dissatisfaction with physical appearance and body weight.

And as back to school approaches and children now have to be face-to-face with one another after almost an entire year, this might lead them to resort to unhealthy behaviors to change body weight to “fit in” with unrealistic body image expectations.

Other than physical appearance, there are many more factors about back-to-school that can lead children to heightened stress.

Academic pressure is also increased this year as children now must go back to physical learning after a year of more of online learning, so adjusting back to physical mode and earning good grades can cause tremendous amounts of stress.

Peer pressure and comparison of one's body, weight, grades, popularity, friends, etc., can also be stressful.

Sports and athletic activities are also going to resume, which means you have to get back in shape.

All these stressors and fixation on achieving an ideal physical appearance can lead children to turn to unhealthy behaviors to help them cope.

These unhealthy behaviors could include restricting food intake, binging a lot of food to cope with stress, excessive dieting that can masquerade as vegetarianism or veganism, exercising compulsively, cutting entire food groups, counting calories, and other harmful behaviors.

Eating disorders must not be taken lightly!

They can lead to a lot of dangerous consequences such as developing nutritional deficiencies, impairing brain function, causing unhealthy and alarming changes in body weight, adopting addictions to certain foods, vomiting, constipation, dangerous changes and even rupturing of the stomach due to binge eating, kidney failure, and a heap of other psychological and physical problems.

In addition to serious health complications, eating disorders can hinder how your child socially acts, sees themselves, and academically performs.

Because of all of this, going back to school can lead to the development of eating disorders or make existing conditions worse.

Becoming aware of such behaviors in your children and getting professional help early is crucial to help your child deal with their body-image issues.

Why? When dealing with eating disorders, the way your child consumes food is not the problem. Instead, it's the existence of other mental health conditions or deep-seated insecurities or self-esteem issues that lead them to resort to risky behaviors in the first place.

The co-existence of other mental health issues makes eating disorders so complex. And that's why professional help is crucial because merely changing your child's way of eating does not help them recover properly and stop the damage.

Your role as a parent plays a crucial role in your child's recovery. It's important to recognize the signs of eating disorders and get your child professional help sooner than later.

Boys and girls present their warning signs differently.

For boys, the symptoms could be hiding in plain sight because being skinny and underweight is not usually considered a problem in boys, and impulsive exercise is often socially valued in men. Similarly, a 17-year-old boy eating multiple big macs might be seen as 'cool.' So, parents might not even know that their child is suffering from an eating disorder.

But some telltale signs can help you identify a potential eating disorder in your child or teen boy.

• Excessive focus on exercising.
• Eating large amounts of food in a very short time.
• Complaining about irregular heartbeats, sore throats, dental problems, weight changes, and physical appearance.
• Use of laxatives.
• Going to the bathroom in the middle of the meals or right after.
• Obsessively reading nutritional information about foods or counting calories.
• Constantly weighing himself or looking at the mirror.
• Avoiding or withdrawing from social groups that involve food.
• Refusing to eat certain food groups and relying on specific foods only.
• Rigidity around eating meals
• Feeling disgusted, ashamed, or guilty after eating.
• Eating to cope with stress.

Similarly, girls might show the following symptoms.

• Excessive and compulsive exercising.
• Persistent complains and worries about body shape and keeps telling people that she needs to lose weight and feels fat.
• Developing a new diet that becomes obsessive, often disguised as becoming vegetarian or vegan, which results in extreme weight loss in a short period of time.
• Fear of eating in front of others.
• Making food for others but not eating it herself.
• Hair loss, dry skin, significant weight loss.
• Developing unusual sleep patterns, increased sensitivity to cold, feeling faint or tired all the time, irregularity, or stopping menstrual cycles.
• Secretive eating, where large amounts of food disappear from your house in a short time.
• Using laxatives, frequent vomiting, or diuretic abuse to purge the food soon after eating the meal.
• She frequently weighs herself and constantly checks herself in the mirror.
• Spending increased time in the bathroom.
• Frequently consumes a large amount of food and seems out of control during these binge-eating sessions and regrets later.
• She is often in denial that anything is wrong with her eating behaviors.

If you observe some or all of these signs in your child, getting them professional help early can not only save them from the physical dangers of eating disorders but can also help them cure the underlying psychological issues that cause them pain and lead to these harmful behaviors to exist in the first place.

If in doubt, ask the professionals! We offer free 15-minute consults so you can discuss your concerns with us and come up with an effective plan. Maybe it’s nothing, and we’ll tell you if it is… however, we find that most parents who have the instinct to ask for advice are usually on to something and don’t regret the call.

Why summer is the best time to get help for your child's eating disorder.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:38:37 GMT

Why summer is the best time to get help for your child’s eating disorder.

Every year, summer brings an opportunity for children to take a step back from the pressures of school and take a well-deserved break.

The restrictions are off, and finally, your child can relax and unwind, but what does this sudden freedom and shift in lifestyle mean for those who are struggling with eating disorders?

Does summer break make eating disorder symptoms worse, or is it an opportunity for improvement?

The answer is: it can be both.

Your child is out of school, academic pressures have decreased, pressures seem to be cooling down, and for some kids it may seem as if their eating disorder is getting better by itself.

Parents often assume that spending time with their family and having plans for summer will make it easier for the eating disorder to just go away.

Unfortunately, putting off treatment during summer could be a huge mistake.

Eating disorders are much more complex and deep-rooted than that. Even if the symptoms subside for some time, they can quickly get back up and worsen if the person is not getting proper support and treatment.

Eating disorders have a high relapse rate, and out of all mental health issues, illnesses like anorexia nervosa can have the most damaging impact on a person.

A young person’s eating disorder must not be taken lightly, and it is crucial that they get timely and adequate support.

Summer is the time where parents of children with eating disorders should double their efforts instead of toning down.

Even if this break does not cause a flare up your child’s symptoms, it can be an excellent opportunity to focus entirely on improving and reinforcing positive behaviors . These three months can be an immensely powerful block of time to help children learn to manage their symptoms effectively, before the pressures of school start up again.

Let us examine why summer should not be taken lightly for kids with eating disorders and why delaying treatment is not a good idea.

Summer is associated with having fun outside, going to beaches, and “The swimsuit season.”

This means naturally less clothing and more body exposure. Fitting into a swimsuit or wearing more revealing attire can be exceptionally hard for someone who suffers from body image problems.

For children and teens struggling with body dysmorphia, this change of clothing can trigger shame and an increase in dissatisfaction with their bodies.

And to cope with it, several symptoms of eating disorders can resurface and therefore increase the chances of your child resorting to unhealthy eating patterns to get their weight under control or even relapsing to previous eating disorder symptoms that had been in remission, such as abuse of laxatives or purging.

They might become victims of anorexia, where they refuse to eat food, even to dangerously unhealthy levels, so that they can lose fat and maintain their ideal body shape, even if it is seriously harming their health.

They might also develop bulimia nervosa, where they first engage in binge eating, regret their decisions to overeat, and then purge to get rid of extra food.

Moreover, summer break reduces structured routines during the day, which could mean skipping meals, unhealthy sleep patterns, and more accessible access to emotionally comforting snacks. This loss of routine can cause kids to move away from the positive coping strategies that were helping them stay healthy and cope with their eating disorder.

Kids often have more free time, which leads to more alone time during the summer.

Isolation, boredom, and secrecy provide excellent conditions for your child’s insecurities and eating disorder to thrive. Initiating new habits or leaving previous ones can also be a stressful transition.

They might start binge eating to cope with boredom, stress, or sadness.

Food is comforting and readily available - it can help fight stress temporarily. Abuse of food as a coping mechanism can exacerbate body image issues.

Not to mention the fuel social media can add to the fire. A bombardment of seemingly perfect and beautiful photos of men and women can increase the desire for an unrealistic body figure, thus increasing the dissatisfaction with our body.

This frustration can result in forming obsessions with healthy eating and exercising.

While it is good to focus on an improved diet and physical activity, individuals with eating disorders often take it to the extreme.

This overindulgence in clean food and exercise can also lead to the development of orthorexia which is an eating disorder where a person puts too much emphasis on making sure that they are exercising and eating right, so much so that it could damage social interactions and a person’s ability to function in society properly.

All these factors can make eating disorders particularly challenging during summer.

When the social pressure resumes during fall, it can make it difficult for children to maintain mental resilience and get back on track.

And if the symptoms of eating disorders worsen and get out of hand, it can result in a crisis that leads to needing to drop out of school to get treatment.

But things do not have to be this way.

Summer also presents us with an opportunity where we can not only reverse but improve a child’s ability to cope with these troublesome symptoms.

In fact, summer can be one of the most advantageous times of the year for getting therapy for your child.

Let us look at how you can turn these three months of summer into some of the most helpful months for your child with an eating disorder.

Opting for summer as the time of treatment for your child might turn out to be the most logical solution because there is no academic burden , so it can be more convenient for both parents and children to completely focus on counseling.

Eating disorders often have co-occurring mental health conditions such as depression, self-esteem problems, anxiety disorder, or a combination of these issues.

Even if your child’s symptoms have improved, getting therapy during these three months could help them reinforce their gains, treat other coexisting mental health concerns, and provide them with the proper guidance to develop better body image and self-esteem.

Summer also means children have more free time to engage in activities that improve their mental health and further reinforce healthy coping mechanisms.

This could include starting a meditation practice, enrolling in a yoga class, or doing whatever makes them feel at peace with themselves.

You also can join support groups where people are dealing with the same problems. These people are here to provide you with help, hope, and advice. This could help you learn from other peoples’ experiences and make your child feel less alone about their eating disorder.

It is also better to get help when you are not in a crisis. You have at least three months to turn symptoms around without competing with school stress. You may also not need as intense a form of treatment as an inpatient.

These three months can play a significant role in making or breaking your child’s eating disorder.

So, use this time to your and your child’s advantage and help them develop lifelong skills by enrolling them in therapy and getting them lasting help to overcome their body image issues.

Tags: eating disorders , children , kids , kids eating disorders , anorexia , binge eating , stress eating , bulimia , eating disorder , summer time , healthy , kids having eating disorders , health , body dysmorphia

Is your child just anxious, or does she have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:26:07 GMT

Is your child just anxious, or does she have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?

Is your child prone to taking things more seriously than other kids of their age?

Does he count, check, wash or clean himself or other things over and over?

Does your child have seemingly irrational fears that you cannot soothe no matter how much you try to reassure them?

Do they engage in strange, repeated behaviors that interfere with family life?

For example, a child might be worried that their hands got dirty, so they may wash them twice or even three times just to make sure that they are clean. This is entirely normal.

But what if your four-year-old son is so afraid of contaminating germs that he is washing his hands more than necessary? Even 20 or 40 times during a day?

Another instance could be that your five-year-old daughter is so scared of a robber breaking into your house that this fear will not let her sleep until she checks all the doors and windows multiple times each night.

There could be several other scenarios where your child experiences thoughts that are out of their control or might engage in seemingly strange behaviors repeatedly because they feel a strong urge to do it regardless of whether they want to.

It is normal for children to have worries and doubts as they grow up, but if these fears turn into obsessions and make it harder for them to live a relaxed and comfortable life, then it could mean that they could be suffering from an anxiety disorder, particularly Obsessive-Compulsive disorder.

OCD affects around 4% of children all around the U.S, and many of its symptoms start early in childhood.

Children often have less insight into the workings of their own minds and may not have the capacity to understand the irrational nature of their thinking and actions.

However, parents educated about their condition can play a vital role in ensuring that they help their child understand the problem early on and adopt a more productive approach towards their OCD, so they do not face more debilitating problems later in life.

Parents who do not know about the symptoms of OCD may take on an inappropriate mindset towards helping their child in distress.

Saying things like “Stop thinking about it,” “Just relax, it’s all in your head,” can make it more difficult for your children to open up about the issues they face. They may internalize that it is wrong to talk about their problems and it can become a hurdle for them to get proper support.

But knowing the signs and getting proper treatment earlier can help reduce the symptoms and make them much more manageable.

Obsessions are unwanted or repetitive thoughts where a child cannot stop worrying no matter how much they want to.

These could include images or urges that pop up again and again and feel as if it is outside of a child’s control not to think about them.

Such as: “My parents are going to die”, or “If I walk barefoot, I’m going to get a terrible disease”.

Your child may know that these thoughts are unrealistic, frightening, and even illogical, but they continue to be bothered by them despite knowing this.

A few symptoms of obsessions in children include:

Having extreme worries about contaminating germs, being dirty, or getting sick, to a point where they refuse even to touch things.
Being preoccupied with order and symmetry where they feel as if things must be “just right.”
Having repeated doubts about something going wrong and checking on it repeatedly, such as whether the door is locked or if the oven is off.
Always being worried that something bad might happen to them or their parents.
Often thinking about unwanted, disturbing things, hurting others, or self-harm.
Having uncontrollable thoughts about aggression or of a sexual nature towards others.

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors that are performed to ease the anxiety caused from obsessive thoughts. These are the behaviors that a child feels that they “must do.” Children with OCD believe that engaging in these behaviors will somehow prevent the bad things from happening.

Compulsive behaviors could include:

Repeating rituals such as washing hands too much, checking whether the door is locked, rewriting, and erasing repeatedly.
Only doing tasks in a certain manner and refusing to do otherwise, for example, moving through a doorway stepping with the left foot first or only putting on a selected set of clothes despite having a lot of options in the wardrobe.
Excessive cleaning and body washing, changing clothes multiple times during the day.
Leaving chores or tasks midway and starting them repeatedly because they are not in the right order according to them.
Hoarding or collecting items such as rocks, even when they do not have any value.
Getting extremely uncomfortable if they get in contact with a “contaminated” thing or a person and then engaging in repetitive behaviors to make themselves clean again.

The symptoms of OCD are often misunderstood in children as disciplinary problems, but OCD is an anxiety disorder that can impair your child, and many of their behaviors are out of their control unless they get help and support.

The exact causes of OCD are unknown, but it is mostly influenced by genetic or hereditary factors. However, it can also be caused by learned behaviors that become a habit when they are used as a relief from anxiety.

Luckily, obsessive-compulsive disorder can also be successfully treated with the help of psychotherapy and medications.

One particularly effective and leading psychotherapeutic strategy for treating OCD in children is Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA).

ABA involves taking notes of a person’s behavior by observing their stimulus that causes the action (antecedent), their behavior in response to that stimulus, and the consequence of acting due to that behavior.

A trained applied behavior analyst helps a child understand and manipulate their antecedent or consequence in their favor. They do this by engaging the child in behavioral activation that focuses on setting goals and rewards by engaging in more healthy and meaningful behaviors.

This allows the young child to learn effective ways according to their age and understanding and to handle their anxieties and face their fears using rewards.

Similarly, parents are also further educated about how they can effectively help their child and what they can do to make sure both they and their child can work together to achieve the best possible and lasting improvements.

This way, parents become a part of the process and no longer feel helpless. Furthermore, ABA can help your child improve social and academic skills by enhancing communication and attention to their own troubles by helping them manage and decrease the behaviors that cause them problems.

At The Body Image Counseling Center, we have trained behavior analysts on staff who can work with you and your child through video to reduce anxiety and OCD symptoms. The younger you get your child help, the less likely these symptoms will become ingrained and more difficult to remove later in life.

As a parent, you will become less frustrated with your child’s seemingly irrational behavior and know exactly what to do to help them! For a free consult, just contact us at 904-737-3232, or send an appointment request .

The Pandemic Made My Adult Child’s Eating Disorder Worse and They Refuse To Get Help

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:16:14 GMT

The Pandemic Made My Adult Child’s Eating Disorder Worse and They Refuse To Get Help

Has your adult son or daughter moved in with you during the Coronavirus pandemic and their eating disorder symptoms have gotten worse?

Is your son or daughter compulsively exercising, becoming obsessed with healthy eating, losing too much weight, or hoarding food and gaining weight? Do you think they may be making themselves throw up?

Have your tried to reason with them and offered to pay for counseling but they are still refusing to get help?

The year 2020 onward has been one of the most distressing times in modern history. Because of lockdown and social isolation, emotional and psychological issues are on the rise, so much so that the depression symptoms among adults in the U.S now have tripled in comparison to the pre-covid era.

This can make it harder for people with existing mood or eating disorders - and even cause relapse for those already treated.

Recently, for various reasons — loss of job, safety concerns due to pandemic, breakups, etc. — many adults have moved back in with their parents. When an adult child comes back to live with their parents, a lot of distressing eating and exercise habits can be easily identified.

Watching your child engage in unhealthy and even dangerous eating and exercise behaviors can make anyone concerned. And almost every parent wants to help their kid, be it emotionally, physically, or financially.

But independent adult children are no longer under your care as they can manage in most areas of their life, so it can be increasingly hard to convince them to break their unhealthy eating disordered habits and seek professional help.

A simple “I’m not going” can put parents in a tricky spot because you cannot force your child or use your financial aid as leverage because your children are no longer dependent on you.

Emotional eating or restricting can be an immensely powerful coping mechanism that many of us use when we want to feel better and fight mental distress.

Most adult children have never experienced being trapped in their home, especially during a time of life where you want to be free and independent. The stress of the pandemic lockdowns may have made your son or daughter more conscious of their weight and health.

Making some changes in diet or becoming focused on your health can be normal to a point. However, it can become a dangerous problem when one’s relationship with food and exercise takes on more intensity and becomes and obsession.

They may have started to use food and/or compulsive exercise as their primary coping mechanisms because it helps them fight stress and other underlying emotional issues. Have you noticed your adult child restricting excessively to meet their fitness goals, even if it means depriving their body of essential nutrients? Or on the opposite end of the scale, have you noticed them soothing with food, hoarding it, and purging in the bathroom?

These symptoms can be extraordinarily powerful ways to feel better in the moment, especially in lockdown, where we cannot go outside, cannot socialize, and do not have access to activities that make us feel better. Control of eating and exercise seems to be at least one area of our life that we can still easily reach and still control.

And it is important to know that eating disorders are among the most severe psychiatric disorders because they can increase the likelihood of health risks and even death.

These bad habits can be easily incorporated into your child’s life, and sometimes they may not notice that they have a problem or even deny that these behaviors are unhealthy. It does not help that these behaviors are reinforced and encouraged by unhealthy social media sites!

This can be common among individuals who live independently and are not aware of their unhealthy eating patterns because they live alone and do not have anyone to provide feedback.

Or they may have greater control over their lives and resources, so they are more likely to do what they desire.

But at the same time, for the safety of your child, it is crucial that they seek professional help.

So how can you convince your adult child to engage in treatment?

The first thing you must do is change your approach because your child is now an adult. Scare tactics, pressurizing, removing the food, etc., are not likely to sustain favorable outcomes in the long run and can cause your child to become more isolated, resentful of you, and secretive.

It will be much better if you discuss the issue with them instead of threatening or ordering them to get help.

Start your search for credible specialists before having the discussion with your child , so once they agree, you can get to the treatment at once or refer them to whom they should see.
Prepare yourself to have ‘the talk’ with your child. Educate yourself about the condition first so you understand how it truly feels to be in their position so you can put forth a convincing argument for why they need to take their eating disorders seriously and what is at stake if they do not .
Avoid ultimatums, commenting on appearance or weight, shaming, or blaming. Instead, encourage them to get professional help.
Pick a good time and place where both you and your child can pay proper attention to one another. Let them know beforehand that you need to have an important conversation with them so they can understand that it is something serious and that they need to pay proper attention.
Approach them with empathy, start with something like , “I have noticed that you have lost some weight during the past six months. We also heard you complaining about not having your periods, and we think that there might be something else going on that you need to pay attention to. We love you more than anything, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we didn’t.”
Once the conversation starts, tell them how their symptoms are terribly similar to an eating disorder and what it could mean in the long term. It could be that your child is not aware of the severity of the situation, and that is why they might be reluctant or ignorant of the matter.

If your child still refuses, ask them what is holding them back and if there are any other underlying issues, they are facing that they would like to talk about.

Getting to the roots of your child’s distress can help you tackle the issue more effectively.

Also, make sure that you do not become angry or resentful in the process, and you are not letting your fears and concerns get the best of you.

While it is important that you go the extra mile for your child’s well-being, if they are not comfortable with you being involved, it is better to put the word out there and let them know that solutions exist if they need. Giving them space without being rejected can lead to better results and let them know that you are always available if they need someone to listen and support them.

Most important, never give up! Resist the urge to go into denial like your adult child but do so without hostility or panic. This is a tall order when the person you love most in the world is in danger. At The Body Image Counseling Center, we have coached hundreds of parents about how to successfully steer their adult children towards treatment and recovery. Do not be afraid to ask for support and help – you do not have to go it alone!

Do this BEFORE you get bariatric surgery, a gastric bypass, or a gastric sleeve!

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:59:43 GMT

Do this BEFORE you get bariatric surgery, a gastric bypass, or a gastric sleeve!

Are you so worried about your weight that you are considering a gastric bypass procedure?

Has your doctor warned you that if you do not start controlling your weight you will have significant health problems that could be life-threatening?

Are you concerned about the side effects of these permanent procedures, but do not know how to control your eating habits in a better way without surgery?

Obesity is a common issue that is faced by people across the planet.

In a study conducted in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 and older, were found to be overweight.

While exercise and diet alone can be powerful tools in the battle against obesity, some people find it hard to benefit as they do not know how to use these techniques to their advantage correctly.

Often in such cases, a lack of knowledge and guidance can make it seem as if a surgical procedure such as a gastric sleeve is the only effective solution that exists.

When you feel that exercise and diet have failed you in stopping your emotional eating, bariatric surgery can seem like a last resort option that offers a quick and permanent solution.

Bariatric surgery refers to a set of surgical procedures that aid in weight loss by making changes to your digestive system. Some of these procedures limit how much you can eat, while others reduce your ability to absorb nutrients.

The most common type of Bariatric surgery includes gastric bypass surgery, in which a small pouch is created in the top portion of the stomach.

This pouch divides a portion of the stomach from the rest of the stomach’s area.

Then the small intestine is similarly divided and connected to the newly created small pouch.

This procedure limits the food your stomach can hold as well as how many calories it can absorb.

Sleeve gastrectomy is another form of bariatric surgery in which almost 80% of the stomach is removed.

Bariatric surgeries are performed in severely overweight patients with life-threatening health problems such as heart disease, sleep apnea, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, for example.

Bariatric surgery can help you eliminate excess weight almost instantly and deter weight gain in the future. In most cases, it is only preferred to help save lives.

It is essential to understand that such surgeries are not for everyone, and they come with physical and emotional complications of their own.

Many people — despite not suffering from life-threatening conditions — opt for Bariatric surgery.

If you are thinking about getting a bariatric procedure for yourself, you might already know the benefits, but are you aware of the complications that can arise after the surgery?

And most importantly, are you aware of other non-surgical procedures that could help you manage your weight and body image problems in a relatively easy and non-risky way?

When people choose to get their stomach operated on, they often feel so desperate (and are often scared to death by their doctors) they can put a blind eye to the risks that could follow them in the future.

Before getting any kind of surgery, you must weigh both the pros and cons and only after careful assessment, make the final choice.

Bariatric surgery is a complex procedure that permanently affects your vital organs and can potentially result in higher complication rates.

It also requires comprehensive close monitoring and limiting yourself to the lifelong use of medications and an extremely limited selection of foods.

The physical risks associated with a gastric bypass resemble that of any abdominal surgery. These can include bowel obstruction, gallstones, hernias, malnutrition, ulcers, vomiting, stomach perforation, and low blood sugar.

Excessive skin creation is another lesser-known issue, and you might have to go through corrective surgery for that condition, which is expensive and can also have negative complications.

The surgery may also lead to “dumping syndrome” that can cause regular excessive diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting.

When they experience these side effects patients usually must undergo another surgical procedure to get their complications resolved!

Other than physical complexities, there can also be severe psychological side effects.

The extreme shifts in diet and lifestyle after the surgery can be a challenging life-long adjustment. Your body may respond differently to alcohol, soda, and certain foods after surgery which can put you at a risk when engaging in social hangouts or other leisure activities involving a wide variety of foods.

Weight loss surgery can provide you with an initial uplift in mood and increased satisfaction. However, studies suggest, it may result in a higher prevalence of co-morbidities, including mood disorders, worsening of eating disorders, low self-esteem, anxiety, increased alcohol use, and personality disorders.

Therefore, you should get specialized counseling from mental health professionals for your eating issues and keep permanent surgery as a last resort.

Proper counseling can also improve self-esteem and stop ongoing intrusive thoughts about food, body image, and dieting that interfere with the quality of life.

Individualized mental health and nutrition counseling can help you educate yourself about your condition and try practical approaches you were previously unaware of.

Intuitive eating is one such method that helps you maintain your natural weight and stop your body image issues without involving surgery.

Intuitive eating does not involve any forms of dieting or food restrictions. Unlike dieting, you do not have to go through prolonged fasting or relying on specific foods to obtain your results.

Instead, intuitive eating is a mindset that makes you an expert on how your body works and how you can form a lifelong healthy attitude towards food and body image.

Intuitive eating helps your body break the diet cycle and set it into its natural weight range instead of focusing on just shrinking your body.

Like genetics and hair color, every person has a unique body shape, and the ideal weight varies from person to person.

You do not have to follow the same body standard everyone else follows because your body has its own ideal weight and shape.

It means that your ideal weight can be less than what you have now, or even more. The end goal is not maintaining a healthy weight. Instead, it is keeping a healthy body where healthy behaviors should be your top priority.

The main principle of intuitive eating involves eating only when your body requires food and stopping as soon as you are full. As it does not include any restrictions, this approach towards eating can be easily followed over the long term without sacrificing food variety or lifestyle.

Body image issues usually arise when you start to misuse food for emotional reasons.

In emotional eating, you use food as a powerful way to soothe feelings of sadness, loneliness, boredom, and even excitement and joy. This form of eating causes guilt, self-hatred, and eventually developing unhealthy relationships with food and body image.

Intuitive eating means you learn to eat in response to physiological hunger instead of eating for emotional reasons. It means you honor your body’s natural hunger cues, do not pose any unnecessary restrictions on it, and feed it adequately, only in response to physical hunger.

Intuitive eating prevents excessive hunger and our primal drive to overeat. Instead of fighting against your body’s cravings, you make peace with your food and give your body permission to eat what it wants.

This way, you maintain a healthy weight without dieting or engaging in dangerous medical procedures and focus on developing and maintaining healthy behaviors.

Your dissatisfaction with your body involves more than just your weight. It could be a combination of factors involving underlying mental health conditions and distorted mindsets that lead to self-esteem issues.

With the help of proper counseling and adopting an intuitive approach, much of your issues can be solved in less risky and more healthy ways, making sure you achieve your goals without getting surgery.

So, before choosing surgery as your solution, try getting individualized counseling to obtain less risky, healthy, and easy-to-follow lifelong approaches to improve your self-esteem and take control over your body image problems.

By the way, we often get calls to perform mental health “evaluations” to deem a person mentally “sane” so they can get the go-ahead to receive bypass procedures.

Guess what? We refuse to perform these evaluations as policy. Why? Because most people are sane! The problem is that they have not worked with intuitive eating specialists who can teach them how to get out of dangerous weight range without dieting or surgery.

We feel that our dieting culture is insane. If you would like to work with our intuitive eating specialists to explore a much less dangerous and expensive way to have a healthy relationship with food, call us or fill out a free 15-minute consult form today.

This is why you've gained weight during the coronavirus pandemic

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:48:59 GMT

Are you finding it harder to fit into clothes that seemed to fit perfectly fine a year ago?

Is weight gain during the coronavirus pandemic causing you to panic?

Are you feeling more isolated and bad about yourself because you have gained weight during this time?

If you have gained weight since last March, you are not alone.

The pandemic has made a significant impact on our lives.

Before quarantine, we spent much of our days outside of the home — attending our jobs, school, or running errands, seeing friends and family.

We used to follow a very active lifestyle where we engaged in physical activity from time to time and had healthy ways to release our stress.

Ever since the pandemic hit, our routines and usual ways of living have been completely changed.

The active lifestyle we once followed has been replaced by a forced stay-at-home lifestyle and has for many of us become oppressive, boring and depressing.

The pandemic is also to blame for many more problems.

Stay-at-home routines have given rise to increased stress. Many have resorted to unhealthy coping mechanisms such as emotional or binge eating.

In the past year, as a result of using unhealthy eating behaviors as a coping mechanism for stressful situations, many people have reported an increase in their weight.

Considering the circumstances, gaining weight in this situation is completely normal, and there is nothing to be ashamed of as it is a very common issue. Not much of it was in our control, but we can control how we approach this situation now.

And most importantly, we do not want to give into ineffective ways of weight loss that are fruitless and make our eating habits worse, and only harm us in the long run.

When it comes to losing weight, one of the most common methods people usually resort to is dieting.

When dieting, you focus on certain foods, avoid others, and restrict yourself by denying your body its natural eating patterns. Dieting can surely give results, but it is usually very difficult and nearly impossible to stick with in the long run.

Eventually, people on diets often cannot control themselves for extended periods and have “cheat days” where they go against their diet plan and find themselves back at the same weight and, in some cases, gain even more.

With diets you are not breaking your bad habits. Instead, you are ignoring the stressful events that caused the weight gain in the first place. Saying no to “bad” foods will not solve the stressful circumstances, and will only cause you to crave restricted foods more and more in reality.

Diets follow a one size fits all approach and completely ignore a person’s unique needs and preferences. You cannot keep starving yourself forever, so, in most cases, diets are not the final answer to your weight loss.

People also often confuse their binge eating with emotional eating.

When you break the rules of a diet, it is easy to believe that your emotions are what caused you to binge in the first place. But in reality, this desperate desire to binge is a biological reaction to deprivation.

When you are not getting enough calories, your brain releases neuropeptides (NPY) as a response to starvation. An increase in NPY can delay satiety in your body, so we feel like we must eat lots of food at once to make up for the deprivation.

Cravings during diets are not an issue of control. Instead, they are your body’s natural survival mechanism to keep us alive and well. In this way, dieting is the real cause of our binging in the first place.

If you find yourself on a diet and are not seeing results, it does not mean that you are not working hard enough. It means that the diet you are following does not work.

If you want to lose your extra weight, the first and foremost thing you need to understand is that diets are not the ideal solution, and you do not have to put yourself through extensive tests of willpower to lose weight.

So, then what is a good alternative solution that can help you lose weight without restrictive eating?

The non-diet approach is a much more practical, easy to follow, and lasting method that not only gives you a solution but a whole new perspective on how to look at weight and overall health.

The non-diet approach is based on a Health at Every Size (HAES) principle. This principle supports the fact that just like your eye and hair color, every person’s body shape is unique and varies from individual to individual.

It helps you realize that losing weight should not be the end goal, yet maintaining good health and prioritizing healthy behaviors should be a top priority.

This does not mean that you ignore maintaining a healthy weight. This means you focus on maintaining and developing healthy behaviors instead of just focusing on your body’s shape and weight as measures of progress and good health.

This approach is also backed up by research as one of the most effective ways to maintain and improve your health.

You need only to maintain and develop healthy behaviors, and you do not need to shrink your body to maintain health.

One of the best healthy behaviors that you should focus on is intuitive eating. It is a philosophy that makes you an expert on your body and its hunger cues.

Unlike traditional diets, intuitive eating does not pose any restrictions or guidelines on what to eat and avoid. Instead, it promotes a healthy attitude towards your body image and food.

The core idea of intuitive eating is using intuition with your body to eat only when you are physically hungry and stop as soon as you are full. It teaches you how to differentiate between physical and emotional hunger.

In intuitive eating, you are not eating out of sadness, loneliness or boredom, or cravings. Instead, you are responding to your body’s natural hunger cues such as fatigue, growling stomach, or irritability.

So, how can we get started with intuitive eating?

Below are some tips that can help.

1. Reject your diet mentality and understand that you have to let go of any restrictions because it will hinder your ability to use intuition to understand your body better.

2. Eat only as a response to physical hunger and stop when full. You learn to feel your fullness and discover your satisfaction factor.

3. Enjoy your food with all your senses and remove any distractions. Be completely immersed in your food, such as eating slowly, enjoying the texture, the smell, and the taste when you are eating.

You approach your health in a non-weight-focused way.

Similarly, to increase the benefits, you can adopt a better mindset for how you exercise. Instead of making exercise a compulsion and just filling your weekly quota by forcing yourself to exercises you do not like, you engage in joyful movement.

Joyful movement is an approach towards physical activity that emphasizes the pleasure you get from exercise.

Just like intuitive eating, you do not skip or overdo specific exercises. Instead, you choose exercises that you enjoy, take a rest whenever you want to, and pay attention to how the movement makes you feel.

As every person’s body and experiences are unique, therefore, to get the best out of these non-diet approaches, it can help a lot to ask for individual guidance from professionals.

At The Body Image Counseling Center, we provide expert counseling to help you get back on track and regain control over your body image and help you live a meaningful and joyful life, using an intuitive eating, health at every size approach.

Using an intuitive approach, your diet quality can radically improve, your esteem can increase, and you experience improvement in your psychological well-being. It can further help decrease disordered eating, gain weight stability in the long run, and your body dissatisfaction reduces to a great extent.

If you’ve gained weight during Coronavirus, don’t despair, and you’re definitely not alone. Try not to fall into desperate diets - start intuitive eating and joyful movement instead!

Are you binge eating and having panic attacks during coronavirus?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:35:12 GMT

Nothing feels worse than a full-blown panic attack. Many people first realize they are having these attacks after they end up in the emergency room, believing they are going to die. The symptoms can make you feel like you can't breathe and that you may be having a heart attack. It can feel so physically shocking it can be hard to believe "it's all in your head".

No wonder you turn to emotional eating to stop those symptoms! Remember that emotional eating is a form of nursing and self-soothing, not a lack of willpower. It is a primal urge to comfort yourself when feeling in extreme distress, so in a way your emotional eating is working for you in the moment you are panicking.

The problem is that your binging doesn't identify or solve the problems that brought on the panic in the first place. And if you don't figure that out and learn how to properly manage panic attack symptoms, your panic and emotional eating are likely to get worse over time.

Usually, since panic attacks AND emotional eating result from stress you have pushed down deep, you may need the help of a therapist to identify the triggers for both problems. In the meantime, here is a great list of creative ways to stop a panic attack while you are seeking help.

Don't put off getting treatment for your anxiety. Although it's terrifying to go through a panic attack, they are harmless and highly treatable once you have the proper support and tools.

Feeling anxiety is a natural human trait. It is normal to sometimes feel anxious about life situations but can become problematic if experienced more often. Such anxiety attacks can disturb your perfectly healthy and happy life in different ways. These unsolicited attacks, if not treated well can turn into panic attacks in no time.

A panic attack starts with an acute wave of fear, and can be accompanied by breathlessness, tachycardia, and chest pain among other distressing symptoms. They can occur in public gatherings or even when you are asleep. A person experiencing a panic attack might think they are going to die from pain without knowing it's all in their head. They feel so real!

Recurrent attacks are mostly triggered by a situation that has caused a panic attack before. It makes you feel disconnected from your surroundings as if you are going crazy with no escape.

It is so distressing to experience panic attacks that people will go to almost any lengths to relieve the anxiety. These can include recurring trips to the doctor to test for physical causes, drinking more alcohol to calm down, and many times using emotional eating to self-soothe.

Apart from eating to justify physical hunger, we also rely on food to comfort ourselves and calm our emotional needs. Bingeing comfort foods such as sweets and high carbohydrate foods can provide temporary relief because eating is a lot like nursing - immediately soothing and preoccupying.

With the current rise of the pandemic, people are losing their ability to overcome anxiety attacks, and most of them are emotionally eating with anxiety levels being off the charts. They feel powerless over food and their feelings, and in the end, they shame and punish themselves for "messing up".

It becomes a burden to focus on healthier and effective ways to deal with your emotions to mask the problems.

If you don't work to learn to successfully manage panic attacks and feelings of anxiety properly, emotional eating and panic attacks will only get worse with time.

Ultimately you could face a difficult time managing your weight.

Before you despair, know there is lots of good news!

First, panic attacks are harmless and highly treatable once you get the proper support and tools to overcome them.

Second, dieting is NOT one of the tools . If you are highly anxious and emotionally eating, please do not go on a diet, because it will only make the problem worse.

Here's what you CAN do:

Treat yourself with a hot bath if you feel exhausted. Read a good book or watch a comedy show if you're bored. Expend your negative nervous energy by squeezing a stress ball or playing with your pet. Make regular calls and talk to your loved ones if you are lonely or depressed.

Identify your emotional eating triggers and fight them to reduce panic attacks.

Labeling the triggering factors is the initial step to end both panic attacks and emotional eating. Unpleasant feelings, worst experiences, places, or situations can make you look for comfort in the form of food.

Stress is one of the most common causes of binging, it releases a hormone called cortisol. This hormone develops cravings for junk food that gives you a sudden wave of happiness and pleasure.

Reliving past traumatic events, stuffing down emotions, social pressure, and feelings of boredom and loneliness can all act as triggering factors. Unfortunately for many of us, the coronavirus pandemic has created a perfect storm of panic and binge eating triggers.

Medications like antidepressants and benzodiazepines are often used to temporarily limit the symptoms of panic disorder, and there is absolutely no shame in using them when prescribed by your doctor. However, they do not completely treat the problem.

Above mentioned stress-reducing activities can be of great help, but these alone may not make a noticeable change. To fully live a stress-free life, it can be a real game changer to ask for help from a therapist.

A short course of therapy can help a lot to reduce your stress. Among the most commonly used therapies, cognitive behavior therapy, exposure therapy for panic disorders, and exposure therapy for panic disorders with agoraphobia are preferred to deal with anxiety attacks. Combined with guidance from a therapist specializing in effective treatment of emotional eating, counseling can really turn panic and bingeing around quickly.

Don't put off getting treatment for your anxiety. Although it's terrifying to go through a panic attack, they are harmless and highly treatable once you have the proper support and tools.

The counselors at The Body Image Counseling Center are highly experienced and trained in the successful treatment of both eating disorders and panic attacks. We offer telehealth services so you can receive quality treatment in the comfort of your own home.

If you would like to receive a FREE and CONFIDENTIAL 15-minute consultation to see if our services would help you, just fill out a request form here , or call us at 904-737-3232. We will be in touch the same day!

Are you emotionally eating/drinking and gaining weight during coronavirus?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:27:48 GMT

• In a poll of more than 1,000 U.S. readers of WebMD, nearly half of the women and almost one-quarter of the men said they’d gained weight “due to COVID restrictions.” A separate poll of 900 international readers found more than half of men and about a third of women reporting weight gain.

• 70% in the U.S. and 35% internationally cited “stress eating” as a cause of their weight gain.

• Excessive drinking and resulting weight gain has also become a problem with sales of alcoholic beverages having gone up up 55% in the early days of the lockdown.

Rewarding yourself with your favorite food or alcoholic beverage to celebrate an event is a fine as long as you are also hungry. But if you opt for a scoop of ice cream, a slice of pizza or two margaritas to calm your anxiety, stress, loneliness, or boredom- you'll find yourself glued to a detrimental cycle that keeps you from figuring out the root causes of the anxiety.

Consuming junk food and cocktails may feel better right away, but emotional hunger cannot be satisfied with food , as the emotions that caused your emotional eating are still not resolved… and the devoured calories can make you feel even worse and cause weight gain.

It is a primary urge to comfort yourself when feeling distressed, so in a way, emotional eating is working for you in the time you are panicking. But it won't identify and solve the problems that brought on the troubled feelings in the first place.

Don’t be ashamed! Many people are going through this issue right now since it’s very comforting to stress eat and drink.

What you can do to stop emotional eating/drinking during coronavirus:

1, Realize emotional hunger and physical hunger are not the same thing, rather there is a huge difference. It might sound tricky but it's not unusual to mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger when stress kicks in. You can never break the vicious cycle of emotional eating if you don't know how to differentiate physical hunger from emotional hunger.

Physical hunger comes on slowly and stops when you're full. Emotional hunger comes on out of no-where and it’s possible to never feel satisfied with even a full stomach. Feeding yourself to satisfy physical hunger doesn't make you regret the calories you consume. But satisfying emotional hunger with food only makes you feel helpless, depressed, and ashamed.

2) Find alternatives to honor your feelings and avoid emotional eating and drinking. To fight comfort eating and drinking, you need to find substitutes for your emotional deprivation that don't involve food. It can be anything that feels emotionally fulfilling, such as calling a friend, writing in a journal, or going in your car and letting out a frustrated scream so the kids don’t hear!

3) Develop or get back to healthy lifestyle habits and work on yourself

Especially during this stressful period, it can help to make some healthy positive changes in your lifestyle.

Physical activity is a game-changer and works as a stress reducer. Meditation can help you relax and compose your thoughts. Recharge your battery by getting 8 hours of sleep. Safely meet with your friends and family to bring positive energy in your life and protect you from the negative energy of stress.

4) Stop and think before emotional eating

Emotional eating is an automatic mechanism and a mindless effort to win over stess. Before even realizing it, you can eat way beyond natural satiety in an attempt to soothe anxiety or depression.

Next time before you eat, take a moment to pause and think about it. Ask yourself to put off cravings and wait for 5 minutes. While you are waiting, check-in with yourself and observe how you are feeling. This trick will help you help you determine whether or not you are truly hungry.

5) Focus on intuitive eating NOT dieting, which can actually make bingeing worse.

Adjust your living and work spaces. Don’t work in the kitchen, Don’t eat or work in bed if possible.

Focus on easy meals. Even though we’re not going out, this new lifestyle can feel exhausting. Ask all family members to pitch in with food prep and cleanup.

Step outside and focus on joyful movement rather than excessive exercise for weight loss.

Get some help. If you don’t feel like you can get things under control on your own, even a single telemedicine consult with a dietitian or counselor can help . Every approach needs to be individualized and can make someone more likely to curb emotional eating/drinking.

Luckily, we are currently accepting new patients for telehealth counseling and nutrition coaching. We see people of all shapes and sizes, and use a non-diet approach that helps you to quickly remove feelings of shame and inaction.

Want to find out more? We offer no obligation FREE 15 minute consults the same day you contact us, because we know it can be hard to make that first appointment. Call today and let us help!

What would your life look like if you were totally free of your eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:17:12 GMT

Think about it for a minute.

I bet you haven't asked yourself that question very much, or maybe never at all. Why do I know this? Because most people with eating disorders live with them in secret, as well as the false belief that they can never fully recover. So, if you believe you will always have to live with your eating disorder, why would you waste time dreaming about what your life would be like without it?

You may be hearing that voice right now, that negative, pessimistic voice, whispering "Don't listen to HER (or HIM!), you know it's impossible to get better, don't get your hopes up". If that voice (some people call it Ed) is there, just tell it to wait a few minutes, and clear a space to answer, what *exactly* would your life look like if you were forever free? Would it include...

Being able to fully concentrate on your goals and dreams and make them come true?
Having meaningful and lasting relationships?
Loving your body just the way it is?
Having lots of extra time that is no longer taken up by obsessing about your body, food and calories?
This is an IMPORTANT question. Take some time to think about it.

You CAN get the life you want, but you have to have a PLAN to get there.

That's what our mission at The Body Image Counseling Center is all about.

Giving you a plan that has been proven to WORK in a step by step format so that you can achieve the life you've always dreamed of.

Most everyone I've ever counseled has wanted to fully heal from their eating disorder symptoms...But too often they had been sidelined by false information they received from the internet, their own health care providers, their own negative voices, and sometimes from friends or family members who gave well-meaning, but bad advice.

Somewhere in the process they become convinced that full recovery was impossible; they would just have to hope they could somehow keep the eating disorder symptoms at bay. But they did not know this life-changing, powerful secret...

Your eating disorder is a sign of willpower, not proof that you are weak or lazy.

In fact, I bet most of you have worked really hard at trying to stop your eating disorder symptoms... by going "cold turkey" from purging, by keeping food you binge on out of the house, by dieting and counting calories. When you really think about it, all of that stuff takes a lot of willpower to do day after day... so you're not lazy by any measure.

Unfortunately, you are using all that hard work in the wrong way. It's not your fault - you didn't know the secret... until NOW.

What You Can Do To Move Forward

For now, let's just say that this - working hard towards the wrong goals only leads to frustration, low self-esteem, and makes your eating disorder WORSE! If you see yourself going down this path (or are on it already) than the BEST thing you can do is to secure the RIGHT support and guidance to channel all of that great energy into ways of thinking and behaving that will help you kick your eating disorder once and for all.

The great news is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I have over twenty years of experience successfully helping people permanently recover from eating disorders quickly. I know the formula that works right away - to get you on the path to almost immediate relief of your worst eating disorder symptoms.

I can show you everything I know about how to get better fast and forever. It is my mission to help as many people recover as possible, so I'm holding NOTHING back. When you focus on the RIGHT things, use the RIGHT tools, and cut out what has not worked, your recovery is *almost* inevitable.

More to come...

Have you been "doom scrolling"? It can really hurt your mental health - here's how to stop.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:11:50 GMT

So, what exactly is Doom Scrolling?

Doom Scrolling and doom surfing are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing. This term rose to popularity during the recent Covid-19 outbreak. Because of the quarantine, people are engaging with their digital devices and social media more than ever.

Checking your phones and reading about the havoc caused by this pandemic won't stop the apocalypse and it certainly won't help you feel better. Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back.

Social media can serve as a great distraction and help you evade monotonous isolation routines. But if you don't keep a check on what type of content you consume and how much you consume it, it can also work counterproductively and may start slowly chipping away at your mental health.

Why do we do it? Why can't we just look away? Two factors contribute a great deal to this behavior.

One is our basic primal instincts to look out for threats ahead. We're biologically programmed to search for negative news in order to maintain our safety. So, it is natural for us to look to the media for clarity and for more stressful information during this time of turmoil.

The second reason why we are so hooked on bad news is the way social media platforms are designed.

Algorithms assess the content that you're most likely to engage with and then designs your feed accordingly in the form of an infinite scroll of relevant content. Also, it is no secret that the media thrives on controversial and emotional news. So, aided by these algorithms, your Facebook or Twitter feed will continue to deliver you enticing content that keeps you hooked whether it's good or bad news, if it ensures your engagement, you will see it on your timeline.

Unfortunately, this constant diet of bad news can lead to 'mean world syndrome'-the belief that the world is a more dangerous place to live in than it actually is -as a result of long-term exposure to violence-related and negative content. The nature of news sources on social media works differently than traditional media sources. You are provided snippets of information without much context and the majority of the time these snippets are missing reliable sources and cannot confirm the validity of what they are saying.

And often such negative news comes at a much faster rate than we can normally digest. Also, in large part due to the current protests and violence, it is easy for graphic images to appear again and again.

When your brain gets bombarded with constant negativity, your thinking can start going in a downward spiral. This can blow the severity of the situation out of proportion. In this mental state, you will only see negativity, even when there is still a lot of stability and positives.

Being only subjected to negative news and seeing this all play on a loop can give you feelings of hopelessness and make you feel as if the whole world is coming to an end.

Doomscrolling will never actually stop the doom itself. Feeling informed can help up to a point, but getting overwhelmed by tragedy serves no purpose.

If you are consuming too much anxiety provoking information, it may start slowly eroding your mental health without you even noticing it. You have to understand that staying up to date is not the issue. Keeping your mind preoccupied with unnecessary fears and anxiety will only deteriorate your thinking.

What to do to stop it

The first step towards the solution of a problem is identifying it correctly. You may be mostly unaware of your doom scrolling habits, but once you understand that what you are doing is harmful and it will only increase your fears, you have the power to control your media consumption.

Think about how you feel every time you go on this journey of endless scrolling? Does it help you in any way? Or do you return with even more anxiety?

For a start, be conscious of the amount of time you're online and understand when you're going in a negative direction with unnecessary scrolling and reading too much news.

Here are a few tips that you can use to progress faster:

• Set a timer

Doom scrolling is bad but you do not have to discard your social media usage entirely just because of its side effects.

Rather, you should adopt a better approach where you pick two periods during the day where you will check the news for only 5-10 minutes.

You should only gather your news from reliable sources such as government websites or renowned news sources. No more than 10 minutes. As soon as you are done, log off from that website and continue with your day.

• Go in with a purpose, then get out

The Internet bombards us with thousands of options and it is often easy to get carried away with them even if we don't intend to. So check your news with a specific purpose in mind and leave that website once you are done.

• Use news apps that summarize the major headlines

Try installing news apps of your favorite media channels. They will give you a summary of the major events that are happening without any false information or misguidance. Unfollowing news sources from your usual social media feed and keeping it separate will help you to focus on only one thing at a time and not get distracted by unnecessary information.

• Commit to positive, feel-good scrolling sessions.

There is a wide variety of content available for you to watch. Replace negative news with positive content such as humor, motivational videos and other sources of joy (my current favorite is The Dodo - video stories about how good samaritans help animals in need all over the world).

• Use scrolling for positive purposes -

It may help you feel better to know that there have been some upsides to the constant clicking. Social media is helping people stay connected during the lockdown, it has become a tool for active engagement -i.e. spreading the news about community resources-rather than just a way to passively consume pandemic updates.

• Get support and help if you need it from a trained counselor

While you can get control over doom scrolling with some conscious effort on your part, if you find it difficult to manage it on your own, there is no shame in contacting a mental health counselor. It is not unusual for people to experience heightened states of anxiety during the times of quarantine. Also, people are away from their usual therapist routines so the chances of experiencing mental health concerns are more prevalent than ever.

Keeping this in mind many counselors are shifting their services online and are providing professional services to those in need. You can contact your present therapist for online therapy sessions or browse other online options if you think counseling can help you stay mentally healthy.

• Give to others, volunteer, do more nice things for people

What better way to spend your time than helping others in need. See where you can lend a hand whether it is online or at any physical location nearby as long as they keep social distancing rules.

See if any of your family members need help and what you can do to help those in need around you.

• Get a buddy to help each other stop doom scrolling

Let your friends know about your doom scrolling and if they can help you keep a check on yourself. You can help each other by giving reminders to ignore excessive news intake. Discussing your anxiety with other people also has a relieving effect. So, whenever you are feeling down, sharing with your friends will help you feel better.

Focus on what you CAN control (i.e. working on more positive thinking, reaching out and helping others, voting, following CDC guidelines).

It is not the end of the world by any means. We are focusing too much on the negative while there are still tons of things under our control that we can do to see positive improvement. Start by taking care of yourself and the people around you. Ensure proper hygiene in your house and engage in home-workouts and other positive activities such as reading or hobbies to stay physically and mentally fit.

Remember bad times do end and we need to take care of ourselves mentally, socially, and physically in the meantime.

Coronavirus is indeed a testing time for all of us, but history is full of such examples and all such hard times eventually subside after some time. Several countries have already fully eradicated the coronavirus from their countries and soon the whole world will be free from it too. In the meantime, it's important to work with patience and keep ourselves engaged in healthy activities to maintain both physical, mental and spiritual health.

And remember that we are here at The Body Image Counseling Center to help you if you need it. We are offering video and phone counseling for support - all you need to do is call or email and we will be in touch with you the same day!

Are you afraid to drive your car since you've been in an accident?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 19:03:14 GMT

Have you recently been in a car accident and fear getting back on the road?

Are you experiencing severe anxiety and panic attacks since the accident?

Have you been bothered by insomnia, nightmares and/or flashbacks to the accident when awake?

Is your fear of driving again getting in the way of your life?

In the United States, millions of car accidents occur every year. Being involved in one such incident can lead to a spectrum of negative feelings. It would be completely understandable for you to feel shocked, nervous, angry, guilty, afraid, or even have trouble believing it actually happened .

If you have been in an accident, chances are you have gone through some or all of the feelings described above. Usually, with time, these overwhelming emotions subside and go away after the accident.

However, in many cases, these feelings of fear and anxiety can persist and get stronger with time. Anxiety about driving, nightmares, or troubles falling asleep, ongoing memories of the accident, etc. can indicate that what you're feeling is not normal, and these can be signs of PTSD .

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a stress reaction in which you have trouble coping and recovering from a traumatic incident. PTSD is extremely common following car accidents. It can become a troublesome condition that can interfere with your day to day life.

Fortunately, there are a number of effective treatments that you can use to overcome your trauma.

Applied Behavior Analysis and Exposure therapy for PTSD

Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a highly effective and recognized course of treatment for treating people who have PTSD resulting from car accidents.

Traditional talk therapy focuses on targeting the thoughts and feelings that motivate a person's behaviors. In talk therapy, you examine the course of events that lead you to your current problem or way of thinking. Having a place to express your feelings without judgement can do wonders in helping difficult feelings dissipate. In addition, the therapist will also provide you with a list of skills and coping tools that can help you work through your fears in between sessions.

Although talk therapy can be extremely helpful, it doesn't help you to actually face the fear of getting back in the car, driving, driving past the site of the accident, and facing these fears is essential to getting over the symptoms of PTSD.

Unlike talk therapy, ABA focuses exclusively and directly on problem behaviors and helps you to consistently face your fears without panic until symptoms get better.

While both talk therapy and ABA have lots of similarities, ABA is focused on factors that are currently causing the problem instead of extensively looking at the background.

You do not have to unfold all of your past experiences to get to the roots of the current problem you're facing. You do not talk about your deep emotions. Instead, you focus on the issue at hand.

It is a very straight-forward yet robust approach. Because of this direct and time-effective method, the majority of people find ABA better, faster and less invasive for treating their PTSD.

Your therapist may also implement exposure therapy to manage your problematic fears.

In cases of PTSD, when people experience anxiety and fear due to traumatic memory, they try their best to avoid thinking about it or doing activities that trigger that memory. Avoiding these feelings might work for the short-term, but in the long run, they instead give more power to the fear.

In exposure therapy, you voluntarily and gradually expose yourself (with the therapist's support and guidance) to situations that cause you distress. This is done under the supervision of a licensed therapist.

The therapist guides the patient on how to face their fears and develop a sense of control over their panic responses.

For example, in cases of car accidents, your therapist will use different techniques such as visualizations, exposure to real-life objects, and incidents that induce panic in you. They will help you practice relaxation techniques, question distorted or negative thoughts, and talk back to them.

With prolonged exposure and the therapist's guidance on how to manage fears, your fearful emotions slowly start to lose their power. You learn to tailor your response in a healthy manner to cope with memories and triggers of your trauma.

It is a gradual process that is incredibly effective for alleviating the fears and panics of patients with PTSD.

How ABA helps people deal with PTSD

Here's a general roadmap for an Applied Behavior Analysis course:

The therapist explains how ABA will work with your specific problem.
You will then work with the therapist to identify the specific sources (or triggers) of your psychological distress.
She will explain the primary treatment strategies, including replacing negative behaviors with positive rewards, and graphing your behaviors so you can directly see your progress and improvement.
She will then help you develop specific treatment goals (such as being able to drive the same route as your accident without panic).
She will then assign homework on how to face your fears consistently
Together you will establish ways to measure improvements and changes
You will both use sessions to troubleshoot and learn new skills to cope with your negative behaviors.
Finally you will review treatment and put relapse prevention techniques in place once your symptoms are better.

Applied behavior analysts help their clients engage in active behaviors to accomplish their goals.

Because crucial symptoms of PTSD include avoidance, behavior analysts encourage individuals to assess their environments and become aware of trauma-related signals and their own emotional responses.

Specific activities and behaviors are implemented to target a person's avoidance issues.

With practice, an individual will replace undesirable behaviors with desirable ones.

Often in cases of PTSD, people pull away from activities or behaviors they used to enjoy.

For example, someone that has undergone a car accident won't find driving as enjoyable and safe as they once did. This can keep you from accepting invites from friends, and going on other outings you once enjoyed, like going out to eat or shopping, even getting to class.

Such a withdrawal can make PTSD worse and often leads to depression.

Applied Behavior Analysts help individuals with PTSD become active again in their life. This can be done by restarting previous activities or finding new meaningful activities.

This makes Applied Behavioral Analysis and Exposure therapy ideal approaches as they provide clear directions, focus on only the significant concerns, and give fast and effective results for dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder involving a car accident or any other traumatic event.

T he Body Image Counseling Center offers both ABA and exposure therapy. Not only that, but you can do the sessions remotely by video. This is a great help because the therapist can actually be in the car with you while you are doing your homework to offer reassurance and guidance.

Additionally, car insurance often pays the entire cost of this type of therapy because it is directly related to your accident. With the help of your attorney, we will submit claims for you and you won't need to pay a dime to get help and relief. For a free 15 minute consultation to confidentially discuss your specific situation and how we can help, just fill out this form and we will be in touch today!

Are you having trouble finding expert counseling for your eating disorder during the coronavirus pandemic?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:51:55 GMT

Has the Coronavirus pandemic made your eating disorder symptoms worse?

Are quarantine and isolation causing you to emotionally eat, purge more, or restrict?

Do you fear you are overexercising to deal with the stress of quarantine?

The coronavirus is testing time for all of us. Many of the quarantine and social distancing rules have pushed us back and caused many of us to feel cooped up and unproductive. This stay-at-home routine is practically forced on us, and for someone with an eating disorder, this can bring up some unique challenges.

Here's how coronavirus can make eating disorders worse:

People with eating disorders are particularly vulnerable during this pandemic. The sudden isolation and shift in routines can make it difficult for someone recovering from their eating disorder. Fear and anxiety surrounding the illness can also trigger a flare of symptoms.

Additionally, support for people with eating and body image disorders has been suddenly cut off. Because of the risk of contracting the virus, many health care providers have temporarily closed or limited their in-person therapy and treatment programs. At higher levels of care, some healthcare providers are still operating, but their admissions are limited due to the potential transmission of the virus.

This can leave few treatment options for clients whose symptoms are getting worse and need support right now.

A drastic change in routine is not the only threat we're facing from the coronavirus. The biggest problem can be a severe impact on your mental health.

COVID-19 is a time of heightened stress for everyone.

People used to active lifestyles are now stuck at home. Getting support is also limited. Being confined to small spaces and living with people we are not used to can give rise to many emotional triggers that we could have avoided under normal circumstances.

Additionally, with stockpiling and food shortages, finding your preferred food items can also become troublesome . People may have to resort to available items and this can trigger relapses and increased anxiety and depression.

Moreover, individuals with eating disorders are also separated from activities they used as coping mechanisms , such as exercising, social hangouts, therapy groups and treatment providers.

What types of eating disorders can get worse with fear of coronavirus?

Overeating or binging on certain occasions do not necessarily translate to an eating disorder. So, what is precisely meant when the term eating disorder is used? Here are a few examples:

1. Emotional eating : Normally, we eat when we feel physical hunger. But with emotional eating, it's different. You can think of emotional eating as a soothing coping mechanism instead of just eating to fill your hunger.

With emotional eating, you see food as a source of escape. It could be an escape from stress, anxiety or any other negative aspect that is occupying your mind. In simple terms, you eat for emotional reasons and not for your physical hunger. Unfortunately, this does not fix your emotional problems. After bingeing, you may feel anxiety, regret or guilt for overeating.

2. Anorexia : Anorexia is another common eating disorder. An anorexic person suffers from both an eating disorder and metabolic condition in which they experience self-starvation. This can lead to extreme weight-loss and thinness. One might expect this condition to revolve around food, but the problem is mostly psychological.

Anorexia is a severe condition, and it can eventually break down your mental and physical health to a point where it can become fatal because of starvation.

3. Bulimia : Bulimia is another serious and possibly life-threatening disorder. In this situation a person may overindulge by eating large amounts of food in a short period. Then after eating, they may try to vomit out or try any other methods to get rid of the food in their stomach, such as using laxatives. They may also compulsively exercise to try to "make up for" the binges.

People with bulimia are often preoccupied with their body image and may go to deep lengths to keep their body in an attractive shape. Some may even use extreme fasting or weight loss supplements which can be very harmful.

4. Orthorexia : This is an eating disorder that is characterized by fixating on only specific foods for eating. They may plan their diet to the extreme to only consume their desired foods. Often this starts with a supposed lifestyle change, such as becoming a vegan or a vegetarian, but the food plan becomes increasingly more restrictive and punishing.

After their diet, they often become overly obsessed with exercise. They may take exercising to dangerous lengths, even when it is causing injury or pain, they still continue. They may even avoid social functions to perform compulsive exercise.

The importance of Telehealth for eating disorders support during COVID-19

Even during these stressful times, you can find comfort in knowing that you can still get professional guidance for your eating disorder without leaving your home.

Telehealth simply means that you can use technology and digital communication for your healthcare services. In the current scenario, it works even better because you can stay home, save travel costs and get a more comfortable and customized treatment that suits your requirements.

Moreover, telehealth can help you adopt an intuitive eating approach . Often in cases of eating disorders, people are subjected to selective dieting or other strict methods that can make recovery difficult and increase chances of relapse.

With an intuitive eating approach, you receive counseling to adopt a non-diet approach that promotes health and wellness. It teaches you how you can relearn to trust your body. You distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. It is a well-researched approach that helps you reject diet mentality, discover your satisfaction factor and learn to cope with your emotions without using food.

Physical benefits aside, intuitive eating also promotes better body image, elevated self-esteem, improved metabolism and a higher level of contentment and satisfaction.

A combination of telehealth and intuitive approaches can be used to the best of your advantage and luckily we offer a full range of services through telehealth at The Body Image Counseling Center . We have been offering these services for years, so our support to clients has been uninterrupted even with the current troubles with COVID-19.

We are currently accepting new clients and we can assist and guide you to let go of your eating disorder symptoms and adopt an intuitive eating approach. If you fear you are relapsing due to being in quarantine and the related stress, we can help pull you out of that situation and help you get back to recovery. Just call us at 904-737-3232 or fill out an appointment request form here and we will be in touch with you the same day - even on the weekends.

Video Counseling Available Right Now

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:47:17 GMT

Video Counseling Available Right Now

I wanted to reach out given the huge changes that have occurred in the world since the arrival of the novel coronavirus. I have been counseling many people over the last few weeks and here are some of the issues that have come up for them around having to work for home, quarantine in place, or have their children begin online learning:

anxiety over the Coronavirus and the unknown future surrounding it
worries about becoming ill and/or dying
financial worries
feeling cooped up, bored, and anxious at home
feeling cooped up, bored, and anxious AND having to manage your kids feeling the same way.
a resurgence of eating disorder symptoms such as emotional eating, restricting and/or purging as a result of the surrounding stress
experiencing panic attacks or escalated OCD symptoms
concern about caring for aging parents who are more vulnerable to the virus
fears about running out of supplies and food
experiencing marital stress or conflict with kids when confined together
children and teens having increased anxiety, fear and depression without someone to talk to.

Any one of these issues alone would be enough to send a person's anxiety soaring, but many of us are dealing with most of them!

In times of crisis, human beings tend to drop their self-care and supports . This is rooted deeply in our human history going back to caveman times. We couldn't, after all, take a warm bubble bath if a dinosaur was trying to eat us!

In modern times, however, dropping our supports has the opposite effect and relationships (even strong ones) can suffer.

It is more important than ever during this pandemic to keep as many supports as you can in place, including therapy. Weekly online counseling sessions can help you in many ways, including providing:

a confidential place to vent
a toolbox you can use to manage anxiety and depression (including how to accept uncertainty and avoid all-or-nothing thinking).
coaching on how to stop behavior problems when kids are forced to stay home for days on end
validation that you are definitely NOT THE ONLY ONE feeling this way!
couples coaching for creative ways to work as a team and avoid conflict during quarantine.
how to keep up nutrition and meal planning that supports eating disorder recovery.
how to manage out-of-control OCD symptoms triggered by COVID-19

Parents have also been noticing more problem behaviors in the children and teens, which is understandable given the stressful conditions we are all under. However, it can feel overwhelming and impossible to deal with these problems on top of having to manage the house, job (or lack of one), and your own stress.

This may be a good time to ask for behavioral coaching from our Board Certified Behavior Analyst for your child. She will give you a solid plan on how to alleviate behavior problems which can include:

Compliance issues (with chores, school work, etc.)

Having issues getting your children to comply with everyday tasks? The BCBA can help create a reinforcement system to motivate your child to complete these tasks without you having to continue to remind them.

Decreasing problem behaviors

Is your child having problems with aggression, self-injury, yelling, property destruction, etc.? The BCBA can determine the root function of the behavior and work to teach appropriate replacement behaviors.

Creating a sustainable schedule/routine to increase compliance/reduce problem behaviors

Are you having a difficult time creating and sticking to a schedule to include schoolwork, chores, and family time? The BCBA can assist you in creating a sustainable schedule that your children will follow without complaint.

Sleep issues (refusal, not sleeping in their own bed, waking at night, etc.)

Does your child fight going to sleep, wake-up multiple times in the night, or refuse to sleep alone? The BCBA can help create a program to increase independent sleep.

Increasing food acceptance (working on picky eaters!)

Is your child super picky? The BCBA can help create a program to increase willingness to try new foods and decrease problem behaviors at mealtimes.

Toilet training program

Have you tried potty training without success or need a little guidance? The BCBA can help create a toileting program tailored specifically to your child.

Now Offering Confidential Online Therapy

Luckily, The Body Image Counseling Center has been offering online therapy for years through our HIPPA compliant app (used by medical professionals all over the world) called VSee. All patients can use the software for free, all you need is an email address (you can learn more about VSee here .)

We currently have available appointments. If you haven't seen us in awhile for therapy, nutrition or behavior therapy, please take care of yourself and give us a call soon or send an appointment request here .

Please be safe, stay well, and reach out!

-Lori

Director

The Body Image Counseling Center

904-737-3232

www.bodyimagecounseling.com

7 Reasons you may not realize you have an eating disorder if you're over 40

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:39:38 GMT

Did you have an eating disorder when you were a teenager, and after years your symptoms have returned?

Did you have symptoms of one type of eating disorder when you were young, but different symptoms as you have gotten older? (I.e. you were anorexic as a teenager, but doing more emotional eating now?)

Are you worried about the effects of aging on your body, and feeling worse about your looks?

The Daily Beast reports: “... more and more adults in midlife and beyond have begun seeking treatment for an eating disorder. For some of these individuals, the eating disorder is a new problem that didn’t begin until their 40s or 50s. Others had an eating disorder as a teen or young adult and recovered, only to relapse in midlife. Still others have been chronically ill since adolescence.”

Here are some reasons why you may not realize you have an eating disorder in midlife:

You are a male. This is sad, but true. Eating disorders are primarily viewed as a young, white, female condition. It’s difficult enough to seek help for an eating problem when you fit the stereotype; imagine if you are a successful middle-aged man running a company, or a soldier, or a marathon runner… how likely would you be to admit you are making yourself throw up or feel so ashamed of one body part you can barely leave the house?
The Body Image Therapy CenterThe Body Image Therapy Center explains: “Published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders October 2016 issue, “Eating Disorders Symptoms in Middle-Age and Older Men” evaluated 470 males between the ages of 40 and 75 for basic eating disorder symptoms such as having a BMI under 18.5, binge eating and purging, binge eating, and purging without binge eating. What they found is that nearly 7% of the men described eating disorder behavior at a diagnosable level. The most common form was compensatory behaviors in the form of exercise, though all forms of eating disorders were found.”
You are a yo-yo dieter. We live in an eating disordered culture that is fixated on fat shaming and compulsive dieting. The media, our peers, and even our doctors often reward us for the desire to diet and lose weight, even though there is ample scientific evidence that diets don’t work in the long term and actually create a lifetime of physical and emotional difficulties.
You are feeling bad about your aging body . I feel that one of the most dangerous qualities of eating and body image disorders is that symptoms change like a chameleon as we age. When we are younger, the emphasis is often on looking model thin, being super-fit, and avoiding “fattening” foods. As we age, advertisers start to shame us about the normal signs of aging such as developing wrinkles, going grey/bald, age related weight gain (often associated with perimenopause and menopause). So in addition to the never ending pressure of needing to be thin, middle aged men and women now feel they have to fight a losing battle to look forever young.
Your symptoms are not the same as when you were younger. Another misconception about eating disorders, is that an individual only suffers from one diagnosis, such as anorexia nervosa, and the symptoms don’t change over the years. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I have discovered over years of counseling people with eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating and body dysmorphic disorder, is that it is entirely more common for people to exhibit symptoms of several types of eating disorders over many years. So if you only think of yourself as prone to anorexia nervosa because you had it as a teenager, you are very likely to miss the signs if you start to emotionally overeat as an adult.

5. Your doctor tells you that you don’t have a problem . I am not here to disparage doctors and nurses - I work with many fabulous medical providers in the course of my work; however, medical training is not geared towards non-diet, body-positive teachings. As a result, many doctors, nurses, PAs, etc, end up giving their patients faulty advice about needing to diet, and shaming them in the process . I can’t tell you how many times I have heard my mid-life patients recount to me how their doctors told them they are too old to have an eating disorder, or that the answer to their emotional eating is a course of diet pills or irreversible bypass surgery (which actually makes the eating disorder worse!). Even more sad, these same medical professionals suffer from eating disorders, too

6. All of your friends talk about how much they hate their bodies and need to lose weight . I think its funny (not in a ha-ha way, but in an ironic way), that there are so many articles on the internet citing research proving there is an epidemic of midlife eating disorders, when all you have to do is walk into any typical gym, locker room, or family dinner to be bombarded with talk about the latest diet trends and feelings of horror about eating “bad foods” and the need to get back on track. You don’t need a research degree to realize people at every age struggle with weight obsession and disliking their looks and bodies! If everyone seems to be feeling this way, these comments become normalized and more difficult to see them as they really are - untreated and undiagnosed eating and body image disorders.

7. You are obsessed with exercise and clean eating. Along the same lines as the previous point, our culture has become saturated with unhealthy and extreme diets and exercise plans that are couched in promises of longevity, better health, and even helping the environment. When I was a teenager, the diets were terrible (remember the grapefruit diet anyone?), but they didn’t have a MORAL component that implied you were helping the earth, ensuring a life without medical problems, or discovering the anti-aging fountain of youth! These types of messages make it even more difficult to see these diet and exercise plans as extreme forms of eating and body image disorders that can actually hurt your health and emotional well-being!

If you are an older man or woman and you feel exhausted by constant dieting, the need to “eat clean”, or the never ending battle to fight the normal signs of aging, please know YOU CAN BE FREE of these self-deprecating thoughts and exhausting behaviors. But you need to see them as the problem, not the solution.

If you had an eating disorder when you were younger, and all of a sudden your symptoms have either returned, or you have developed different symptoms that are interfering with your life and relationships, YOU CAN BE FREE of them. But you need to believe you deserve support and help and believe it will work even though you are no longer a teenager.

If you hate your body in middle age, fear gaining weight and related health problems , or feel so self-conscious about a particular body part that you have trouble being social, being sexual, or feeling at peace, YOU CAN BE FREE of these fears . But you have to have the courage to pick up the phone and reach out for help and support from someone who gets it and has the skills to help free you.

I have been helping to release people for over twenty-five years from these burdens. I offer a free 15 minute consultation to discuss a plan about how we can help you be finally free. Be reassured that I call everyone back personally, and within 24 hours, because I know how much courage it takes just to send an email request or leave a voicemail message. Don’t believe me? Just take that first step to write or call and we will be talking the very same day :-).

Are you worried constant fighting about politics is hurting your relationship?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:30:57 GMT

Are you in a mixed political marriage?

Do your children/parents have opposing political beliefs from you and it’s driving you crazy?

Has stress in the house over politics become too much to bear?

Do you feel misunderstood and silenced by your partner/family members about your political leanings?

Here is a typical comment I hear from a client seeking couples coaching: “My husband and I are total opposites politically and it's affecting our marriage. We bicker over which news channel to watch and the upcoming election is causing more fights about issues. I just can't stomach that he voted the way he did. I've lost respect for him but I don't want our relationship to suffer. What can we do?”

In December 2016, a poll of 6000 people found that 16% of those who responded stopped talking to a friend or family member as a direct result of the election . 17% also said they blocked friends or family on social media for the same reasons.

Wakefield Research , a marketing firm, also conducted a similar survey. Their in-depth study of 1000 “nationally representative U.S. adults” found comparable results.

The collected data indicates that 11% of Americans, more than one in ten, have ended relationships over political differences.

For younger generations, this number climbs steeply.

According to the responses, 22% of Millennials, more than one-fifth, have ended a romantic relationship because of political strife.
22% of people in the Wakefield survey know someone “whose marriage or relationship has been negatively impacted specifically due to President Trump’s election.” Again, this number skyrockets for younger people.
The number spikes to 35% for Millennials.

You may be surprised how many couples have come to see me for counseling about this exact issue. Our country has become so divided politically that it has in extreme cases broken apart marriages and family relationships. Given the upcoming primaries and elections, it's important to figure out a way to weather the political storms together!

Luckily, I'm a Gottman educator, so I know that it is not essential for romantic partners or family members to be exactly the same in every way (religiously, personality type or politically), in order to stay together and/or in love. Conversely, there are also couples who look extremely compatible on paper, but end up splitting despite these unifiers.

There definitely are many couples that have polar opposite political beliefs that easily stay happy and in love. How do they do it?

The key is the WAY you talk about your differences, not the differences themselves. Specifically this means learning to avoid what the Gottman's call “gridlock” when discussing politics. According to the Gottman’s, here are some of the signs you may be gridlocked politically:

The discussion makes you feel rejected by your partner.
You keep discussing politics but make no progress.
You become "dug-in" over your positions and will not budge.
Your conversations about politics are devoid of humour, amusement or affection.
You become even more gridlocked over time, which leads you to vilify each other during these conversations.
You become less willing to compromise.
Eventually you disengage from each other emotionally.

If you see these signs in your relationship, don't despair! There's a way to get out of gridlock without selling yourself out or changing your vote.

In brief, there are several changes you can make together to get out of political gridlock, the most important of which are:

Soften your conversation start-up . A soft start-up is characterized by empathy and respect rather than blame, hurt and anger. Example of a hard political start-up: “I can’t believe you voted the way you did - I have totally lost respect for you”. Example of a soft political start up: “Honey, I respect and love you, even if I don’t agree with you politically. Let’s try to find a way to discuss the issues where we both feel heard.”
Learn to make and receive repair attempts. A repair attempt is another way to say “making amends” or apologizing. For example, if your dad comes to you and says: “I didn’t mean to call you ignorant yesterday during the TV debate. I get really hot under the collar when politics comes up and I’m going to try to do better next time.”, it is healthier for your relationship for you to acknowledge his repair attempt rather than reject it.

3. Soothe yourself and each other. If you are in a political discussion and either person seems to be “flooding” (heart racing, “seeing red”, raised voice, etc), try to breathe deeply, hold the other person’s hand, and suggest a time out until emotions are calmer.

4. Find common ground. Try to find underlying goals that you and your parents/partner/children may share, even though the methods and ideas on how to get there may differ. For example, you may both be very concerned about the safety of the country, electing the best people to office, and protecting your family from harm. Try to focus on those common goals that you share, even if you don’t agree with the methods.

5. Look for hidden dreams and/or fears underlying your loved one’s beliefs and show respect and caring for them. Maybe your loved one wants greatly to succeed and fears poverty, or was bullied when they were young and wants to protect others from that type of treatment. Try to talk to each other about what specifically about their life experience may be leading them to hold the beliefs with which you disagree, and find your empathy for them there.

Usually with some good coaching couples can learn these steps and get out of political gridlock. I've seen it happen personally with the couples I've counseled in my practice!

By the way, these techniques are also extremely helpful in working through perpetual problems such as:

stress with in-laws
differences in handling expenses and money
bickering over chores, housework and parenting
not being on the same page about sex

The best part is that these techniques and coaching can be learned and used successfully in a matter of weeks, not months or years! It may be a good idea to sign-up for a Gottman coaching 8-week course so you can get through election season peacefully and with love! For more information, feel free to sign up here for a free 15 minute couples discovery call.

Could ABA therapy be a miracle cure for the growing epidemic of anxiety among teen girls?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:26:14 GMT

A disturbing new study has just come out by 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health that unfortunately confirms what I have been seeing the last few years in my counseling practice - anxiety and depression are increasingly wreaking havoc among young girls and women .

Freebeacon.com reports : "The most pronounced-and concerning-disparity, however, is by gender. While teenage girls have always been more prone to major depression, America has now reached a point in which more than one out of every five girls has experienced depression in the past year. That is nearly double the 2011 rate."

"In other words: America's teens, especially its girls, are becoming depressed and stay depressed through college . What, exactly, has caused this grim wave? The best answer is: No one really knows."

OK, maybe on paper no one really knows, but this is what we are hearing from the many teen and college aged girls that share their worries with us in confidential space of our offices :

They feel like they need to be perfect in school, sports and their jobs, and if they dare make a mistake, they consider themselves complete failures . It seems to us that teens are much more unforgiving of themselves than ever and do not consider mistakes learning experiences or a part of being human; rather they are a sign of weakness of character.
They are riddled with social anxiety - to the point where some of them can't get up the courage to go to an in-person job interview, go on a date, or even go out with family because of the fear of being judged.
They are LONELY . Many of them spend hours on the computer and social media sites, avoiding the risk (but also the social reward) of making new friends and having fun new experiences. This behavior can lead to depression, self-harm and suicidal feelings in extreme situations.

4. They are smoking more marijuana in order to feel at ease in social situations, get to sleep, or in extreme cases, to be able to face their day as soon as they wake up in the morning.

5. They feel an insane amount of pressure to appear and be sexual way before actually getting emotionally close to someone or reaching full maturity . If you don't believe me, check out this article from one of my favorite websites, A Mighty Girl where they report on the increasing pressure on teen girls to send nude pictures of themselves to boys: " (A) study by Sara Thomas of Northwestern University found that less than 8% of girls shared explicit pictures because they wanted to; the rest did so because of a desire to please, acquiesce to, or avoid conflict with a boy. Moreover, while researchers found that both girls and boys send nude photos to one another, boys are nearly four time as likely to pressure girls to do so than the reverse. If the pair were already dating, the idea was often normalized with claims like "everyone else has a picture of their girlfriend," and if girls hesitated, some boys threatened consequences to the relationship.

6. They feel hopeless and anxious about the future, being able to find a fulfilling career, and if they are able to miraculously do that, to secure a well-paying job . I started noticing several years ago that my young clients were beginning to express these fears to me in middle school, whereas it used to be more of a worry in junior and senior years of high school.

7. They are hyper critical of their bodies, and often engage in dangerous eating disordered behaviors in order to control their weight , including starving, becoming vegetarian or vegan to the extreme, compulsively exercising, and/or bingeing and purging. Many of them feel there is a competition between girls to be the most fit - some have reported to me that they feel they can't go out socially if they are not participating in gym culture.

All of this must be alarming to read, but I prefer that parents and loved ones of our precious girls are aware of all of the pressures they are facing in today's society . Part of their crushing need to be perfect means many of our young women do not share their feelings of anxiety and depression with their parents or other adult mentors who are often in the best position emotionally and financially to help them overcome these obstacles.

Girls are overwhelmingly more prone to all types of anxiety disorders than boys . Childmind.org reports: "All anxiety disorder subtypes were more frequent in girls than boys

Social phobia: 11.2% females, 7.0% males

Specific phobia: 22.1% females, 16.7% males

Panic disorder: 2.6% females, 2.0% males

PTSD: 8.0% females, 2.3% males

Separation anxiety: 9.0% females, 6.3% males"

Luckily there is some good news. The symptoms of anxiety (such as panic, low self-esteem, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder) are highly treatable with the right techniques and an experienced therapist at the helm .

The most common ways we treat anxiety include cognitive techniques (such as reframing and challenging negative thoughts, practicing positive affirmations, and use of thought-stopping), and exposure therapy, an extremely powerful method that helps people with severe anxiety face their fears in small increments, but consistently with supportive coaching.

One of the most promising methods we use at The Body Image Counseling Center is called Applied Behavior Analysis

. Our Board Certified Behavior Analyst works with teens, college students and adults who are experiencing severe anxiety either in the office, in the comfort of their own homes, and/or by video to reach specific and clear goals to face fears systematically and quickly to overcome fears.

Traditionally ABA has been used to help children and adults with spectrum disorders to become more social and productive; however, we have found that the same methods help people overcome crippling anxiety at a much faster rate than traditional methods, and with the least disruption to school and family routines .

For example, if your teen girl is terrified to walk in to a college registrar's office to ask for needed paperwork, our ABA therapist would work with her to create a "ladder" of behaviors that cause increasing anxiety. She would tackle the least fearful behaviors first, eventually working up to the most dreaded task of walking into the office without fear. All of the progress is charted so the client can see her progress and the therapist can help modify assignments to overcome blocks .

In other words, sometimes "talk therapy" isn't enough on its own; ABA works with young people to consistently face their fears with positive results in a short period of time.

If your teenager or college aged student is experiencing anxiety that is interfering with his or her life, please call us to see if Applied Behavior Analysis will help them get back on track . We have had the rewarding experience of seeing this technique work firsthand with so many of our clients - we know it can help you too!

3 surprising reasons why you are night eating

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:14:33 GMT

Do you have trouble sleeping and then find yourself heading to the fridge, even if you're not hungry?

Do you feel like you need to eat something every time in order to be able to fall asleep again?

Do you feel ashamed of eating at night and do it in secret?

Did you know that about 1.5% of the general population engage in night eating that they feel is out-of-control?

If you suffer from night eating, a form of binge eating disorder, you are definitely not alone. Eating at night when you should be sleeping can feel frustrating and shameful, keeping those who do it from asking for help and continue to suffer in silence.

Eatingrecoverycenter.com reports "Night (nocturnal) eating behaviors are common. Many people binge eat, on occasion, at night. In order to meet the full diagnosis for night eating syndrome, one must have at least 3 of the following 5 criteria.

"Morning anorexia" - skipping breakfast or not eating until 12:00 or later on four or more mornings per week
"Evening hyperphagia" - eating more than 25 percent of one's total daily calories (possibly in the form of continuous "grazing") between dinner and bedtime
Having difficulty falling or staying asleep
Experiencing mood or anxiety symptoms that get worse at night - leaving one feeling more agitated, irritable, or depressed in the evening
Presence of a belief that one must eat to go to sleep initially or to return to sleep"

Most people who emotionally eat feel as if it comes out of nowhere and is due to a lack of willpower or laziness. When you binge in the dark, you feel ashamed. This causes stress which leads to more binge eating. A seemingly endless cycle.

The good news is that there are some very logical causes of night eating, and none of them are about laziness or your worth as a person.

There are also many ways you can conquer night eating - it's not a mystery - you just need the right tools and information!

First let's get to the three surprising reasons why you could be night eating.

1. You're not eating enough during the day

You wouldn't believe how many people's jaws drop to the floor when we tell them they are actually not eating ENOUGH and need to eat MORE in order to stop their night binges. But if you think about it, it makes total sense. Our bodies are fueled by natural hunger signals that occur about every four hours during the day. If you ignore those cues, your body will scream at night to make up for the missed meals. If you are stressed out in addition to hungry, you are definitely going to binge. We can't overcome our natural hunger, and we shouldn't!

2. You have undiagnosed sleep issues.

We always work with our clients' physicians to rule out possible physical causes for eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and night eating syndrome). One of the physical causes that is more common than you think is undiagnosed sleep apnea, a condition that basically causes you to stop breathing up to hundreds of times per night. Not only is this condition, left untreated, extremely dangerous, but it can cause you to binge eat at night.

3. You're consuming too much alcohol or marijuana.

If you are drinking at night to calm down from the day, believing it will help you sleep, you may be surprised to know the opposite is true. Consuming too much alcohol or marijuana at night can actually cause wakefulness. Additionally, they are both disinhibitors which can cause you to head to the fridge and eat more than your hunger is telling you.

And now for one obvious cause of night eating that you probably already knew:

4. You're too stressed

Emotional eating is a coping mechanism and an attempt to self-soothe, and it does NOT stem from a lack of willpower or laziness. If you don't do enough during the day to lower your stress levels, many people will soothe themselves at night by drinking too much alcohol, smoking pot and/or night eating.

Here are some tips to overcome night eating:

Work with a nutritionist to see if you're eating enough during the day or have distorted beliefs about food and sleep , such as you need to eat in order to get back to sleep. Make sure the nutritionist is an Intuitive Eating Specialist and has lots of experience working with eating disorders.
Be more conscious about planning your meals. It's amazing how much people plan for the care of others but neglect themselves. It is essential that you don't skip meals and eat meals that keep you adequately fueled during the day. Often our clients see a dramatic decrease in night eating just by having several sessions with our dietitian and planning daytime meals appropriately.
Work with a therapist to identify stressors and learn what to do to stop them. Although essential, working with the dietitian is sometimes not enough if you can't pinpoint the exact causes of your stress. A therapist who is an eating disorder specialist can help you pinpoint those causes quicky (even if you can't), and help you come up with a plan to work on eliminating them.
Learn how to predict triggers for night eating and prepare for them in advance. A good therapist can help you learn to predict triggers for night eating and come up with a plan to effectively deal with them beforehand. For example, if a stressful visit from a family member is coming up, the therapist can help you work on setting firm boundaries with less guilt.
Plan night time snacks instead of feeling guilty about them. Instead of shaming yourself about wanting to eat at night, work on getting rid of the shame and honoring your hunger. By avoiding the foods you crave at night, you actually greatly increase the chances of overeating.
Develop a bedtime routine. You can't go one hundred miles per hour all day and then fall into bed at night peaceful and relaxed. It's important to have rituals at night that help you wind down and get sleepy. These can include turning off screens at least an hour before bedtime, using meditation apps, and having a warm bath, for example.
Get evaluated for sleep disorders such as sleep apnea. If you take just one tip from this article let it be this one. If you snore and are chronically tired GET A SLEEP STUDY to rule out sleep apnea and other sleep disorders. It could stop your night eating and save your life!
Use relaxation techniques and self-care throughout the day so you don't binge at night. Just as you need a relaxing bedtime ritual, it's important to plan regular self-care during the day to lower stress levels. This can include planning regular lunches with friends, getting a weekly massage, or taking time to take your dogs to the park.
Honestly evaluate your consumption of alcohol, cannabis, or other substances. Overuse of drugs and alcohol can cause night eating and have other dangerous consequences when used regularly to cope with stress. Don't be afraid to ask for help to wean off.
Don't skip breakfast even if you're not very hungry. It's important to eat regularly throughout the day so you don't set yourself up to binge at night. A nutritionist can help you with breakfast ideas that are more palatable if you don't feel your hunger first thing in the morning.

11. Don't deprive yourself of the foods you love, including junk food. Don't take foods you consider "bad" out of the house. On the contrary, if you allow yourself to have them and know you can have them whenever you want, you will be much less likely to binge on them.

12. Consider therapy combined with medication in order to help alleviate underlying anxiety or depression. Medication prescribed by a doctor or psychiatrist can be a valuable tool in combination with counseling to help stress levels go down. Don't be afraid to consider it.

If you need more help with night eating, remember that we have a highly experienced eating disorder treatment team at The Body Image Counseling Center who can help you get better, usually without having to take time off from school or work. Just call us at 904-737-3232 or fill out our contact form to sign up for a FREE 15 minute consult.

Are you worried your college student has an eating disorder? Here's how you can help them even if you are not there.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:57:31 GMT

From the time we're born, we're bombarded with millions of messages--especially women but increasingly men, too--that we're not acceptable the way we are; we need to be prettier, thinner, and affluent, have blue eyes, or a perfect body. Think about social media too; it has just exploded onto the scene! In addition to radio, cable and television, we have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube bombarding us every day with messages that we're not good enough; we need to diet; and we need to constantly exercise.

Additionally, this perfect, dieting, super health-conscious culture is all the more prevalent on college campuses.

Why is this?

When you get people together from the same age group, they're in the same developmental stage. Part of that stage involves having the desire to fit in, to get along, and not to stand out. College-aged students are much more prone to have a group-think mentality. Group-think is defined as: "the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility"

I don't want to be an alarmist, but did you know that there are such things as "binge/purge" parties on some college campuses, where the girls get together and take turns bingeing and purging? That sounds very shocking, but it has been documented over and over again.

Rebecca's House shares this comment from one of their patients: "A binge-purge party is a harmless way to enjoy some fattening foods without getting fat", my patient told me. "At my sorority a few of us girls would buy all of the forbidden and fattening foods we have been denying ourselves. Then we would have a binge-purge party. It's a way to have your cake and not get fat. Three of us meet in my room. It was like a secret society. We ate donuts, chips, pizza, ice cream, fast foods and fried foods then we purged the food."

This acceptance of such dangerous behavior as harmless, normal, and even HELPFUL, is characteristic of group- think mentality, and it also applies to the normalized binge drinking culture that is rampant on our college campuses.

Eating Disorder Hope asserts: "Until recently, substance abuse and eating disorders were treated separately with few people being screened for both disorders simultaneously. Successfully treating one disorder may inadvertently make the other, hidden disorder, worse so the importance of identifying both cannot be underestimated."

This kind of occurrence is a classic form of group think, where abnormal behavior becomes normalized because of the deep desire to fit in. Even in our larger culture beyond college campuses, eating disorder behaviors and diet culture are normalized and celebrated in the media, so one can more easily fall prey to these behaviors and come to believe they are not a problem.

Remember, too, that harmful dieting and eating disorder culture affects boys too, especially underweight males, gay males, athletes and men in the military . I know these groups seem to have very little in common; but there are reasons that each group is prone to eating disorders, and there can be a lot of group-think in these sub-populations of men.

For example, studies show that military men are prone to purging because they continually need to pass physical readiness tests, or PRTs. When the test comes around, many engage in severe dieting; they resort to exercise purging and self-induced vomiting to achieve the desired weight and pass the exam. Since many soldiers engage in these eating disordered behaviors, the behaviors become normalized. As a result, the soldiers often do not recognize that they are developing eating disorders.

College athletes are also at a higher risk for developing eating disorders, especially because our culture's glorification of exercise and fitness can mask their dangerous symptoms, as Eating Disorder Hope explains: "One behavior that differentiates non-athletes with bulimia from athletes with bulimia is the athlete's use of exercise as the predominant purging method . Because excessive exercise is a normative behavior in competitive athletes, exercising as a compensatory behavior may go unrecognized, thus putting the athlete at physical and psychological risk."

How do you and your college student fight against these insidious messages? You must create a force field against group-think and diet culture. This is not easy, but it's important to get angry at the advertisers that strive to convince boys and girls and young men and women to be perfect and not accept a wide range of individuality or difference.

Start to question TV commercials and ads with a critical eye. Get educated about deceptive techniques that advertisers use in marketing like airbrushing and Photoshopping. I post a lot of information about this issue on my Facebook page . Instead of feeling bad about yourself, get angry and take to task any and all advertisers who try to earn money by assaulting people with unrealistic expectations of their bodies. Don't let diet, drinking and drug cultures surprise and overwhelm you. Start to get educated now!

Parents, I'm going to give you a few other resources to start to educate yourselves about diet and advertising culture. Here is some very important advice: Try not to create a diet culture at home . Don't go on a diet, and don't compare people's appearances. Don't criticize your body or your weight in front of your kids, and put a stop to talk about weight and diet ASAP. The parents of many of my young clients tell me they do not encourage their children to diet. What they leave out is that they often tell their kids that they feel fat and are going on a diet.

Your child cannot get over an eating disorder if you are dieting. That's the hard truth; and anyway, diets don't work and they're not good for you, so just cut out the dieting once and for all. If you have trouble doing this, read some books on diet culture and eating disorders. Two that I recommend are The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Or, get help from a trained therapist to help you defeat your own eating disorder thoughts and behavior. It will help your kid.

And remember, try not to normalize behaviors like "partying", dieting, smoking pot, or compulsively working out. If you see your child engaging in these behaviors, teach them about group-think and encourage them to be strong and stand up for their beliefs even if they're pressured by their peers to do otherwise.

If your child needs more help and you are worried that they are suffering from an eating disorder, know that we offer telehealth counseling all over the country. If your child's doctor says they are physically safe to remain in school while getting treatment, we can counsel them long-distance, in the privacy of their dorm room, so they can continue with activities and classes. For more information and advice, just call us at 904-737-3232 or sign-up for a FREE 15-minute consult and we will give you a plan that is tailored to your child's individual situation within 24 hours of receiving your message!

Could your local gym or fitness tracker be giving you an eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:50:54 GMT

Could your local gym or fitness tracker be giving you an eating disorder?

Have you been body or fat shamed at the gym?

Have you been encouraged by physical trainers to go on restrictive diets or take expensive supplements they conveniently sell at their gym?

Do you feel guilty if you miss even one workout?

Do people around you at the gym talk constantly about needing to be “cut”, “ripped”, or worry about being fat or unfit?

Do you feel you have to be wearing your fitness tracker at all times?

Not all gyms are bad. This is not a post to warn you never to set foot in a gym again.

Fitness trackers are not necessarily bad. This is not a post to urge you to throw yours in the trash.

Yet, although some gyms are inclusive and don’t push dieting or extreme fitness, many do, and they are part of a toxic gym culture that preys upon the insecurities of men and women in order to increase their profits and keep you coming back for more.

Paul Landini, a personal trainer writing for The Globe , notes: “Toxic gym culture manifests itself in all sorts of ways, though it can be tough to identify unless you’re the target. Bullying and sexual harassment are the most obvious examples, but by no means are they the only ones. Ageism, ableism, sexism, racism, fat-shaming, homophobia – if you train at a standard big-box gym, there’s a good chance this stuff is happening all around you.”

Insider reports: Sometimes the more egregious examples make headlines. Last August, one gym ran an ad that showed a photo of a pear with the words, "This is no shape for a girl." The same month, a gym chain in the UK put up a billboard depicting an alien and UFO with the words, "They're coming ... and when they arrive they'll take the fat ones first."

Exercise purging or exercise bulimia, is a very dangerous form of an eating disorder that can be made so much worse by toxic gym culture. Believe it or not, you CAN exercise too much and it can be devastating not only to your body.

“Excessive exercise can cause a number of physical issues, including everything from dehydration and fatigue to chronic pain in the knee or back, injuries like shin splints, strains and sprains, tendinitis of the shoulder, knee, elbow or hip, and stress fractures. More long-term health problems that might be the result of excessive exercise include osteoporosis, degenerative arthritis, loss of one’s period, reproductive problems, or heart issues, experts say.”

The physical complications are scary, but your emotional health can also suffer greatly.

People trying to recover from eating disorders such as binge eating, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa are especially open to relapse when immersed in a fitness obsessed gym environment.

Here are some of the signs of exercise bulimia and fitness obsession:

Insisting on exercising even when sick, hurt or tired.
Skipping non-exercise related social events or time with family in order to complete a workout.
Having an obsessive exercise routine that causes panic when modified.
Feeling extreme guilt and low self self-esteem when you take time off from exercise.
Engaging in other eating disordered behaviors such as purging and restricting to try to achieve a “ripped” or “cut” body.
Being overly concerned with one body part, or your body’s appearance overall.
Spending money you can’t afford on expensive diets and supplements that are unproven and marketed by your trainer and/or the gym.
Working out for hours without rest for most days of the week.
Assigning a moral value to exercise - i.e. you are a success and a good person for completing a workout, and other people are seen as “lazy” and lacking willpower.
Exercising in conditions that are not safe, such as in bad weather, extreme heat or cold, or in dangerous environments.
Skipping meals if you miss a workout because you feel guilty and want to compensate.
Doing exercise you hate because you feel it will make you more fit and healthy, rather than engaging in joyful movement that isn’t weight related.
Using exercise as your primary method of coping with anxiety or depression without other supports.

Gyms aren’t the only culprits - you may be wearing one on your wrist!

Again, I’m not telling you to throw out your fitness tracker (although I do believe it is very difficult to use them in moderation and they are becoming more and more invasive into our activities and lives), but keep in mind that they can become addictive.

"Within less than a week of use, I became addicted," recovering anorexic and bulimic Andria Martin wrote on XOJane . "I had to wear it all the time and track every minute of activity correctly. Every bite of food. Every hour of sleep. Every everything."

And just like toxic gyms, fitness trackers can trigger eating disorder relapse.
Bustle reports: “The propensity of activity trackers and calorie counters to trigger eating disorders and cause relapses in previous sufferers is a pretty well-documented phenomenon by now. Since the New Republic published an article back in 2013 titled, ominously, "Hunger Games," personal stories have abounded from recovering anorexics and bulimics about how a wristband or activity tracker app pushed them back over the edge.

Since the dawn of industrialization we have lived in a culture that encourages eating disordered thinking and behaviors, but today these messages are even more insidious because they are usually cloaked in misguided advice about “health and wellness”.

Gyms and fitness devices and apps feed into this unhealthy thinking by using addictive and shaming sales techniques and technology.

They do not encourage moderation or other more holistic models of health that include being part of a supportive community, getting enough rest, having fun, finding meaningful purpose in life, and nurturing spiritual connections.

If you feel you have become a slave to your gym or fitness device, and worse, if it’s triggering more severe eating disorder symptoms such as bulimia, restrictive eating, body dysmorphia or compulsive exercise, you need help to deprogram from diet culture.

We’re here to help if this describes you or your child.

Just call us at 904-737-3232 or email us a message here for a free 15 minute consult and we’ll help you start the process of becoming more balanced and eating disorder free.

What is "fitspiration" and could it be giving your child an eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:43:52 GMT

Is your child, teen or adult child obsessed with social media, especially Instagram?

Is your son or daughter always on their phone and taking pictures of themselves to post on social media?

Have you noticed them getting upset over not having the "perfect" picture to post?

As a parent, have you ever actually looked at your child's instagram feed to see what types of people they are following?

Have you noticed your child shying away from foods they now believe are "unhealthy", and engaging in constant exercise?

Have you ever heard of fitspo?

Don't worry if you haven't. I'm an eating disorder specialist and I hadn't even heard of it until some of my young clients clued me in. Fitspo is short for fitspiration - a current internet trend that encourages people, especially young people, to eat in "healthy" way and to exercise.

Insider.com reports that there are more than 49 million posts with the hashtag #fitspo. Most of them are accompanied by photos of gurus (mostly women) flaunting their perfectly fit bodies to their thousands of followers.

Have you ever taken a look at instagram posts with the hashtag fitspo? As a parent myself, I encourage you to do so . I would post some examples here, but I feel that would be promoting a dangerous and unhealthy trend.

Personally, I was shocked to see these fitspiration posts.

Why?

First, many of the pictures are objectifying and overly sexualized.
Second, the posts are predominantly of women.
Third, most of these women's bodies are cartoon like in that they have disproportionately sized breasts and behinds, perfectly white teeth, long flowing hair, etc.
In the few fitspo images I saw of men, the male body was also unrealistically portrayed, with washboard abs, large biceps, lack of body hair and body fat.

I see the fitspiration movement as part of an alarming epidemic of orthorexia - an obsession with "clean" and increasingly restrictive eating, and compulsive exercise.

There is also a disturbing moral component to these trends - implying that if you don't follow them to the letter you are lazy and if you do you are better than everyone else.

The worst part is that I am seeing more and more young people with eating disorders in my psychotherapy practice who developed anorexia and/or bulimia because they started to follow one of these unhealthy social media campaigns.

I am getting calls from anxious parents who report their son or daughter was at a healthy weight, but after they started following fitspiration posts on Instagram and other social media sites, they began exercising more and more, and restricting many foods from their diet, resulting in a shocking amount of weight loss, fear of eating certain foods, and rigid compliance with punishing exercise programs.

Last year I was receiving phone calls like these from parents about once per month. This year I receive at least one phone call or email PER WEEK from alarmed parents about their fitness and food obsessed teens and college students.

There's no denying that social media campaigns like #fitspiration are largely the culprits. In the privacy of my office most of the young people I see admit that their obsession was catapulted by following posts that promote food deprivation and unrealistic exercise regimens.

These dangerous posts are almost always accompanied by photos that promote fantasized visions of what the male and female body should look like.

The results of early studies confirm what I'm seeing in my counseling practice. One well circulated study looked at a group of 276 women: "It found that browsing Instagram for as little as 30 minutes a day was linked with higher levels of self-objectification. (That's when you start to view your body as an object , and it can predict both depression and disordered eating in young women.) Looking at fitspiration in particular was linked to more body dissatisfaction. Other studies have reached similar conclusions ." https://www.insider.com/fitspiration-social-media-negative-effects-body-image-2017-11

Another study followed a group of 101 women who post fitspiration images on Instagram and a comparison group of 102 women who post travel images. Both groups completed measures of disordered eating and compulsive exercise. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eat.22559

The researchers found that women who post fitspiration images scored significantly higher on drive for thinness, bulimia, drive for muscularity, and compulsive exercise. Almost a fifth (17.5%) of these women were at risk for diagnosis of a clinical eating disorder, compared to 4.3% of the travel group. Compulsive exercise was related to disordered eating in both groups, but the relationship was significantly stronger for women who post fitspiration images.

Parents often lament to me that it seems like a losing battle to try and limit their kids' exposure to social media, especially as they become teenagers and young adults. Social media is addictive, and kids can be sneaky in finding ways to access it, even when parents have placed parental controls on devices.

Is it a losing battle? What can parents to do combat the negative influence of Instagram?

If you can't beat them, join them. I always encourage parents to ask their teens in an interested and non-judgemental way what they find fascinating on YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat and other social media sites.
Start with praise. Keep an open mind and praise them for trying to reach a goal, work towards self improvement, and attempt to become self-disciplined, even if the methods are misguided.
Point out the behavioral and physical changes in your child that are observable and have you worried. You may have noticed your child has lost an alarming amount of weight, for example, or has skipped once enjoyable activities with friends and family in order to complete strenuous workouts, or has cut out foods they once enjoyed and ate without guilt.
Ask them how much of their waking life is now consumed by thoughts about food, weight and exercise (usually it's almost every waking moment), and if it feels like a burden to be so consumed with these thoughts.
Let them know that you are responsible for their safety and well-being both emotionally and physically as their parent, and that you feel seeing a nutritionist and a therapist would be helpful to get a second opinion and help them to feel more happy and healthy.
Make an appointment with their primary physician as soon as possible to rule out any other physical causes for the changes that are alarming you, and also to get the gravity of the doctor's recommendation for counseling (which a good doctor will suggest right away) on your side.

As a parent, you can feel woefully ill equipped to deal with today's technology and its influence on your kids, especially when you fear it may be causing a dangerous mental health condition such as anorexia, bulimia, or body dysmorphic disorder (when your child starts to become obsessed with a particular body part not being perfect).

Remember you still have a lot of power and influence as a parent and that there are many professionals who specialize in the treatment of eating and body image disorders who can help you to turn a dangerous situation around.

If you are worried that your child is developing an eating disorder or compulsive exercise problems due to social media campaigns like "fitspo", know that we provide free fifteen minute consults within 24 hours. Just call us at 904-737-3232 , or email us a consult request here .

Social media brainwashing CAN be turned around, but the sooner you start the better!

Does avoiding mirrors make you hate your body more?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:36:17 GMT

You would think that ending your physical eating disorder symptoms such as bingeing, purging, starving or compulsively exercising would be the hardest part of recovery, wouldn’t you? And recovery is very hard - possible, but hard.

Yet, I’ve found that many of my clients have an even harder time learning to like their bodies once the physical danger of the eating disorder is over.

Troubles with body image, whether you call it body dysmorphia, poor body image self-esteem, or plain old body hatred, are often the lingering emotional symptoms that can get overlooked in the recovery process. These troubles are silent but devastating.

Just like with any fear, our inclination is to avoid it all costs. I’m not very fond of spiders, so I definitely do not go seeking them out in my garage! Sometimes it’s fine to avoid the situations that cause fear, as long as they don’t negatively impact your life. If I were working in the insect house at the zoo, I would definitely need to work on my arachnophobia, but thankfully, I don’t need to!

If you’re afraid to look at yourself in the mirror because you don’t want to experience the negative feelings and comments you say to yourself when you do, you avoid the pain in the short-term for sure. However, it’s difficult to avoid your own reflection entirely.

Additionally, those negative thoughts about yourself are still within you, just buried for the time being. And they hurt your overall self-esteem. They can cause you to hide from others, avoid taking risks that could benefit you (such as going for job interviews), wear clothes that show your style, even going to the beach because you won’t wear a bathing suit.

Avoiding the mirror and those painful thoughts can keep your from many beautiful life experiences. What should you do about it?

It is a weird conundrum that facing fears actually help them go away. There is a type of therapy called exposure therapy that can help people face their fears in a safe and measured way. For example, if I really wanted to overcome my fear of spiders, exposure therapy would start with me just imagining a spider, and then using cognitive and relaxation techniques to imaging this scenario without having a panic attack. Then I would hold a picture of a spider, then look at a real spider, and then finally hold a non-venomous spider while practicing these calming techniques.

This process would be done over several sessions until my fear of spiders was nothing but a memory. Researchers and clinicians have started to use a similar concept in helping people overcome negative body image and fear of looking in the mirror.

It’s called mirror exposure therapy, and there are three types. The first is called guided non-judgemental mirror exposure therapy. In this situation the person with negative body image is asked to look at himself in the mirror and describe all of his body parts in the most objective way possible. For example, instead of saying “My thighs are huge”, he would be directed to say “My thighs are about 25 inches around, they are slightly tan, and I have a small freckle over my right knee”.

By continually describing your body in a scientific, matter-of-fact way, this guided technique will actually retrain your brain to describe your appearance, and the negative feelings would subside.

The second type is called pure mirror exposure therapy. In this situation the person is asked to look in the mirror and actually say all of the negative thoughts she is feeling as well as express her feelings about her body and not look away. This seems to me to be the most original (i.e. pure) form of exposure therapy - having the person face the fear of feeling their painful emotions about their body.

As they face the painful feelings in a systematic way, they lessen over time. Obviously, this type of exposure can be overwhelming and needs to be monitored carefully by a trained therapist.

The third type of mirror exposure therapy is called positive mirror exposure therapy. I actually recommend a form of this technique in my book How to be FREE of weight obsession and body hatred : Technique #1: Only allow yourself positive comments when you look in the mirror. Did you know social scientists have proven that we think 95% of the same thoughts every day? So, if 95% of those thoughts are negative thoughts, it is a huge emotional burden to be carrying day in and day out, throughout your life. You may be constantly pointing out faults and putting yourself down. If you’re doing that over and over and over again, 95% of every single day of your life, you are not going to have high self-esteem. It’s important to start to turn those toxic thoughts around as soon as you can.

Is this the case for you? When you are looking in the mirror are you telling yourself “Oh, I look so fat today.” or “Oh, I look so tired today.” or “Oh, my thighs look big today.” or “That skirt doesn’t look good on me.”? If so, I want you to make a concerted effort to never say anything bad about yourself when you look in the mirror again! Even if you have to jump in front of the mirror and say “You look awesome today!” and then jump back without saying anything negative, do that at first! Make a conscious effort to always focus on something positive about yourself in the mirror, such as: “My hair looks great” or “I’m a wonderful person.”

A companion exercise is to take other negative thoughts you notice and rewrite them in the positive. Instead of “I’m always late. I’m always irresponsible. I can never get anything right.” turn it around and reframe: “I do my best every day and I’m a fantastic person” or “Everyone is late sometimes. I have to give myself a break. I’m only human”.

In his interesting article on the topic, Trevor C. Griffen notes: “Mirror exposure therapy is an important, evidence-based treatment for body image disturbances and a large number of people could benefit from treatment. Individuals with eating disorders and body image disturbances should consider adjunctive mirror exposure therapy during the course of their eating disorder treatment; however, mirror exposure therapy should not be the only treatment for an eating disorder. Mirror exposure therapy can also be helpful for individuals with body dissatisfaction who do not have an eating disorder. ”

Do you think mirror exposure therapy could help you stop hating your body? Before you try, keep in mind that this type of experience is not for everyone. Psychology Today warns: “Though mirror exposure therapy appears to be effective in some groups of patients (e.g. those with eating disorders), its efficacy remains to be proven in other groups; for instance, in individuals with clinical depression, those with a history of self-harm, people who are significantly obese/underweight, and men. That is why the paper’s authors urge caution in using mirror exposure therapy in these populations until further research is conducted.”

Most of all, know that you don’t have to live your life hating the body you were born with. Mirror exposure therapy is just one of the effective techniques you can use to heal your body image. Don’t despair and give up - and if you’re not sure which way to turn, remember that we offer free 15 minute consults to help point you in the right direction!

Contact us today about Mirror Exposure Therapy by calling us at 904-737-3232 for more information!

Is improper treatment of PCOS causing your eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:29:57 GMT

Have you been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and warned by your doctor to lose weight but not instructed how?

Are you feeling hopeless about your PCOS diagnosis and symptoms?

Has your PCOS caused you to feel lethargic, depressed and experience painful periods?

Did your doctor provide any proof or evidence that PCOS is successfully managed by weight loss?

Do you fear you have developed an eating disorder (such as anorexia, bulimia, or binge/emotional eating) triggered by dieting to control your PCOS?

If you have been diagnosed with PCOS, most doctors will instruct you to lose weight, despite the lack of any evidence that weight loss eases symptoms.

If you are also a person who emotionally eats (i.e. when you are stressed, upset or tired), this order can add to feelings of shame you may already carry with you about not being able to “control” your eating.

PCOS can cause alarming fluctuations in weight, which can lead a person to try “crash” diets to drop the excess pounds. The condition is typically diagnosed at age 25-30 or older. The symptoms can include difficulty getting pregnant, unwanted hair growth, debilitating fatigue.

This shame can lead to a restrict/binge cycle (dieting and falling of the diet) that actually can do more damage to your metabolism and can cause irregular weight distribution (especially around the stomach). Even worse, the pressure to lose weight can lead a person with PCOS to develop an eating disorder such as anorexia, bulimia, or compulsive overeating.

The reverse situation can also be true! As mirror-mirror.org reports: “ Often times, a patient will begin eating disorder treatment and it isn’t until then that the PCOS is recognized. This can happen various ways… as a patient describes the development of the disordered eating, it becomes clear that the change in eating began in response to a mysterious weight change irrelevant of unchanging eating or exercise patterns.”

In fact, a recent international survey of over 1,300 women with PCOS showed that 50% of women saw three or more health professionals or waited for more than two years before receiving a PCOS diagnosis!

A pattern of yo-yo dieting can make PCOS symptoms worse by creating more circulating insulin in your body, causing your periods more painful and your weight to fluctuate.

Many women who are diagnosed with PCOS feel they have been given a life sentence of dealing with acne, unwanted weight gain, excessive hair growth or loss, endless cravings for carbohydrates and sweets. Add to this fears around being able to get pregnant, poor body image, and fluctuations in mood and it can seem like a hopeless situation.

Women diagnosed with PCOS are more likely to experience mental health issues, both as result of genetics and stigma around the illness. The Columbia School of Nursing notes: “We were surprised to find that menstrual abnormalities in women with PCOS was the strongest predictor for mental health issues, particularly when there are so many other symptoms - like beard growth and infertility- that can make a woman feel unfeminine… The study finds that we can’t treat PCOS effectively unless we pay close attention to any signs of mental distress.”

What if there was a better way to manage PCOS and it didn’t involve dieting?

By practicing an intuitive eating approach you can ease your PCOS symptoms, stop dieting forever, and end weight fluctuations. On top of that, practicing intuitive eating and joyful movement can improve your sense of well-being, help you enjoy food and soothe negative feelings about body image.

It can improve your periods and may increase your chances of getting pregnant with your diagnosis.

An added plus is that intuitive eating can help prevent diabetes and heal eating disorders.

Unfortunately many well meaning doctors and medical professionals are not on board with the non-diet approach for treating PCOS, even though there is a severe lack of evidence that diets help PCOS.

You may have to be proactive in finding medical professionals who support a non-diet approach and avoid weight stigma, but it will be well worth it.

It is also essential to work with a licensed dietitian who uses an intuitive eating approach to help symptoms of PCOS.

You may experience resistance inside yourself about quitting diets.

This is completely natural given we live in an eating disordered society that shames us for being fat and gaining weight. Every other commercial seems to promote compulsive exercise routines and extreme diets, both of which are likely to magnify your PCOS symptoms.

When these feelings of resistance arise in you, it may help to also work with a therapist with experience treating eating and body image disorders, so you can let go of all of those painful messages and get to a place of peace about food and your body.

A diagnosis of PCOS does not need to resign you to a life of physical discomfort and hopelessness. Our team of therapists and dietitians are specifically trained to help you manage your PCOS through intuitive eating, joyful movement, and support for anxiety and depression.

We can also support you to speak up to your doctors about the non-diet approach and find a team that does not shame you about your weight. Receiving the diagnosis is enough, you don’t need to be judged and shamed by the people who are supposed to help you!

Contact us about more information regarding your PCOS treatment and your eating habits by calling us at 904-737-3232 !

Is your partner's eating disordered thinking and behaviors hurting your recovery?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 17:23:44 GMT

Here is a question I received from a reader about a little discussed dilemma in eating disorder recovery that is all too common: realizing a family member or your partner also has eating disordered thinking or behaviors (such as yo-yo dieting, compulsive exercising, purging or body dysmorphia) but they won’t admit to them or seek help.

“Now that I’m working on learning intuitive eating, I’m realizing my husband has some signs of an eating disorder. He goes on and off diets, compulsively exercises, and often criticizes his body. When I tried to talk to him about it he got very defensive and refused to consider his behaviors are unhealthy. It’s really hard to practice intuitive eating without his help. What should I do?”

How frustrating for you! Many of my clients experience this problem, namely, once they start to practice intuitive eating and embrace recovery, they realize one or more family members has eating disordered thinking and/or behaviors. Unfortunately, eating and body image problems do not occur in a vacuum, and you have realized that your husband has shared your struggles.

You sought help for your eating disorder, but your husband has not...yet. Compulsively exercising, going on and off diets, and berating one’s body are the rule rather than the exception in our culture. It is normalized behavior, and it keeps your husband from recognizing the havoc and pain it is causing in his life.

And social media and the internet encourage him too! When I did a quick google search on “I don’t want to diet anymore but my husband does”, I was shocked to see the following search results:

How do I keep my husband healthy?
How do I get my husband to lose weight?
How do I motivate my husband to exercise?
Ten top ways to motivate a spouse struggling to lose weight

It’s all about the need to diet and lose weight - absolutely NOTHING about non-diet culture and supporting intuitive eating. Remember that if you are the “average Joe” and not actively searching body positive and intuitive eating articles, you are most likely to be targeted by diet and weight loss ads all the time.

Sadly, most people, including your husband most likely, believe they are weak and lack will-power because they can’t lose weight on a diet OR that they just haven't found the “right” diet or exercise program that will be the magic key to long-term weight loss.

When a person seeks eating disorder recovery and starts to practice intuitive eating, it can be a real shocker to their close friends and family members.

In her blog, Krystal Carges, RD notes: “Some behaviors that you might encounter with the loved ones in your own home might include:

Restrictive eating behaviors
Yo-Yo Dieting, or frequently going from one diet to another
Recurring binge eating episodes
Hoarding/Hiding Food
Body shaming talk
Talking negatively about certain foods, (i.e. “good” versus “bad” foods)
Food shaming (getting shamed for your food choices)

In fact, sometimes the entire family has eating disordered behaviors that were never diagnosed. It can be very painful for a person in recovery to realize their own thoughts about dieting and weight are distorted, never mind those of the people they love.

This is one of the most difficult parts of eating disorder recovery’ whether it be from anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating or orthorexia - at least when you were dieting and in your eating disorder, you had a lot to connect with and talk about with your husband. What diet would you try this time? How would you support each other to keep up that workout? Now it no longer feels like a connection, albeit a painful one - it has started to cause a rift.

Additionally, it is well known in the eating disorder treatment community that it can be quite common for the client’s family members to try to “pull them back” into their eating disorder because it is making them more aware of their own disordered eating. In some cases, you not only lack support, but you have to fight off comments and attempts to pull you back into your dieting behavior.

It can be lonely to be recovered in a world that is obsessed with weight and dieting - especially when the people you love still choose to live in that world. Have faith! The non-diet and body positive movements are getting stronger, and research about men and eating disorders is growing. And now your husband has an advocate sleeping right next to him, so he has access to a more healthy viewpoint and way of life.

You have a right to be upset, but confronting your husband (or family) about his restrictive food practices and thinking before he is ready will only cause more conflict and distance between you. The best thing you can do right now is set limits on how he talks about body and food around you. For example, when he talks about not liking a part of his body, or not having burned enough calories in his workout, for example, you can gently but firmly let him know you it is important for people not to discuss food and weight around you while you are seeking recovery.

Remember it probably took you a long time to realize your emotional eating and dieting mentality was hurting you so much you wanted to seek help. Share with your husband how healing your food and body work have been to you. Show empathy when he puts himself down and let him know it hurts you to hear him make those comments about someone you love.

Meanwhile, keep at your own recovery and surround yourself with family, friends and medical professionals who support you in your efforts. Hopefully your partner will notice you are more at peace and will want the same for himself and your relationship. If not, you may want to seek some couples counseling for additional support.

For support with your difficulties with your partner's eating disordered behaviors during your recovery, you can contact our team of therapists by calling 904-737-3232 !

Is your fear of gaining weight taking over your life?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:21:05 GMT

Many of my clients are terrified at the thought of gaining even one pound in recovery. Our society's stigma against fat people as well as our unhealthy obsession with being thin and beautiful creates these feelings of terror.

One of the most difficult parts of recovery from an eating disorder can be the fear of gaining weight as well as actually gaining weight. When a new client comes to see me for eating disorder treatment, I am very clear from the outset that our goal is not to reach a certain size or weight that will make the person "happy".

Rather, I want to help the client reach a state of overall physical and emotional health and maintain their natural weight. Natural weight is achieved by consistent intuitive eating and a total cessation of dieting.

Fear of weight gain is especially dangerous in those who suffer from anorexia nervosa, because the thinner they become, the "fatter" they feel. In this case it is essential to view food as medicine and to follow a weight restoration meal plan. People with anorexia actually lose much of their fear of weight gain the more they are weight restored.

Others who have enormous difficulty with the thought of weight gain are chronic yo-yo dieters. Lifelong dieting (and falling off the diet, resulting in weight gain), leads to a situation where the person not only does not know their natural weight, but they often idealize their thinnest weight when they were dieting. Helping my clients let go of their unhealthy dreams about once again achieving their "dieting" weight is not an easy task, but it is so very important in reaching full recovery and being free of food obsession and poor body image.

Some of the tips I use to help people let go of the fear of weight gain are:

Be aware of how much time you use while awake obsessing over food and weight - wouldn't it be nice to free up all of that room in your brain by letting go of those thoughts?
Get angry at our culture's obsession with thinness and how it seems to want us (especially women) to disappear.
Try to avoid videos, instagram photos, and even old pictures of your “thinner self” that trigger you.
Set limits with food and weight talk from friends and loved ones. Remember, they live in our diet and weight obsessed society too, and also suffer from food and body insecurity. Tell them you know they don’t mean to upset you with comments about how they have to “work off” that cupcake, or diet down into that maid of honor dress, but those comments don’t help in your recovery.
If your clothes do not fit any longer, get new ones that do. Try not to hold on to your old eating disordered clothes, your “dieting” clothes . They only encourage you to idealize an unmaintainable weight. When you consistently eat intuitively, you will only need one set of clothes unless you become pregnant, and you won’t have to continuously struggle to maintain or lose weight to reach you natural size.
Be prepared for people, even complete strangers, to comment on your weight gain, or loss, as you start to reach your natural weight. If people compliment your weight loss and ask “how did you do it”, consider being honest with them about being in recovery from an eating disorder and that you are practicing intuitive eating rather than dieting.

If people comment you have gained weight and “look so healthy”, etc., try not to equate that comment to “you look fat”. Practice in the mirror telling people you would appreciate if they would not comment on your looks or weight, even if they mean well.

Try to avoid body checking (obsessively Iooking at yourself in the mirror to see if you’ve gained weight, feeling your thighs or other body parts over and over, etc). Train yourself to recognize when you are body checking and have a way to redirect yourself. For example, carry a Sudoku puzzle book and do a puzzle instead of checking, or try an adult coloring book or a meditation app).
Thank your body for all of miraculous things it allows you to do on earth, especially when you feed it well and let it move with joy. Thank your brain for helping you solve problems, empathize with others, and enable you live your life fully because you feed it!
Don't step on a scale, EVER , unless your doctor needs to take your weight, and even then you can turn around and not look.
Allow yourself to grieve your dieting self and dieting body . We live in a culture that encourages us to be thin at all costs, even those of our happiness and overall health. Letting go of your dieting body means you will never reach that societal ideal and all of the praise and attention that can go with it. Let yourself cry, scream, get depressed and release your sadness over no longer living in that world.
Take a look around you and see that human beings come in all shapes and sizes - our genetics determine our natural size for the most part . There isn't much value or use in fighting it.

And what about the fear itself? When you think about weight gain 24/7, it causes extreme anxiety and can greatly interfere with your quality of life. We tend to think that most people who are afraid to gain weight are struggling with anorexia; however, the truth is much worse - most people are walking around every day terrified they look fat.

A Dutch study recently found that :”A fear of gaining weight or becoming fat peaked among women between 16 and 25 years of age, and these concerns continued throughout their lives. A particularly troubling finding was that many women in the 16- to 25-year age group were very or extremely afraid of weight gain despite the fact that only 12% to 14% were actually overweight .”

Of course, you don’t need to read a Dutch study to know that many of your family, friends and acquaintances think and talk about weight and fear of getting fat all too often.

Being terrified of gaining weight is not a fun way to go through life. If you need help to let go and learn to love the body you were born with, we can give additional tips and provide lots of support and courage!

If you are having fears regarding gaining weight, contact our team of therapists for more information by calling 904-737-3232 !

Are you worried that your high school or college athlete has an eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:15:06 GMT

Are you worried that your high school or college athlete has an eating disorder?

Has your high school or college athlete lost a lot of weight with no known medical cause?

Is he or she working out constantly, in addition to team training?

Has there been a growing obsession with “pure” or “clean” eating with the hopes of increased performance?

Have they become more fatigued, irritable and defensive?

When we think of eating disorders, high performing athletes are usually the last people who come to mind. Athletes are at the top of their game, in peak physical shape, and the healthiest among us, right? So you would think they would be the last people prone to anorexia, bulimia, laxative abuse, or compulsive overeating.

Unfortunately, there is a secret life of eating disordered behavior among many of our athlete population.

Famous gymnasts, such as Kathy Johnson, Nadia Comaneci and Cathy Rigby have come forward and admitted to fighting eating disorders. Rigby, a 1972 Olympian, battled anorexia and bulimia for 12 years. She went into cardiac arrest on two occasions because of it. Christy Henrich, one of the world’s top gymnasts, died in 1994 from multiple organ failure from extreme anorexia and bulimia.

Famous male athletes are starting to come forward as well.

“Bahne Rabe was a successful competitive rower for Germany, with world titles on his belt and 2 Gold medals. Yet, Rabe was fighting some powerful demons that eventually took his life . Rabe struggled with anorexia and tragically died from pneumonia after being admitted to the hospital for extreme malnutrition.”
(https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/blog/famous-athletes-anorexia-bulimia).

I’ve written before about Seattle Mariners catcher Mike Marjama coming out about a lifetime struggle with an eating disorder that included severe exercise bulimia.

Female athletes are especially at risk in sports which emphasize a thin body or appearance, such as gymnastics, ballet/dance, figure skating, swimming and distance running, horse racing and riding.

Male athletes are especially at risk in wrestling and bodybuilding, and other sports that require them to “make weight”.

A study of NCAA athletes found that binge eating occurred more often in male athletes than in female athletes. The same percentage of males and females used steroids to improve athletic performance. Female athletes were four times more likely than males to use vomiting to lose weight. 

What are the causes of eating disorders among athletes?

• The idealization of thinness in our society, combined with the pressures of the athletic subculture.
• Judges progressively rewarding thinner athletes - i.e. in 1976 the average gymnast as 5’3” weighing 105 lbs; in 1992 the average gymnast was 4’9” weighing 88 lbs.
• Coaches pressuring athletes to be thin by criticizing them or making reference to their weight.
• The unsubstantiated belief that lower body fat enhances performance.
• Individuals who are preoccupied with weight and appearance may be more likely to participate in athletics.
• A dramatic increase in exercise can precipitate a decrease in appetite and severe weight loss.
• Body dissatisfaction- athletes at risk for eating disorders are often those who are particularly anxious and critical of their own athletic performance and who express these concerns by dissatisfaction with their bodies.
• One study found that athletes are more likely than non athletes to report symptoms of eating disorders, even though participation in sports can help people have better self esteem. Drive for thinness can be related to other factors besides self esteem in the sports world.
• College can be a stressful place for many students. The pressures may result in someone turning to eating disorder behavior to regain a sense of control.
• Many athletes are not even aware they have an eating disorder because the behavior has become acceptable in the peer group, for example, sharing laxative and diet pills, having group binge/purge get togethers or sweating off excess pounds to make weight for competitions.

What are the effects of eating disorders on athletes?

Symptoms that interfere with athletic performance include: fatigue, weakness, lightheadedness, broken bones, leg cramps, and irregular heart rate - stemming from electrolyte imbalances, osteoporosis, poor heart and circulatory functioning. There is also high risk for the female athlete triad: amenorrhea, disordered eating and osteoporosis (brittle bones).

Detection and treatment - how can I help?

Athletes are often aware of the symptoms of eating disorders but do not want to acknowledge them for fear they will be required to stop their sport. You can reassure your athlete that except for extreme cases, they can continue in their sport and will actually improve their performance once in recovery.
• Talk about what you see: lightheadedness, chronic fatigue, loss of concentration, inability to complete workouts, etc. It’s hard to deny visible symptoms or personality changes.
• Some athletes will be relieved to share the secret; some will deny the problem and may be angry. Remember that they may need time to process what you have told them. Have resources ready in hand and remember you have planted a seed that may eventually lead to treatment.
• Many with eating disorders feel they are crazy and they are the only person who does the things they do. There is much shame and denial. Reassure them that they are far from the only athlete that uses eating disordered behaviors to cope.
• Coaches and trainers need to be aware of the signs of eating disorders and recognize when healthy training routines turn into an obsession, with obsessive measures to become thin. Coaches should bring in nutrition experts to educate athletes on healthy eating and make them aware of how important it is to fuel the body adequately. Counseling should be made available to athletes who are suffering from eating disorders and they should be supported and encouraged to accept the help. Assure them they will not be criticized or looked down upon if they come forward with a problem.
• If you are the parent of a minor, remember you have the power to force the issue. Let them know that their safety, health and well-being are your top priority, and you will restrict access to the sport and other forms of exercise until they accept help and proper treatment.

If your gut is telling you your high school or college athlete has an eating disorder, don’t ignore it. We help many athletes recover and successfully return to their sport, often after only a short hiatus. We work with parents, teachers and coaches to encourage recovery, and to save the athlete’s place on the team. If you are worried about your young athlete, give us a call or request a free 15 minute consult. We’ll help you move in the right direction quickly!

Contact us today about getting help for your high school or college athlete with an eating disorder by calling our team of therapists today at 904-737-3232 !

Feeling fat? Look at what is happening in India to understand why.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:03:03 GMT

Last night I was watching a show called VICE on HBO. If you don’t know, it’s a news show that uses a documentary, immersionist style to go deep into a contemporary issue. Last night I watched a segment on India’s growing skin lightening industry .

Apparently, having light skin is extremely prized in India, and if you have dark skin (as so many people in India do), it can keep you from getting job offers, finding a marriage partner, and becoming an actor or actress. The journalists interviewed several young women and men that shared they were rejected over and over from jobs and arranged marriages solely because of the darkness of their skin.

Young girls were severely affected. Apparently families comment on a child’s skin color (whether it is light enough) from the moment they are born . If they child is born too dark, the family often laments how they will have trouble finding a job or a husband, and negatively compares them repeatedly to other lighter skinned siblings.

Imagine how it would affect your self image being told over and over again you are ugly because of a physical attribute you cannot control.

But it gets worse.

There is a multi-million dollar skin lightening industry that has grown out of India’s cultural desire to be whiter. Young women and men pay enormous amounts for cosmetic “procedures” and skin lightening creams that promise a fairer complexion to the user.

I was shocked to see that many of these creams are produced by well-known American cosmetic companies such as L’Oreal. Not only is the cosmetic industry profiting off of this insane belief, the belief has its roots in occupation of India by the British.

It is an outgrowth of the caste system, colonialism and racism.

I was outraged learning about this situation in India. I am heartbroken for all of the young girls (and boys), who grow up in that culture being denied opportunities because of their appearance, and for the lifelong self-hatred that results.

Then I realized that if you substitute being thin for skin tone, we have the exact same situation in The United States.

From the time we are born in this country, parents often comment on a child’s weight if they are not thin enough. These children are often put on diets and in weight-loss programs in order to be able to “succeed” in life, including finding a job and a mate. These parents mean well and they are often not wrong. It has been proven that larger sized people ARE less likely to be hired for jobs, as NAAFA reports:

• Fat people can be terminated or suspended because of their weight, despite good job performance. (Rothblum et al 1990)

• Weight/height discrimination is as prevalent as rates of racial discrimination reported a recent Yale study especially among women. (Puhl et al 2008)

• Up to 6% less earnings than thin people in comparable positions and fat women suffer more than fat men. (Baum et al 2004)

• Fat people get fewer promotions. (Loh, 1993).

and they are more often rejected and bullied:

• 1 of 3 children has experienced weight bias from a teacher. (Rudd Report 2008)

• 2 of every 3 children has experienced it from a classmate. (Rudd Report 2008)

• Fat students are significantly less likely to be accepted for admissions to college despite comparable academic performance. (Canning 1966)

• Teachers have a lower expectation for fat students in comparison to thinner students. (O’Brien et al 2007)

• Negative attitudes start in preschool and progress as students age. (Turnbull et al 2000)

There is a multi-million dollar diet and beauty industry that encourages the use of dangerous procedures, medications and products to achieve our body and beauty ideals. And these ideals are rooted in a history of classist and racist beliefs.

Strong words, I know. But we need strong words and actions in order to fight against our culture’s unrealistic ideals of weight and beauty. Our children are suffering the same as Indian children. They are being raised in a culture that tells them if their natural size is large that they are ugly, less likely to succeed, and have little chance of finding love.

They likely grow up to be adults that yo-yo diet and suffer from the emotional and physical complications that result, including eating disorders.

And if you have an eating disorder such as anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia or body dysmorphic disorder, I believe it is an essential part of recovery to educate yourself about the socioeconomic factors that encourage you to continue to struggle. In other words, educate yourself and stop blaming yourself.

Do you think you started hating your body in a vacuum?

Once you’re educated, start putting your money where your mouth is. Don’t support products and procedures that encourage body hatred and the unrealistic goal of dieting to be thin. And support causes that encourage individuals to focus the size of their character, not of their body.

I was encouraged to hear that several organizations in India have been created to change the country’s damaging view of ideal beauty according to skin color, such as Women of Worth who launched a “Dark is Beautiful” campaign throughout the country. They have seen early legal results, one which fined a skin lightening beauty cream company with false advertising.

Similar rulings and laws about false advertising about body image are being adopted in other countries, including ours. Dr. Marilyn Bromberg reports

“While there are few laws in the body image area to date, those that exist are significant. This is one reason why Cindy Halliwell (of The University of Melbourne Law School) and I named these laws ‘Body Image Law’.”

Requires models to have a minimum size in order to work
Requires a warning on images of models that were altered to make the models look thinner or forbid this alteration from taking place
Require stores to carry clothing in many different sizes
Forbid certain words or expressions from appearing in images with models.”

If you wake up every morning and can’t bring yourself to look in the mirror because you believe you are fat and ugly, you have been brainwashed by the beauty, diet and weight-loss industries. You are also unfortunately a product of a relatively recent history of prizing thin bodies in our culture above all other personal attributes.

Don’t believe me?

I suggest you read “ The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls ” by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, who “draws on diary excerpts and media images from 1830 to the present. Tracing girls’ attitudes toward topics ranging from breast size and menstruation to hair, clothing, and cosmetics, she exposes the shift from the Victorian concern with character to our modern focus on outward appearance - in particular, the desire to be model-thin and sexy.”

Perception is often reality, and we need to change our perception of size and beauty to one that is more healthy and realistic. Becoming an educated body size acceptance advocate is an essential step in eating disorder recovery. In order to overcome distorted beliefs about your body and weight, we must fight for change!

For more information about body size acceptance, contact us by calling 904-737-3232 !

Here’s why dieting is the WRONG way to manage diabetes, and can actually make it worse!

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:48:43 GMT

As part of launching our “No-diet Diabetes” program, I sat down this week with our fabulous dietitian Elizabeth Lagasse, RD to ask questions about why you should never focus on losing weight to manage prediabetes or diabetes . If you have been feeling frustrated by your failed attempts to drop weight to manage your diagnosis, this interview should give you renewed hope and start to remove the shame.

Liz, why is it so important NOT to diet or totally cut out sugar when managing diabetes? 

Then you may ask what is a better approach to diabetes management other than weight loss and dieting? There's a great number of A level research studies showing that diabetes is much more controlled and treatable without the focus on weight loss. If weight loss happens to occur because of change in the behaviors, fine, wonderful, but it's not the focus. You can still get the results of controlled blood sugar and therefore the lowered comorbidities that occur with diabetes with a focus solely on health behaviors.

What do I mean by not focusing on diet? For example, if a client absolutely loves bagels and the thought of giving up bagels makes them mentally distressed, then cutting them out won’t be sustainable. Our approach asks how can bagels fit in your diet to where it can still have a neutral to positive affect on your blood sugar. That can be done by spreading peanut butter on the bagel to add protein and allow your metabolism to have more time to release the sugar as opposed to going straight into the bloodstream. Or is it that we make the choice to have a smaller bagel, or to have a bagel that's chock-full of nuts and seeds? In other words, what we can do to still have the bagel but have it in a way that is going to have a more neutral to positive effect on the sugar levels.”

How do you use an intuitive eating approach with your clients with diabetes?

“We know that intuitive eating is not a diet but eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full, right? And fullness is an indicator blood sugar levels. When your hunger signals go up, your blood sugar starts dropping - hunger signals go down as your blood sugar increases. So if you can tap into hunger signals through a mindful eating approach, you've literally come back into your own barometer for blood sugar. There is no need to control it externally through a diet.

I tend to fall back quite a bit on science, and science says number one that diets are not effective. There are honestly very few longitudinal studies on the effects of dieting on diabetes and the ones that are out there pretty much show that after two years the weight comes back. In fact there is more research that proves that weight cycling or yo-yo dieting is much more detrimental to your health and blood sugar levels than being a higher weight. This is health at every size. A quote I really love is that you can focus on health without focusing on weight!

Not focusing on weight doesn't mean you're giving up. You can still focus on health just without focusing on the weight. Something else that I think about quite a bit is that it's literally impossible to live a lifetime without ever experiencing weight change. It happens to everyone - there's no such thing as weight change never happening so why focus on the weight and make yourself miserable? It is not normal to stay exactly the same weight over a lifetime. Did you know that for women the average weight per month is 6 pounds weight gain or loss for a female in her menstruating years? Men do not remain the same weight either. This belief that it is even possible to stay the same weight over a lifetime (without having an eating disorder) needs to be a lot of debunking along with this belief that we could stay the same weight if we just work hard enough.

That's what I think that's why people don't go more regularly to doctors or traditional diabetes education classes. If you had a dangerous physical condition, and your medical providers or classes kept telling you you’re just not working hard enough or you need to lose tons of weight to have even a chance at health, would you continue to go? It is so detrimental! It is so much more effective to focus on health behavior then on shaming people about their weight and failure to diet.”

How does following a non-diet, intuitive eating program help to ease the symptoms of diabetes?

“When your blood sugar numbers improve through consistent intuitive eating, all the comorbidities that go along with diabetes, such as neuropathy, retinopathy, skin wounds, etc., all of those symptoms can decrease if blood sugar is controlled. Additionally, an intuitive eating, non-diet approach greatly improves quality-of-life factors such as energy levels, sex drive, restful sleep, and easing of anxiety and depression.

Think about it this way - humans are fundamentally designed for seeking pleasure. Our minds evolutionarily are geared towards seeking pleasure so that's part of this non-diet approach. We get to tap into your pleasure centers and work with them rather than fight them, in a losing battle I may add. And we're going to tap into that in a way that actually improves your health. An intuitive eating plan is going to improve the physical symptoms, that physical spoke of health, and we can actually have numbers to back that up. But you also have to consider the other spokes in that holistic wheel of health besides clinical factors. The other spokes are mental health, sleep quality, and longevity, for example.

It is always exciting to see what else improves in our prediabetic and diabetic clients besides their sugar numbers. I definitely notice an increase in their energy and overall mood. Think about it - if your blood sugar goes through constant highs and lows with prediabetes and diabetes, the bar of expectations gets lower and you can get used to feeling bad and accepting it as normal. So getting your blood sugar more controlled and more balanced without dieting will help you feel so much better every day.”

Liz, is it possible to be “cured” of diabetes once you receive the diagnosis?

“Unfortunately diabetes is not curable but it can be very effectively managed and you can still have a fantastic quality of life. What makes me mad is seeing all of these “experts” on Twitter and other social media who say things like “the keto diet cured my diabetes”. This is incorrect - diabetes can be effectively managed but not cured and every person is different. They may need medication as a tool to help, but intuitive eating and a non-diet approach are key to success over a lifetime. AND the best part is there is no need to make anyone feel ashamed or a failure about their weight!”

If you enjoyed this interview and would like to start a non-diet approach for diabetes management, you can work with Liz one-on-one, stop dieting forever, and stop the feelings of failure about losing weight. Here is the link to ask for a FREE 15 minute consult or set an appointment by calling us at 904-737-3232 !

Have you even been living with shame because you received a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:33:06 GMT

Have you been living with shame because you received a Type 2 diabetes diagnosis?

Have you been shamed by your doctor, friends or family about your eating habits or needing to lose weight because of this diagnosis?

Do you feel like a failure, lazy, and hopeless because you haven’t been able to stay on a diet for diabetes management?

Do you wish there was a way to manage this disease WITHOUT weight loss?

Have you avoided going for medical appointments because you are afraid to be weighed or have office staff comment about your weight?

Have experiences of fat shaming, comments about your diagnosis caused you to binge eat more, purge or yo-yo diet, making your diabetes symptoms even worse?

I would like to share a story with you about a young patient I have been seeing for about 6 months. She has given me permission to do so as long as she remains anonymous. She went through years of fat shaming by medical professionals related to her diabetes diagnosis.

It all started about a year ago. Casey, is a smart, creative young woman with a sharp sense of humor and a very kind heart. She loves to sew and often comes to our sessions wearing the cutest outfits that she created herself. One day she went to her doctor for a routine physical that included bloodwork. A few weeks later her doctor asked her to come back into the office. When she did, he presented her with a terrifying diagnosis - her blood work showed that she had Type 2 diabetes.

Casey was shocked. She was only 18 years old. This was a disease she would now have to live with for the rest of her life. But that wasn’t the most devastating part. During her teen years Casey had suffered from an eating disorder. She binged large amounts of food and then purged, for several years. The doctor knew this because she had disclosed this history, even though it was one of her deepest, darkest secrets. She trusted her doctor and knew that in the best interest of her health she needed to be totally honest.

After telling him about her new diagnosis the doctor did not hesitate to tell Casey why this had happened to her - she had done it to herself. All of those years of binging and purging had sealed her fate and there was no going back. And the solution? Lose weight, fast. The doctor patted Casey on the shoulder with an “I told you so” look, handed her a prescription, and instructed her to set a follow-up appointment with him in three months.

Casey was paralyzed with guilt and shame . She had worried as a teen that the binging and purging were hurting her body, but she didn’t know how to stop and was too embarrassed to ask for help. And now she had “given” herself a terrible illness.

In a panic, she started to diet. She tried to cut out all sugar and carbs, eat more vegetables, and go the the gym several times a week. She kept it up for about a month, but she had never gotten help for her eating disorder, which was the way she comforted herself when under stress.

The pressure of forced dieting and exercise became too much for her (as it would be for anyone!), and one day she bought a bunch of sweets and gorged on them in her bedroom in secret. She stopped exercising and resumed this daily bingeing ritual.

When she returned to the doctor for her follow-up appointment - which was terrifying to do since she hadn’t dropped any weight - in fact she had gained weight because of the bingeing, the doctor launched into a lecture about how she was not taking her diagnosis seriously. Did she want to lose her toes and feet to neuropathy? Did she want to go into kidney failure? She needed to drum up some willpower and get that weight off.

Casey left the appointment feeling ashamed and defeated. What was wrong with her that she first gave herself this illness and then wouldn’t follow the doctor’s advice to manage it? She knew she needed help. Luckily she called us instead of a weight loss center.

When Casey came to her first appointment with me, she told me tearfully about her experience and shared her feelings of hopelessness about ever being able to recover from her eating disorder OR manage her diabetes. We were a last ditch attempt.

I really wanted to hug her. And truthfully, I wanted to go give that doctor a piece of my mind. However, I know that most doctors are trained to be fat phobic and believe that dieting and weight loss are the cure for almost all ills, even though mounting scientific evidence shows that being fat is by far not an automatic indicator of poor health.

Here’s the real kicker to this story.

A few months later, Casey, in working with an excellent endocrinologist, found out that she carries a rare genetic marker for diabetes. The doctor never thought to explore other causes for the diabetes and jumped right into shaming Casey and blaming her lifestyle and behaviors. The truth is, Casey would have received this diagnosis no matter what, even if she were a size 2 fitness model!

When Casey came to her appointment to tell me this news, this time she cried with relief. She finally realized that developing diabetes was not her fault. Sadly, many people with Type 2 diabetes face this type of stigma every day, as NBC news reports:
“Few chronic diseases carry more stigma than Type 2 diabetes. While patients with heart disease or cancer are often showered with sympathy, people with Type 2 diabetes are criticized for being fat, lazy or junk food junkies.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45137643/ns/health-diabetes/t/diabetes-shame-plus-denial-risky-combo/#.W9HYURopChA

Shame leads people to hide their condition, not seek adequate medical treatment. In addition, physicians often contribute to this shaming behavior , according to vice.com: “In many doctors’ opinions, there’s nothing else to diagnose once a fat person walks into their office—the answers to our health problems are written all over our bodies. Over the past few years, the negative bias and stigma impacting people of size has become more widely seen and understood as ill-informed and destructive: They lead to misdiagnoses and missed diagnoses, and discourage fat people from getting the care they need”
https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/43ppwj/how-to-find-a-fat-positive-doctor

It is because of heart wrenching stories like Casey’s that The Body Image Counseling Center recognizes the incredible need for diabetes treatment that does NOT focus on weight loss or dieting, and is welcoming of all body types. I have had so many clients come to see me with these types of stories that I knew we had to do something more proactive.

That is why we are proud to announce our new diabetes and pre-diabetes counseling and education program “NO diet diabetes”. The program is a team treatment approach to diabetes management that includes both weekly nutrition counseling AND weekly therapy sessions to help you understand the emotional triggers that can lead to binge eating, purging or restricting.

No Diet Diabetes! - Intuitive Eating for Diabetes Self-Management

Purpose: Treatment of Pre-diabetes and Type 2 Diabetes with a focus on health behaviors, Intuitive/Mindful Eating for the purpose of lowering and managing blood glucose levels without a focus on weight and weight loss.

The approach centers around four major learning phases:

Learning Phase 1: Diabetes Demystified

Diabetes basics/ Introduction to Diabetes
Insulin
Defined
Production
Resistance
Load
Diabetes myth-busting
Target blood sugar levels. Symptoms of hypo/hyperglycemia
Introduction to focus on health without the focus on weight

Learning Phase 2: Demystifying Carbohydrates and Gentle Nutrition

Carbohydrates Defined
Consistent Carbohydrates
Insulin Resistance
Insulin Load
Plant based diets
Fiber
Protein and Fats
Diabetes Plate
How to make diet changes that are sustainable.

Learning Phase 3: Intuitive Eating/ Mindfulness and other health behaviors

Introduction to Intuitive Eating
Hunger/Fullness and blood sugar levels
Mindfulness
Restriction—>Binge cycle
Why? When? What? How? How Much? Where? Eating and Food Choices/Selection.
Other Heath-related behaviors affecting insulin resistance
Movement (Exercise)
Stress
Weight Cycling
Other

Learning Phase 4: How to stop emotional eating through a non-diet approach.

Understanding how emotional eating is a coping mechanism, not a lack of will-power.
Learning to use the hunger scale
Identifying your emotional eating triggers
Learning what you can do specifically instead of emotional eating
How to add joyful movement to your life.
Letting go of diet thoughts, counting calories and body shaming.

Here is the best part… We will never put you on a diet. We will never ask you to track calories or cut out certain foods. We will never shame you about your weight or your eating and exercise habits. And your diabetes will be managed safely!

Please do not avoid your prediabetes or diabetes diagnosis any longer. If you would like more information, or to share your personal story to learn how we can specifically help you, we offer FREE 15 minute discovery calls here.

You can manage your diagnosis and live a healthy life - without dieting or extreme weight loss , and without feeling bad about yourself. Let us show you how. Call our team at 904-737-3232 today!

Have you or your child been a victim of cyberbullying and/or body shaming?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:20:18 GMT

Has your son or daughter been teased at school because of their weight or appearance?

Were YOU teased as a child because of your weight or appearance, and the feelings of low self-esteem and shame are still with you months or years later?

Do you believe being bullied about weight has changed your child’s eating behavior and may be leading to a full-blown eating disorder?

Does the bullying you endured as a child affect your eating behavior and feelings about your body as an adult?

If you have a history of bullying and teasing about weight and your body, or your child is experiencing it at school, you are unfortunately part of a very large but mostly silent group . It seems that teasing about weight is the last acceptable form of discrimination we have, and it needs to stop!

Not only is bullying about weight and body image hurtful - it can lead to the development of deadly eating disorders.

In fact, an eating disorder treatment center in Chicago revealed that 30–50% of its teen patients used social media as a means of supporting their eating disorders.

A 2011 study conducted by the University of Haifa revealed that the more time teenage girls spent on social media websites like Facebook, the greater their risk was of developing eating disorders and negative body images.

Another study conducted by Florida State University in 2014 also reported a correlation between Facebook use and disordered eating behaviors.

Roughly 65 percent of people with eating disorders say bullying contributed to their condition, according to a report by Beat, an eating disorder charity in the United Kingdom. The survey also found that 49 percent were less than 10 years old when the bullying started and many stated that the effects had stayed with them into their 40s and 50s.

Teen boys and men are subjected to thoughtless opinions and hurtful comments made as well. Nearly 65 percent of teens boys reported having been body shamed . (bullying statistics.org)

In the privacy of my counseling office, I have been witness to hundreds of tearful accounts of childhood bullying that forever changed the course of the person’s life. So many of my clients tell me that EVEN ONE painful comment about weight triggered them to begin a severe cycle of restrictive eating, often accompanied by purging, use of diuretics or laxatives, and compulsive exercise in order to drop the offending weight.

And social media is often more than willing to give them support and help to engage in eating disorder behaviors , from posts that flaunt thigh gaps, six pack abs, and the like, to memes that shame individuals if they are not self-disciplined enough to keep the weight off. There are also plenty of social media sites that allow “fitness experts” to promote diets and exercise regimes that we would not inflict on our prison population, let alone our children.

With the click of a button, it is so much easier these days for people to be impulsive and cruel, and people are suffering. Many individuals feel free to post judgemental comments about people's’ appearances on dating sites. No wonder many people want to post pictures of themselves when they were thinner or lie about their age!

For so many people I have spoken to, they have lived two separate lives: the life before the bullying that was filled with confidence, peacefulness and often happiness, and the life after the bullying, rife with low self- esteem, extreme self-consciousness, panic, and a desire to lose weight and keep it off no matter what.

This change cast a dark shadow over most of their adult lives and caused years of eating disordered behavior and misery before they sought us out to get help.

If your child is being bullied about weight at school, it is absolutely heartbreaking as a parent. Most feel at a loss to know how to help or what to do. I have actually seen parents pull their children out of school because the teasing and attacks were so severe.

This is not right!

In order to change our culture of fat shaming, eating disorders, and bullying, we have to acknowledge it as a serious issue that needs to be faced and abolished.

Luckily, there are many actions kids and adults can take to stop body shaming and cyber bullying:

It is unfair to blame parents for not effectively controlling their children's’ social media use - it is a monumental task and they are ill equipped. It is better to demand better policing from the social media firms themselves. Luckily, it seems that many of these sites ARE taking notice and standing up to body shaming. Take a look at this fantastic open letter that Bumble sent to a body shamer after his awful behavior was reported to them http://thebeehive.bumble.com/bumbleblog/an-open-letter-to-michael . The site then banned him for life!
We must insist as parents that school administrators effectively stand up to all bullying with a mix of firm consequences, education, and a policy that rewards standing up for the weakest members. Many of the parents I’ve worked with whose children were bullied found that school administrators were dismissive.

Remember you and your child have rights as taxpayers. Go to the school board if your child’s school is unresponsive, write letters to your council person. Your child can help write these letters - it is important to externalize the blame towards the bullies and the system that allows them to act without consequence, not internalize the messages to harm your kid’s precious self-esteem.

Stand up for diversity in social media representations and report all body shaming to the site administrators . If they don’t respond, let your wallet do the talking and quit the site.
Teach your children that body shaming is unacceptable towards others AND towards themselves. Walk the walk and don’t shame YOUR OWN BODY as a parent. Many kids and adults believe fat comments and jokes are still acceptable as long as the person doesn’t hear them.

Let your kids know that negatively commenting on a person’s appearance is not OK ever, and part of growing up to be a good human being means extinguishing that kind of talk.

Reward your kids for standing up to bullies and body shamers, and providing support and encouragement to those who have been shamed.
If you are an adult who was bullied as a child about your body, this is a traumatic event that can affect many aspects of your life. You are far from alone. Don’t be afraid to seek help and support to understand the long-term effects and heal. Eating disorder symptoms are difficult to overcome, but poor body image and traumatic memories can be even more difficult to manage.

Many people not only suffer pain from the bullying that happened to them, but they also minimize the experiences and try to convince themselves that it wasn’t that bad. You must considered what happened to you a trauma that is worth tending to, even if it occurred years ago.

It often takes counseling from a compassionate therapist trained in trauma counseling to help overcome the painful legacy of bullying. It takes trust and work, but you can heal. Denying what happened to you will delay your recovery and can result in a lifetime of eating disorder symptoms such as restrictive dieting, emotional eating, compulsive exercise, and even excessive alcohol and drug use.

We know how to help if you or your child has been a victim of body shaming and bullying. If you’re not sure what happened to you was abuse, contact us for a free 15 minute consult and we will give you our honest and caring opinion.

Should we hide or throw food away from our overweight child?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:11:20 GMT

Has your child’s pediatrician warned you that your child is overweight and may experience health problems as a result?

Have you tried to present and teach your child about “healthy options”, but they still go towards sweets and “junk food”?

Is your child secretly hoarding food and bingeing in their room, then denying the behavior?

Are you worried about causing an eating disorder or self-esteem issues if you put your child on a diet, but you’re not sure what to do instead?

We hear it on the news all the time… we are experiencing an obesity “epidemic” in this country, especially among our children. Doctors warn that children are being diagnosed with early onset diabetes and resulting health problems. Resultantly, many of them blame the parents, and often times, the children, for lacking discipline and willpower.

Doctors are on the front lines of the weight wars in this country, and they are trained to help us live healthier, longer lives. I do not want to blame them, however, I think that their advice is misguided. It blames the victim, rather than the perpetrator - a society that is severely eating disordered.

Children are growing up in a world that increasingly gives mixed messages about food, weight and self-esteem. Television is teeming with indulgent cooking shows that reward taste and appearance of food rather than balance and nutritional content. They also focus on the speed of preparing these dishes as a stressful competition rather than enjoying the cooking experience as a social event that can be relaxing and restorative.

On the opposing end, we have a rising epidemic of people being obsessed with clean eating, Veganism, and compulsive exercise. I have never seen so many people coming into my office who are absolutely terrified to eat non-vegan foods or foods that are in any way processed. I’m not saying that if you are vegan you have an eating disorder, but for many people that is where an eating disorder starts.

Adults are having enough trouble navigating all of these mixed messages - how are we to expect children to do it effectively?

In his article “ Why You shouldn't put your child on a diet ” , Dr. Yoni Freedhoff warns that blaming kids and their parents for weight problems is short sighted and borders on abuse: “What’s different is the world our kids are growing up in. Today’s world is a Willy Wonkian dietary dystopia. It’s an environment filled with nutritional misinformation, predatory advertising, misguided crop subsidies and aisles and aisles of ultra-processed boxes masquerading as food.”

Then there are the painful social consequences of being a fat child.

In Findlay McKay’s recent article “Everything you know about obesity is wrong” , he reports: “And yet, despite weight being the number one reason children are bullied at school, America’s institutions of public health continue to pursue policies perfectly designed to inflame the cruelty. TV and billboard campaigns still use slogans like “Too much screen time, too much kid” and “Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid.” In an incendiary case of good intentions gone bad, about a dozen states now send children home with “BMI report cards,” an intervention unlikely to have any effect on their weight but almost certain to increase bullying from the people closest to them. ”

Most of my clients have been bullied at some point in their lives about their weight, including young children. Often, they feel criticized and pressured by their own parents, who mean well, but make the bingeing worse by hiding food, putting them on restrictive diets, and/or warning them about health consequences of excess weight, as well as social consequences of potentially not having friends or romantic partners.

But you can’t blame parents for doing what their doctors and society overwhelmingly tells them is the answer - put that kid on a diet. Unfortunately, diet’s don’t work. Hiding food doesn’t work. Shaming the child doesn’t work.

Dr. Freedhoff concurs: “I’ve seen too many patients in my adult office who trace their struggle with food and weight back to a well-intentioned doctor and his or her straight talk about their “not so little anymore bellies” — or to a well-intentioned Mom or Dad who took them at an incredibly young age to Weight Watchers. Coupling that with the clear-cut fact that studies on parental feeding behaviors in kids demonstrate that being more restrictive backfires and leads to further dietary disinhibition and weight struggles (Scaglioni, 2011), I can’t in any good conscience recommend that children be placed on diets.”

I understand the idea that in order to keep your child (or yourself!) from overeating, you should remove the temptation. This thinking makes sense - how can you overeat if the food is not available to you? Although it seems logical on the surface, hiding food from your child will only make the bingeing worse. It can also lead to food hoarding and eating in secret.

Why?

When you withhold food from yourself (i.e. when on a diet), or from your child, you are creating a deprivation situation that will make your child think about and desire the food more. This is exactly why diets do not work. 95% of people who lose weight on a diet will regain the weight (and often MORE weight) within five years.

The children I work with whose parents keep what they believe is "unhealthy" food out of the house almost always end up buying those foods outside of the home, bingeing on them at their friends' homes, and/or hoarding food in their rooms and eating secretly.

So what is the answer?

It is better to allow all kinds of food in your house, and not label food as healthy or unhealthy. When your child realizes they can eat that food whenever they would like and it is not forbidden, it usually reduces the bingeing behavior.

Educate yourself about weight and health. Often it is better to be fit and fat rather than thin and sedentary. Although fat adults and children can experience health problems, many of them do not. If you can remove the fear about fatness in your own mind, your child will feel you relax and benefit.

Dr. Freedhoff recommends that parents model the behaviors they want to see in their children, and that should not include dieting, compulsive exercise or eating meals on the run. Cooking together, exercising for fun, mental health and overall fitness and NOT weight loss should be key. Less screen time and more time outside.

I would add the importance of educating yourselves and your children about fat stigma and the importance of ending it. Let them know people come in all different shapes and sizes. It is genetic and not a result of laziness or lack of willpower.

Work on your own internalized prejudice about fatness, and work to change it within yourself. Teach your kids to be savvy media critics. Show them how models are photoshopped regularly, how there is a lack of body size diversity on television and in advertising, and how corporations flood our supermarkets with cheap and nutritionally deficient foods.

This is a great first step, but families can also benefit from counseling from a nutritionist and a therapist to help them learn WHY they emotionally eat and what to do instead. It can also help kids heal from bullying and learn to be empowered about their bodies.

Have you relapsed and feel too ashamed to get help?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:03:21 GMT

Have you been in recovery from an eating disorder and symptom free for months or years, and your symptoms have suddenly returned?

Are you feeling in despair because you recovered from anorexia nervosa when you were younger, but now find you are purging or emotionally overeating - that your eating disorder symptoms have changed over time?

Did you overcome emotional eating in months or years past, only to find that now you are obsessed with dieting and exercise to the point you can think of little else?

Many people who call The Body Image Counseling Center for help have suffered a relapse. In other words, they have resumed compulsive dieting, purging, obsessive exercise routines, or emotional eating and weight gain, sometimes after years of being symptom free.

You can imagine how discouraging and upsetting this could be to a person who may have spent months or years in treatment when they were younger to work through their issues. It can take an enormous amount of trust, emotionally energy, financial commitment and time to tame eating disorder symptoms.

Individuals who relapse can feel like failures. They can feel hopeless. They may feel like giving up.

If you have relapsed in your eating disorder, you are not weak or a failure!

It is common, and many of the reasons have little to do with your character and value as a person.

Most important, you can get over a relapse, and often much faster than you did the first time you sought help for you eating disorder.

The causes of relapse are complex, and vary with each individual.

Eating Disorder Hope reports: “ There are many factors that contribute to high relapse rates. The University of Toronto study determined that having the binge-purge type of anorexia nervosa and/or a childhood history of physical abuse were two factors that made patients more likely to relapse following discharge from treatment. Another top struggle for patients in the study was maintaining the motivation to recover.”

It seems that the type of eating disorder a person experiences also influences the chances you will relapse.

Although much less is known or has been studied about relapse rates for bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, JAMA reports one study found that about a third of study participants with bulimia relapsed within 5 years, and binge eaters had the highest recovery success rate at 82% after 5 years.

Research also has discovered that your genetics can have much more to do with your developing an eating disorder than other factors.

Can you fight your genetics? It’s not easy, and it’s not your fault. Researchers are finding that your likelihood to develop an eating disorder may be as immutable as having brown hair or blue eyes.

The National Institute of Health reports: “Eating disorder symptoms themselves also appear to be moderately heritable. Twin studies of binge eating, self-induced vomiting, and dietary restraint suggest that these behaviors are roughly 46 to 72 percent heritable. Likewise, pathological attitudes such as body dissatisfaction, eating and weight concerns, and weight preoccupation, show heritabilities of roughly 32 to 72 percent. Taken together, findings suggest a significant genetic component to AN and BN as well as the attitudes and behaviors that contribute to and correlate with clinical eating pathology.”

I believe the worst enemy to eating disorder recovery is shame and self-blame. As a therapist, I know it is my number one goal to help the client remove feelings of shame and negative self-talk before they can begin the other steps towards recovery. If I give them the tools to recover (and there are many tools that work quickly to alleviate symptoms), clients will not use them consistently or effectively enough to relieve their symptoms if feelings of failure dominate their mind.

Additionally, remember that your ED symptoms are actually deep seated coping mechanisms that are almost primal in nature. If you don’t handle stress well at certain times of your life, your symptoms may “kick in” to remind you it’s time to ask for help and resume self-care.

Your symptoms ARE NOT signs of failure and weakness, and they are not out of your control, even though it may feel that way when you’ve relapsed.

Once you change your viewpoint and realize your symptoms are actually trying to help you at their root (for example, the calming effect and release that comes in the moment of bingeing and purging, or the feelings of control you experience when you restrict your food or compulsively exercise), it becomes much easier to seek support and help, substitute healthier ways to feel soothed and in control, and believe you can get better.

People with eating disorders who have trouble getting better often believe they need to use brute willpower and deprivation to overcome a relapse. Just a few days ago I received a phone call from a new client who told me she has been placing a penny in a jar every time she goes one day without purging, and she lots of pennies in the jar.

However, one day she purged and felt like a total failure, that all of those days purge-free were a waste. I told her that although her attempt to stop her symptoms seemed logical and responsible, counting the days she didn’t purge was actually setting her up for eventual relapse!

Why?

Because purging, emotional eating, compulsive exercising and food restriction are ways your body tries to comfort you under times of extreme emotional stress.

It’s like putting yourself right in the middle of a tiger’s cage at the zoo without any way to defend yourself. The eating disorder behaviors are like the cage that protects you from the tiger. If you remove the cage before you have other ways to deal with the tiger (the stress), you don’t have a chance. You’re going to put that cage back around the tiger so you don’t become his breakfast!

The key to getting over a relapse is not to “white-knuckle it” to keep your symptoms at bay.

What DOES help is figuring out what events, feelings or circumstances triggered your body to reach for your symptoms again for comfort. Once you get support and help to handle the stressful feelings and events, your symptoms will get better.

Reducing stress is not always such an easy proposition. For example, if you’re going through a divorce, you’ve lost your job, or you’ve just found out your kid is on drugs.

A warm bath and a good cry just isn’t going to do it!

That’s why it is so important to seek professional help and support as soon as you can after you relapse, and without shame! If your eating disorder symptoms have returned and you don’t know why, don’t be afraid to ask for help from a professional to help you figure it out so you can get better once again!

How do I convince my adult child to get treatment for an eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:56:39 GMT

Every month I receive at least one heart-breaking phone call from a parent about an adult child who refuses to seek treatment for an eating disorder. The parents are often besides themselves. Their child is either starving and approaching a low weight that is life-threatening, engaging in binge-purge behaviors, compulsively over-exercising or emotionally overeating and secretly hoarding food.

Each of these eating disordered behaviors are worrisome to parents, especially when your child is over 18 years old, financially independent, and in denial about the severity (or even the existence!) of their eating disorder symptoms.

On top of that, the adult child is typically very high functioning in other areas : they are getting good grades in college and involved in many extracurricular activities, they are married and taking care of their own young families, and/or they are holding down a successful job and are financially independent. In this case the parents lack financial leverage over their child to encourage getting help.

The opposite scenario is also sometimes true. I have worked with many families who have their adult child living at home because they have had to drop out of college, a job or a relationship because the eating disorder symptoms caught up to them. Yet, they still refuse treatment. These parents do not want to pose an ultimatum to either go for treatment or live elsewhere (you don’t want your ill child to be sick AND homeless!), but are at a loss about how to force the issue.

In almost all of these cases the parents are extremely caring and willing to go to enormous emotional, physical and financial lengths to help their child recover - which makes it all the more devastating when the child refuses these offers of help.

If you are a parent of an adult child who has an eating disorder and is refusing help, here are some ideas that have worked for many of the parents I have helped over the years:

If your adult child is dependent on you financially and has refused to seek treatment, it can be difficult, but quite effective, to withhold financial support for college, housing, a car, etc, until they seek meaningful recovery. When presenting this “ultimatum”, you make it clear that as their parent, you are not their friend or buddy, but responsible for their health and safety, their overall well-being.

A sample script could be: “Dad and I love you very much, and it’s our job to make sure you are safe and healthy, even if you get angry at us for trying. We believe the eating disorder is putting your life in danger, so we cannot continue to pay for college (a car, housing) until you see your doctor, a therapist and a nutritionist. As soon as your doctor gives the OK, we will resume our financial support. We want you to be successful and do everything you want to do in life, but in a healthy body and mind”.

If, on the other hand, your child is financially independent and you cannot use your financial support as leverage, begin by noting the observable changes you have seen in your child that worry you (i.e. “I've noticed that you have lost a lot of weight over the last six months, and you told me you lost your period.” Or “Dad and I see you disappearing to the bathroom after meals, and we notice you have been very worried about gaining weight”).

Have the name of several eating disorder specialists ready , and then tell them you are willing to go with them to a first appointment. Encourage them to at least give it a try and see if they feel connected. A good therapist is often able to convince a reluctant client to continue with sessions.

Become as educated as you can about the causes of eating disorders and the best ways to talk to your adult child about them . Many times parents use scare tactics, remove food from the house, or threaten to remove all financial support in a way that frightens the child rather than with understanding and calm. Often this type of approach is made out of desperation and a lack of education about the causes of the eating disorder (ie it is not your adult child’s fault or your fault - if they could stop the behavior they would, but they need professional help to do it)

Consider seeking parent coaching before you try to convince your adult child . A qualified therapist can listen to your worries and fears, reassure you, provide support and help you practice a way to talk to them that is more likely to achieve results. There are also several online support groups for parents of adult children with eating disorders that can provide priceless advice and encouragement.
Ask yourselves honestly as parents, is your fear and worry causing you to push your child too much, to the point he or she may be tuning out your well-meaning concerns? In a post from the psychcentral.com blog on this subject, Dr. Ashley Solomon writes: “If your (adult child) isn’t interested in having you involved, it could be best to give her space. As a parent of an adult child, it can be hard to step back when you see her struggling. That doesn’t mean that you won’t continue to love her and show her encouragement. Keep letting her know that you are available to listen and to support her.”

Sometimes giving your child some space without being rejecting can actually turn things around.

If your adult child is living at home with you but refusing treatment, try to pose the question about what is holding them back and REALLY listen to their response without getting frightened or defensive . When you let your child speak freely without interrupting, you may find that he or she is more open to treatment than you thought, but a certain solvable issue is holding them back.

For example, they may worry about burdening you financially with the cost of their treatment, or they may have tried working with a therapist they did not connect with and are reluctant to try another one, or they may falsely believe they just have to live with the eating disorder and can never truly recover so why try?

I often find that parents are often so terrified about their child’s eating disorder, they over promise about what they can do to help and become resentful in the process. This resentment is unconsciously (or sometimes consciously) communicated to the adult child, who fights back or retreats from the parent.

For example, it is unwise for parents to overextend themselves financially to secure treatment for an adult child - especially if they can’t help but let the child know how “expensive” the treatment is. Let your child know honestly what you can and cannot afford, and then explore the treatment options together within those limits.

Similarly, some parents are able to handle a Maudsley type approach where they sit with the adult child for every meal and snack to provide calm encouragement to eat and not purge. But some parents cannot handle that stressful role, and that is not a failure on their part. It takes enormous patience, support, and sometimes physical and financial sacrifice to use this type of treatment approach, and it’s better to be honest with your child if it is not the best fit for you.

It may feel hopeless when you have an adult child who refuses help when you know they’re really in trouble. Please don’t despair. If you have run into dead ends trying to get through to your son or daughter, it may be time to ask for a fresh set of eyes to come up with solutions you may not have considered. Remember that we provide Emergency Parent Coaching to parents all over the country to do just that!

Why are eating disorders skyrocketing among midlife men and women?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:48:00 GMT

I have been an eating disorders and body image therapist for over twenty years, and have noticed an alarming trend.

Eating and body image disorders are skyrocketing among midlife women and men.

Why? Divorce. Money worries. Caring for children and aging parents at the same time. Losing a job. Health problems. Feeling alone. Seeking a purpose. All of these stressors can either trigger an eating disorder for the first time, or cause relapse even if a person has been symptom free for years.

Eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating and orthorexia (an obsession with “clean eating”) are not just a teenage problem. Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that 13 percent of American women 50 or older experience symptoms of an eating disorder; 60 percent report that their concerns about weight and shape negatively affect their lives; and 70 percent are trying to lose weight.

Since 34.4% of the U.S. population is now made up of women and men over age 45, you can see that eating disorders in mid-life are likely to become more prevalent as our population gets older.

What factors trigger poor body image and eating problems in mid-life?

Unfortunately, the media and advertising agencies from the fashion, diet and beauty industries are often the culprits. Older adults hold much of our nation’s wealth, and that fact isn’t lost on advertisers, who target their insecurities in order to guarantee sales.

I always say that advertisers start preying on us when we are young because we’re not thin, pretty or wealthy enough, and then they try to finish us off as we get older by telling us we are too grey, wrinkled, fat and/or bald. These are universal and normal signs of aging that are stigmatized by corporations for their own economic gain.

As a result of their shaming advertisements, midlife men and women are buying more and more beauty products and procedures (often clinically unproven and expensive) to “cure” these problems. And of course, you can never look too youthful or too thin, so it can become a never ending cycle of anxiety, spending and dieting.

Stressful life events are often triggers for midlife eating disorders, and these stressors can be abundant, including divorce, lacking adequate savings for retirement, caring for aging parents and your own children, going through menopause for women, loss of a job, and/or dealing with increased illness.

In her book Prime Time, Jane Fonda describes the stresses of midlife: “...especially between the mid-forties and the mid-fifties, many (people) feel they’re losing control of life and have nothing to hold on to. I certainly felt this way. I call it the challenge of in-betweenness, and it’s scary.”

She is also very open about her lifelong struggle with eating disorders that lasted off and on throughout middle age: “Like many girls, I first began to experience anxiety and depression during adolescence. That is also when my twenty-year-long battle with anorexia and bulimia began. As I know all to personally, this doesn’t end with adolescence but is a pattern of disembodiment that, unless consciously broken, can make intimate relationships nigh impossible”.

As we get older, we less able to fully recover from the devastating effects of eating disorders (starving, purging, compulsive exercise and body hatred), making them even more dangerous to older adults.

More troubling, eating disordered thinking and behaviors can be masked by our society’s obsession with fitness, clean eating, dieting and anti-aging. For example, you may get compliments for going on a “divorce diet” or starting a compulsive weight lifting routine, even if you hate your body and feel fat inside, restrict your food, or use laxatives to drop weight.

Middle-aged eating disorders and eating disordered thinking isn’t just harmful to that person - it’s harmful to their children as well. In one study, a researcher asked 500 8-year-old children questions about their mother’s self-image. The youngsters whose mothers were constantly dieting tended to restrain their own eating and felt encouraged to be thin themselves, although their body dissatisfaction levels were normal. The influence of a dieting mother was greater on daughters than sons.

For this reason it is all the more important to not give up on seeking recovery if you are an older person with an eating disorder. If you can’t justify doing it for yourself, do it for your children so they are shielded from developing the same problem.

Here are some tips on what to do if you think an older adult in your life has an eating or body image disorder:

Don’t attack out of worry; focus on behaviors and changes that are observable (i.e. severe weight loss, the bill for expensive anti-aging products, lots of comments on being ugly, old or feeling fat)

Have resources for help in hand before you talk to them, including a list of therapists and nutritionists who are eating disorder specialists

Talk to them more than once if you have to– don’t go into denial with your loved one.
Consider bringing their friends and other older members of the family in on the conversation.

If you are an older adult and you fear you have an eating disorder, there are some advantages age can afford you. Usually by the time people in their 40s, 50s and beyond come in to see us for help, they are worn out from dealing with the symptoms and low self-esteem surrounding the eating disorder, and are more ready to follow treatment recommendations than they may have been as teenagers.

For that reason, it is definitely not too late to get better, even if you have been binging, purging, restricting and/or emotionally eating for most of your life. Many people do achieve full recovery once they find a qualified eating disorder treatment team, and commit to following the advice and treatment they provide.

Here are 4 MORE Ways Joyful Movement Can Easily Get You Fit for Life...

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:39:47 GMT

ou may have read this week about Seattle Mariners catcher Mike Marjama coming out about a lifetime struggle with an eating disorder that included severe exercise bulimia. As a follow up to my last blog post on the importance of joyful movement, I want to list some of the signs of exercise purging, plus three more ways to incorporate joyful movement into your life as a part of eating disorder recovery.

Signs of exercise bulimia can be confused with our culture’s unhealthy obsession with getting ripped and fit as a sign of health. If you or someone you love is exhibiting these behaviors, it’s time to get help:

Feeling debilitating fear when you are still or at rest
Feeling extreme guilt if you miss a workout
Refusing to eat if you can’t exercise to “burn off” the calories
Conversely, exercising excessively when you believe you’ve eaten too much
Exercising even if you are sick, in pain, or have an injury.
Giving up other priorities in order to exercise, such as work, going to class, having fun with friends.

Joyful movement is a powerful antidote to exercise bulimia when combined with therapy, nutrition counseling and sometimes medication. Here are three more reasons you should exercise rather than for weight loss and burning calories:

1 Exercise can cheer you up

It’s important to think of exercise as a depression and anxiety fighter and a brain energizer, rather than a weight control method.

Another tip to help you keep up with healthy exercise is to focus on exercise as a way to lift mood and ward off anxiety and depression – then you will be much more likely to stay active your entire life.

Remember that exercise increases endorphins, which are a feel-good chemical for your brain. These are so much better goals to think about than losing weight and having the perfect body!

It’s not that I’m anti-medicine for mental health issues; I really think that medicine has its place, especially to help chronic depression or anxiety. But I also believe in using as many natural methods to fight anxiety and depression as you can , before you try medicine.

Exercise is by far the number one way, if you talk to doctors, to lift depression and anxiety, because it floods the body with endorphins. That’s very similar to what psych medicine does, and exercise can do that naturally.

This is another great reason to keep exercising throughout your life besides exercising for weight loss.

5: Athletes need more nutrition

If you’re an athlete, remember you need more calories if you’re playing a sport. This sounds like a no-brainer, right? This may seem obvious, but a lot of athletes actually under eat . I counsel athletes every year that are practicing hours and hours every day and they’re restricting their eating.

Why?

Many athletes are perfectionists and are not fully educated about their nutritional needs , even by their own coaches! They workout with the team hours and hours every day, often to keep a scholarship that they’re receiving, so they also have to keep up with classes. This kind of schedule increases stress and they can end up trying to cope with it by restricting, bingeing and purging, or compulsively exercising.

The stress can also create anxiety which curbs appetite. As a result, athletes can under eat, even though their bodies need more calories in order to perform well.

Remember you’re also burning calories when you use your brain . We burn a certain amount of calories just sitting and thinking. In fact sometimes I see a lot of patients during the day and I haven’t gotten up and done a lot of exercise, and I’m still ravenous because I’m thinking a lot.

You still need to eat even if you’re not exercising because you’re still burning calories just by thinking and existing!

You also want to watch out for compulsive exercise - it’s a form of purging. Athletes are more likely to develop eating disorders than the average person.

Consider having a nutrition coach as well as your regular trainer , who will make sure you get enough nutrients to feed your sport and increase performance in a healthy way.

Step 6: Move with friends

Moving with friends can be a motivator to keep exercise and joyful movement in your life.

Consider joining a team, or having an exercise partner, but make sure you’re doing something you both find fun .

Sometimes people get together to exercise because they feel they need to lose weight.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about doing something entertaining so the time just flies by because you’re having so much fun.

There can also be a lot of positive social effects to exercising with friends. Many studies show if you exercise with someone else you’re more likely to keep it up, and be happier.

At the same time, you want to try not to compare yourself to others. Make a pact with your exercise buddies to ban diet and weight talk from your time together.

This can be a real struggle.

If you have spent any time in a men’s or women’s locker room, you know you constantly hear people talking about how they have to go on a diet or how “fat” they feel.

Diet talk is all over the place - at the water cooler at work, in the locker room.

How do you deal with diet and weight talk around you? It’s not easy, because these may be people you really love, that you really want to spend time with, but they’re obsessed with food and weight and body image. It’s an enormous problem in our culture.

Here’s you can do to make a change .

First, you can tell your friends, “Hey, let’s make an agreement not to talk about diets together or about weight, because it just makes us feel bad. Let’s talk about other things that are meaningful to us”.

You can also say, “You’re beautiful just the way you are. I don’t want to hear you talking badly about yourself.”

The very least you can do is show them how you feel by not talking about diet and exercise , by excusing yourself politely from the conversation and walking away.

Over time people will know honestly not to talk that way in front of you. It takes time, but you will feel relief that you’re not around that kind of damaging talk.

Step 7: Stick with your good habits

Our last step towards a practice of joyful movement is to envision the practice of intuitive eating and joyful movement as a lifestyle choice that is a reflection of respect and love for yourself, and a commitment to lifetime happiness.

Do you want to go through life hating your body and counting calories and being in an exercise and weight loss prison?

I’ll venture to answer no for you; I’m almost positive you want to go through life feeling peaceful and happy in your body.

And you don’t want to live with a life threatening eating disorder like anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or orthorexia!

If you start to work on some of the practices I’ve mentioned here, you are going to end up in a very good place.

Ongoing acts of self-care are just as important as learning how to be responsible with money, being a caring human being, and being good at your job. Learning to love yourself and your body, and take care of it well for your whole life is as essential as working and providing.

And it’s an essential powerhouse in eating disorder recovery!

I hope that the tips I’ve been sharing with you will help you get there.

Stop using food and exercise as a series of painful quick fixes through dieting and forced exercise; these methods don’t work in the long term anyway and will make you sad. Just like saving pennies in a piggy bank every day, you may not see the effects of positive self-talk, joyful movement, and intuitive eating right away, but over a lifetime you’ll build a wealth of happiness, peace and high self-esteem.

You can do it!

Remember these tips for keeping up joyful movement and being fit for life:

Exercise for fun, not for weight loss.
Find activities that mirror ways you moved as a kid.
Move to feel good, not to look good.
Use exercise as a depression fighter and an anxiety reducer.
If you’re an athlete, remember you need more food than a non-athlete.
Move with friends to keep the fun going.
Start to think of intuitive eating and joyful movement as a lifestyle choice.
If you think you may have an eating or body image problem, get help from a professional!

3 Ways Joyful Movement Can Easily Get You Fit for Life... and Help You Recover from an Eating Disorder

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:34:27 GMT

Do you exercise with the primary goal of losing weight and burning calories?

Do you feel guilty, lazy and like a failure if you miss a workout?

Or do you dread exercise because you don’t like it or feel forced to do it?

Do you feel like you have to exercise more if you eat “too much”?

I may sound like a revolutionary or a trouble maker when I say what I’m about to say.

Some people are just not going to like it.

Some fitness trainers, weight loss “experts”, doctors, and coaches may get furious hearing my advice... and some (I know) will cheer for me.

I hope this advice will free you from diet, exercise and weight loss prison forever. Well, here it is...

Never exercise with weight loss or calorie burning as a goal and I mean never with a capital N. If you haven’t already, make the switch from seeing exercise as a “necessary evil” to a desire to put joyful movement into your life every day.

What is joyful movement? Our bodies are meant to move. We’re not meant to sit all day and be still. We’re meant to move, but we’re not meant to hurt when we move. We’re supposed to have fun when moving our bodies and enjoy them.

But the media and our culture (including, unfortunately, the medical and fitness communities) has brainwashed us to dread exercise and see it as a chore. This actually results in us exercising less!

Here are some powerful tips for beginning and maintaining a practice of joyful movement that will NEVER involve your body hurting, making anything “burn” or forcing yourself to move in a way you detest or dread.

1 Exercise for the fun of it

Most people force themselves do an extreme workout program they see on TV or a “boot camp” of some sort which promises the result of having a perfect body.

Before some of you write me and tell me “I love fitness boot camp!” I do acknowledge that some people do truly enjoy these types of exercise.

However, many people hate them and cannot sustain that type of exercise program over the long term. If you change your outlook to joyful movement you will actually want to exercise and move your body.

Change your exercise outlook. If you stop exercising for weight loss or for burning calories, or to “get ripped”, you’ll start to think about it for fun and feeling good in your body. Then you’re going to exercise more, and be fit for life, I promise.

Exercise should never hurt—so go discover exercise that “doesn’t feel like exercise”.

What does this mean?

Be creative and come up with fun ways to move your body. For example, do you know that The American Heart Association actually has bathing a dog on their approved list of exercises?

2 Be a kid again

Here are some tips to figure out what types of joyful movement will work for you. First, think about how you liked to move when you were a little kid. Many of these activities can be recreated as adults, or modified for an adult.

For example, if you liked to climb trees when you were a kid, there’s lots of stuff you can do up in the trees, you can go zip lining, you can still climb trees, or you can go rock climbing.

If you liked to dig in the dirt when you were a kid, you can garden - gardening is actually also on the approved exercise list from the American Heart Association.

What about joining a community garden so you can also make friends while you’re exercising?

If you liked to bike ride when you were a kid, you can do road biking.

If you liked to roller skate—I’m giving myself away about when I was growing up in the eighties—the big exercise was going roller skating. To tell the truth, we never considered that we were exercising; we went there to get asked by boys to skate during the slow songs!

We were having fun and being kids, but we were also exercising. If you liked roller skating as a kid you can longboard or rollerblade as an adult.

Another tip is to make a list of physical activities that you would at least like to try and give them a shot. College is a great place to do this. When I went to college I took a class called Aerobic Martial arts. I’ll never forget it. It was just what it sounds like. We danced around and did karate chops and I just remember laughing the whole time and having a lot of fun.

That’s the kind of feeling you want to get. Don’t take exercise so seriously! Have fun. Find exercise that doesn’t feel like exercise.

Also, don’t be afraid to change it up and put different types of activity into your life. Varying your movement is actually healthier for you and keeps you from getting bored.

If you feel you need to jump on a treadmill every day, you’re not going to stick with it. But if you’re bowling one day, and then you’re going on a hike the next day or you’re playing lacrosse another day, you’re going to keep up with exercise more.

You also don’t need to master every new form of exercise. Remember the goal is to have fun, not to be the champion. If mastering your activity eventually becomes part of having fun that’s fine, but don’t fall prey to the need to be perfect with every new activity you sample.

I’ll remind you that people who are prone to eating disorders tend to be perfectionists.

If they expect to be perfect with every new exercise activity, they end up giving up if they don’t do well the first few times.

So try to look at exercise for fun, not to be perfect, and also remember the more non-traditional ways that you might be moving.

You may already be exercising a lot by walking or biking to class or work. If you’re on a campus facility and you’re walking to class, you’re already doing a lot of the exercise you need!

Step 3: Move to feel good not to look good

When you practice joyful movement, try to concentrate on how your body feels, not how it looks. Again I know I talk about this a lot, but I’m trying to deprogram you from all the advertising that we’re bombarded with day in and day out, from the moment we’re little until the day we die.

Advertisers have conditioned us to focus on exercising for the sole purpose to create a perfect looking body, rather than a body that feels happy and energized.

It’s a model built on low self-esteem and shame, telling you that if you don’t look perfect then you’re a failure. And, luckily, THEY have the answer with their compulsive exercise system or their program.

Let’s get out of that shaming model and turn towards a pleasure filled, joyful model.

A perfect body is either unattainable or requires ongoing compulsive exercise and food restriction to achieve and maintain.

Think for a moment about all of those compulsive exercising programs that you see on TV. I don’t want to say the names, but you know which ones I’m talking about (i.e. maybe it takes you ninety days to get that body – wink, wink).

If you actually follow the “program” and achieve that body, then what are you going to do? Continue it for your whole life until you’re eighty or ninety years old? It’s unsustainable in a healthy way over a lifetime …but they don’t talk about that part.

Keep up activities that you will want to participate in for your entire life. Getting on the exercise perfection treadmill only leads to low self-esteem, and potentially physical harm and eating disorders such as anorexia, bulimia, compulsive bingeing and orthorexia.

Too much exercise can hurt you, so don’t try to be perfect and have a perfect body.

Move to feel good!

Just as you need to listen to your body about the food it needs to intuitively eat, you also need to learn to listen to your body’s signals about exercise.

Many people push themselves to exercise when they are in pain. When they’re aching from the last workout, they push themselves through it and that’s unhealthy. You can get injured.

It’s sad for me to see athletes who push themselves to keep playing or performing when their bodies were telling them to stop (because they were tired or in pain).

These athletes end up having worse injuries and taking a leave of absence from their sport, or not even being able to play ever again.

Your body will tell you what it needs and sometimes it needs to rest, not to move.

I hope this revolutionary advice will make you cheer! If you need more help getting out of Diet Land and Exercise Prison, we can always help you find the key, just ask.

Are you sick and tired of dieting?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:23:50 GMT

Have you been dieting for years and it never pays off?

Do you try and try again with various diets and still end up the exact same as before or worse?

Is constant dieting making you feel worse and hopeless about your life?

Do you feel like your self-esteem hinges upon reaching a certain number on a scale?

Like most people, you may go on a diet for a number of reasons:

You are convinced (usually by the diet industry and beauty magazines) that going on a certain diet will be beneficial for your life , especially in terms of physical health (your weight, muscle-mass, and skin) or your mental health (your levels of depression or anxiety, and overall joy), and especially to make you more beautiful, handsome and/or desirable. These messages blind you to the impossible and often dangerous requirements of the diet.
You believe a temporary eating routine will lead to permanent effects – which is an overly simplified concept perpetuated by the billion dollar diet and weight loss industry. For instance, a diet program on its surface promises that if you eat exactly the way they tell you to eat, you’ll end up being the version of yourself that they convince you that you should desire to be.

This makes you fixate more on the summit than the climb!

You are convinced that hard work and dedication to follow a strict diet and exercise plan is the real solution – rather than a much easier solution that you were born with that doesn’t require diet deprivation and punishment , intuitive eating (more on that below!).

You are pressured from popular culture and marketers, and sometimes family and friends, about the latest dieting trends that include certain foods and supplements. Then celebrities and newscasters spread this false information all over media in order to either sell a product or generate an easy “solution” that vulnerable people would tune into, especially children and teenagers.
You have been shamed by the media and sometimes friends and family and even your own doctor, about your body and weight, so you’d be willing to try anything to feel better about it . Trying a completely new routine or “solution” gives a temporary but powerful sense of hope that is unfortunately short lived.

The truth is diets simply do not work.

According to the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, “ 95% of diets fail and most will regain their lost weight in 1-5 years .” Diets are unrealistic solutions that will cause you to force yourself abstain from certain foods to the point of complete exhaustion and ultimate departure from the diet.

In other words, NO ONE can succeed on a diet long-term . There is not something wrong with you personally because you have gone on and off diets your whole life. This is the case for most people – diets set you up to fail.

Eating the same types of food every single day will make you go insane - you are literally trying many different diets over and over again and expecting different results. Why get caught up in pursuing a glorified version of yourself to the point where you’ll slave over a system that won’t even guarantee long-term benefits?

What usually happens is that people quit diets when they get to a certain body type with which they are happy. You got what you wanted in the first place, so you can finally stop that draining process.

Except when you do quit the diet, you will most likely “fall back” to your original state or worse because your body will crave the foods it was missing, and your body will biologically want to load up on foods it craves. You can’t fight your body and nature – better to listen and work WITH your body!

The problem is that while diets can show short-term noticeable results, it is way too demanding and stressful for it to be a long-term consistent lifestyle – for EVERYONE, not just you!

On top of that, most diets lead to poor nutrition , which “can contribute to stress, tiredness and capacity to work, and over time, it can contribute to the risk of developing some illnesses and other health problems” (SA Health).

You are not a failure - it is completely normal to collapse under the pressures of a diet - it shows that you are a human being. We are omnivores and are meant to eat a variety of different foods ranging from fruits and vegetables to dairy and grains. Blocking out one or two food groups entirely will weaken your body.

You may be wondering now what you can do instead. Here are some healthier solutions.

Problems with food and weight often stem from emotional eating . You may be eating too much food in one sitting, unable to control when to stop and knowing how much is too much. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, it is important to “pay attention to hunger and fullness cues before, during, and after meals.”

It is critical to consistently listen to what your stomach is telling you as you eat - and to develop the ability and the courage to stop eating a meal when your stomach sends those cues.

You can always save food for a later time, and you can always eat again when hunger arises.

Contrary to what certain diets tell you, all foods are important to maintain a healthy lifestyle - an important footnote to tack onto that, though, is that too much or too little of one food group could bear negative effects.

By now, you’ve probably heard the saying “everything in moderation,” but no saying could be truer in this case. The best diet you can have is a balanced diet combined with the practice of intuitive eating.

If you’re not able or confident enough to know what a “moderate” amount of a certain food group is, a great place to start is with the book “ Intuitive Eating ” or my book “ 5 Simple Steps To Be Eating Disorder Free ”.

Also, please don’t be so hard on your body size or yourself in general. Diet and beauty product companies want you to feel inadequate and insecure about yourself in order for you to buy their products , but it’s essential to learn to accept, love and care for the body you were born with. Realize that the bodies that the media celebrates are most often fake bodies that have been photo shopped and starved.

If you need more help, the therapists and dietitians at The Body Image Counseling Center are intuitive eating specialists and we can help you reconnect to your body and its natural hunger cues, WITHOUT dieting. Please throw out your scale, put down the step counters and calorie counters and call us to learn how be free from diets and body hatred!

Is your child addicted to video games?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:08:26 GMT

Is your child or teen constantly on the computer or playing video games?

Is he uninvolved in any other activities in his free time?

Is gaming affecting his attitude and overall well-being?

Has your son or daughter become violent with you rather than hand over an electronic device?

Just recently, gaming addiction was labeled as an actual disorder by the World Health Organization , which is described “as a pattern of gaming behavior (‘digital-gaming’ or ‘video-gaming’) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences,” (WHO).

I’m hearing from an increasing number of parents who feel it is an all-out battle to get their child to put down the mouse or the controller – and they are losing the war . Addiction or not, this is a critical problem that needs to be addressed.

According to Iowa State University, “8.5 percent of Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 (that's roughly 3 million people) are addicted to video games.” A study by Pediatrics found that 3,034 children and teenagers had an average length of time of 20 hours per week spent playing video games!

Here are some signs that your child may be using online gaming as an unhealthy coping mechanism:

1) Does s/he have few interests other than video games?

If gaming seems to be all that your child is doing during their free time, it may be safe to assume that they aren’t involving themselves in a variety of activities. It is important to have a balance of activities during free time. It is vital learn new skills or have more experiences, and video games are only one avenue.

2) Are his or her grades suffering because of excessive video game playing?

If your child is constantly redirecting all their focus towards gaming, they may not be giving their attention and time to more important matters such as schoolwork. Without balancing work and play, their grades could suffer for it.

3) Does s/he get angry or even violent when you try to cut down the time s/he plays video games?

Playing games could be a major source of comfort for your child, making it extremely difficult for them to stop playing when told. Just like any addiction, taking the stimulus away could cause various negative reactions such as expressing anger and even becoming violent.

Sadly, I have heard from more than one exasperated parent that their child or teen became violent when they tried to remove an electronic device from their hand or room.

4) Does s/he play for more than a few hours at a time?

The old saying is “everything in moderation,” so if your child is playing video games for an extensive period of time every day, they may not be able to stop at a certain point. This is a time in life where it is essential to learn how to self-soothe in a variety of healthy ways. If you’re playing video games when you’re depressed or anxious, it’s just like smoking a cigarette – you’re not learning how to calm down in a more healthy way.

What can parents do:

1) Try not to panic - very few people actually meet the criterion for gaming addiction, especially kids!

Most of the time, people play a lot of games just to have a good time and not because they are subconsciously drawn to it at all times. It’s likely your child is not clinically addicted, although, you should still look for signs of any compulsive behaviors.

2) Try to look at video games from your child’s point of view - they can be fun, creative and even social.

From an outsider’s (i.e. a parent’s) perspective, video games can be seen as entirely negative for a child, but gaming can be a fun and entertaining activity. It can even help your child connect with others more easily and become better problem solvers.

If you can acknowledge that video games aren’t entirely bad, you can better relate to your child when trying to get them to add more varied activities to their schedule. It’s better to avoid conflict when discussing the issue.

Consider playing a few games with them – you may actually have fun! I’m sure I’m dating myself here, but I can still get lost in a game of Pac Man. At the very least you’ll have a good laugh. I know you all can relate, even if you won’t admit it!

3) Allow limited gaming as a reward for completing other tasks like exercise, practicing an instrument or doing chores.

If you present gaming as an end reward, it will motivate the child to get more productive activities done. It will also teach them how to balance gaming with other activities so they will use time management wisely. If they find more fun activities to do other than gaming, they’ll realize that playing video games isn’t everything, and that there is so much more out there to experience and try.

It’s always better to find a way to say yes (and sneak in a no) rather than stomp in and remove everything in an exasperated rage.

4) Set your limits and have clear and realistic consequences for not respecting them that BOTH parents enforce.

If reasonable rules and consequences are clearly established uniformly by both parents, you will be so much more effective in minimizing your child’s video game usage. The earlier the rules are established, the better - this is why it is important to notice the signs of video game addiction early on so you can make the necessary changes as soon as possible. And be a united front – don’t send mixed messages.

5) Help your child learn to recognize when they turn to video games when under stress or upset so they can see the connection and use other ways to soothe their feelings.

Video games are a common path to finding a distraction from the pains of adolescence, but that doesn’t make gaming an effective solution to dealing with them. That’s why it is important to not only explain to your child that video games are not the answer, but introduce them to other ways of coping with stress and anxiety, such as reading, taking a nap, or talking it out with family members.

Since technology is all around us, in our households and even in our individual rooms, it is important to regulate their use, especially with children and teens. Growing up and adapting to abundant electronic devices all around us involves knowing how much time to spend on them and, more importantly, when to stop and take a break.

This is especially true for video games, where kids have access to every game they can think of via the internet and often have no internal conception of how much time is too much time playing them. This is the new digital age, and has much that is positive, but we and our children have to learn how to live with it in a healthy way.

Time management is the most important and rewarding aspect of life to learn and conquer in order for distractions to be limited, productivity to flourish, and overall mental health to be maintained. It’s surely a battle for parents, but if you approach it with a calm, supportive and united plan, your child will be more likely to follow suit.

Most parents of children and teens know it can feel impossible to remain calm when your child is arguing, having a tantrum, or trying to guilt you about missing out on gaming time with friends. If you need more help, we have successfully coached parents on how to set firm and reasonable limits with their kids, and to become closer to them in the process!

Are you afraid to talk on the phone, apply for jobs in person, or hand in papers because they’re not “perfect”? You’re not the only one!

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:54:59 GMT

Are you too afraid to make phone calls or speak up in because you fear you’ll “choke” or have to deal with conflict?

Would you rather accept a consequence you do not deserve because you do not want to cause a scene or inconvenience anyone by bringing it up?

Do you avoid applying for jobs or other opportunities because you are terrified of interviews or even walking into a business to get an application?

If you’re a student, do you agonize over writing papers, even to the point where you can’t turn them in or even write them at all because you fear they may contain mistakes?

As a therapist who has helped many people years, especially young people, I have recently noticed a new kind of problem. So many of my younger clients have confessed to me about this problem that I can’t just chalk it up to a random occurrence.

In fact, I hear about it so often that I would venture to call it a potential epidemic .

What is this problem?

Having social anxiety, where you have “intense anxiety or fear of being judged, negatively evaluated, or rejected in a social or performance situation” (ADAA). When talking to another person, you’re afraid they’ll judge you on how you speak or act , making it hard for you to speak up to begin with.
The presence of severe, debilitating fear to make phone calls, walk into stores to ask for job applications or be interviewed for a job, and/or terror of writing essays because they may contain mistakes.
Not wanting to create a nuisance or an inconvenience to the other person by making them address a difficulty situation. Since you don’t want to waste their time by putting effort into fixing their mistake, you’d simply rather take the blame and move on .
Feeling selfish or needy if you’re trying to resolve something purely for yourself, so you refrain from speaking up.

Some examples?

How about refusing to make a call to the police station about a ticket you did not deserve, or talking to a professor about a grade you were wrongly given? What I find is that people would rather pay the ticket or accept an incorrect grade rather than speak up for themselves and correct it!

And after some quick online research, I realized I’m not the only one noticing this dilemma. Yahoo Finance reports: “According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article, millennials see the phone as "an interruption" — picking up the phone ‘without emailing first can make it seem as though you're prioritizing your needs over theirs.’

For a generation who spent the hours after school Instant Messaging, calling can feel foreign — and presumptuous.”

Although there are people who can easily speak their minds in a public setting or make a call to an organization, others are struck by paralyzing fear and self-doubt .

The obvious consequences of social anxiety are damaging enough: paying fines you were wrongly charged, accepting grades you do not deserve, and missing out on education and job opportunities because you’re too scared to even apply.

But Fortune reveals that there are additional, serious, consequences that can also affect your health: “The coping mechanisms of those with social anxiety, according to Joyable’s survey, point to the plate and the bottle. Fifty-one percent turn to eating to help get through social events, while 38% turn to alcohol.”

Severe anxiety can trigger eating disorders and substance abuse problems , which makes it even more urgent for those suffering to seek help and learn how to manage and overcome their anxiety.

The truth is, in life, it is necessary to live and communicate in a society with other people - if you need other people to resolve a personal situation or get ahead, you will have to learn to talk to them directly.

And luckily, although your anxiety may feel insurmountable, it is actually highly treatable if you use the right techniques and get the right kind of help and support.

Here are some tips you can start using today :

Solve ONE issue at a time .
By solving your problems in chunks and not all at once, you will be less overwhelmed and more likely to get all of them resolved over time.
Don’t assume you know how the other party will react .
Most people are decent human beings and will they will notice the error and happily fix it for you. If they try to defend their actions, you need to explain the situation as best you can and try not to feel intimidated.
See if you can solve the problem in a less direct and less confrontational manner .
This includes sending an email or letter, in which you would only have to type or write down the problem rather than speaking directly with the other party – this is a good stepping stone to work on your anxiety, but it’s important to work your way up to having the courage to talk with people directly.
Make a script as to what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.
If you write out everything you want to say before you make a phone call or confront a person in real life, it will make the process more efficient and less stressful since you will be able to simply read from a piece of paper.
Practice conversations first by yourself and with loved ones.
It may be hard for you to even speak up in the first place, but it is important to be assertive - your tone needs to be clear and confident so others will have more of a reason to take you seriously. Eye contact is important too! You can practice speaking up either by yourself in front of a mirror or with a family member willing to role play.
Have a friend or family member help you directly.
By getting someone who you know is on your side to help you, you will feel a higher sense of security. They could either just be by your side in support or could help you in conveying what you want to the other party.
If none of the above options work, it may be best to seek professional help.
Seeing a therapist gets you direct one-on-one aid to stop your anxiety at its source. They are trained in helping to solve these social problems, and the sessions would be tailored to your specific situations. Sadly, though, “anxiety disorders are highly treatable, yet only 36.9% of those suffering receive treatment,” so please take action (ADAA).

Learning how to speak up to those around you is a vital skill in life. There will many instances where being confident will come in handy and help you get ahead and set healthy boundaries.

You are the spokesperson for your own life - no one else is going to stand up for you as much as you could do for yourself.

The way you choose to improve your social skills depends on how severe your situation is - sometimes it is best to just reach out to those who you know will help.

It’s never too late to get back out there and try again – and remember that we are anxiety treatment specialists and help people overcome their fears every day!

What is a “life list” and how can it ease my eating disorder symptoms?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:41:45 GMT

For months, or in many cases years, you have been using your eating disorder to soothe you in times of emotional distress. It may have become automatic and feel like it would be impossible to do something different.

The truth is, we all need multiple ways of comforting and soothing ourselves when under stress, and many of us never learned how. If you’re working with a therapist, they can help you to figure out why you never learned.

In order for you to feel relief from your eating disorder quickly, you can skip right to the part where you develop and practice other, more healthy ways of handling trigger situations.

I have found it very helpful for my clients to separate comfort into five different categories.

Why?

Because getting a hug or taking a warm bath is not going to cut it for soothing every stressful situation, just as your eating disorder doesn’t cut it.

You need a plentiful and varied list of comforting behaviors that you have at the ready to use when you feel like purging, bingeing or starving.

Then, once you have that list, you need to practice, practice, practice using them so they become almost second nature to you . The goal is for your comfort list to become your LIFE list – the list you will pull out every time you experience stressful feelings in your life.

Here is a more thorough description of the five different types of comforts:

Emotional Comforts:

These are the ways you express emotions, including happiness. The most natural ways to receive emotional comfort from the time you were born are:

crying when sad

and

expressing anger appropriately

Unfortunately, many people were told or shown while growing up that it was not safe to cry when sad, either because they would be shamed out of it, or would be physically harmed if they showed sadness. Boys and men in particular are often shamed out of crying because our culture and sometimes our families saw crying as a sign of being too weak or feminine.

Do you know that it is possible to express anger without raising ones voice and also while showing love and affection? Many of my clients learned either that anger was never to be shown (i.e. let’s sweep all of this under the rug and never discuss it), or that anger was violent and out of control.

Other examples of emotional comfort are:

getting hugs
talking to a friend
seeing a funny movie
having a celebration party
writing in a journal

2. Physical Comforts:

These are the activities you use to release stress physically and also to pamper your body. People with eating disorders have to be careful that using physical comforts does not turn into exercise purging.

How to know the difference?

Every time you feel the urge to exercise, ask yourself honestly: “Am I exercising because I want to relax and reduce stress and have a sense of well-being, or am I doing it because I feel fat today and want to lose weight and burn calories?”

You can guess that the former is the goal to strive for, not the latter.

If you are finding that you have an overwhelming desire to exercise for calorie burning and weight loss ask yourself, what happened or what was I thinking about that triggered my “fat feelings” and desire to exercise purge?

Find your trigger, and then try to use other non-physical categories on the comfort list to soothe your stress.

Body pampering can also be a difficult task for people with eating disorders because they have often learned to please others rather than focus on their own needs and pleasure. Remember, in order to truly be able to help and support others, we need to come from a place of strength and life balance.

Physically nurturing our bodies is an essential part of self-care.

Some examples of physical comforts are:

taking walks
getting a massage
getting a manicure and pedicure
doing yoga
swimming

3. Social Comforts:

Eating disorders are life thieves – they steal friends and family away from you. As your eating disorder symptoms get worse, you will tend to isolate from the people who care about and love you the most.

There is often fear bordering on paranoia when having to eat in front of others, so meals are skipped or eaten alone. Your energy is sapped from lack of nutrition and thinking constantly about food, so there isn’t much left for social interaction.

But human beings are not meant to live alone.

We need help and support from others in order to be happy and thrive. That’s why one of the assignments I give my clients is called “Telling.” When you are ready, you are to tell about your eating disorder to others in a way that helps you let go of the secrecy and shame you have held for so long. For some people it is having the courage to finally tell their significant other that they have an eating disorder, for others it is speaking at an Eating Disorders Awareness Week rally, and for others it can be writing a letter to a magazine opposing their portrayal of women in their advertisements.

You also need social comforts in your life.

Some examples of social comforts are:

going out with a friend
taking a risk to make new friends
getting involved in an organization you care about
volunteering
recontacting friends you may have shut out of your life

4. Intellectual Comforts:

We are not earthworms that spend their lives burrowing through the dirt never becoming bored.

Human beings need to learn in order to be happy and grow. You don’t have to learn physics (unless that thrills you!), but you need to bring new knowledge and skills into your life to remember that the world is a magnificent and never ending source of wonder.

Too often, when eating disorders hit, they entrap an individual into an isolated, static world. This means that not only emotionally and socially, but mentally they are deprived of healthy opportunities to learn and grow.

Engaging our minds in learning new, fun information and skills is healthy exercise for our brains. Learning has a way of opening up new avenues for thought, growth, and happiness, and ultimately, hope.

It even becomes physically, emotionally, and socially beneficial when our minds have a secure, healthy activity to focus on. When your mind is comforted by more intellectually engaging material, your entire life will be energized, and your eating disorder will fade into the background.

Have you stopped learning new things?

Some examples of intellectual comforts are:

taking a class
learning a new hobby
reading a book
joining a discussion group

5. Spiritual Comforts

By spiritual comforts I don’t necessarily mean going to a house of worship, although many people would include that here. What is it in life that makes you feel there is some meaning in the world, something beautiful holding us all together despite all of the hardship and sadness one can encounter in life?

Many of the clients I work with who have suffered severe loss or abuse have trouble answering this question. Either they feel their spirituality and hope in life was stolen from them by their difficult experiences, or they never were able to explore in a safe way what their spirituality meant to them.

If you can’t fill in this part right now, do not despair. Take your best guess and TRY.

Some examples of spiritual comfort are:

being with children
prayer
meditating
being in nature
painting and other artistic activities
healing your abuse experiences with the help of therapy

Keep in mind that some comforts can overlap into two or more categories. For example, what you place in the spiritual comfort zone could also fall into the emotional, and vice versa. It is not as important where you list the comforts, but that you have a wide variety and use them often.

What should be on every person’s comfort list?

Although the comfort list needs to be highly personalized and different for every user, there are several items that need to be included on everyone’s life list in order to create a self-care plan that makes your eating disorder a thing of the past.

Learning to express your feelings in a healthy way to healthy people;
Learning to say no and set appropriate boundaries;
Stop over-committing and over-functioning;

Then just once that week, if you feel like binging, purging or restricting, try to substitute an idea from the comfort list instead. If you still end up engaging in the eating disordered behavior, try to figure out the trigger afterwards, and STILL try something off the comfort list.

These are new behaviors to you, and no one can master them right away. Practicing is important, even if you do it after you use your eating disorder behaviors.

Eventually, over time, the life list should become natural to you. And your eating disorder will no longer be necessary for comfort. And, as always, don’t be afraid to ask for coaching and help if you are getting stuck in your symptoms – you don’t have to go it alone!

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Do you suffer from Anxiety AND an eating disorder? Here are 7 tips to help you stop worrying.

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:22:40 GMT

Can you see a difference in the things you worry about than what most people worry about?
Do you often find yourself mired in a situation that you can’t find a way out of?
Do you worry so much that you find it difficult to relax?
When things are going well for you, do you find yourself looking for something to worry about?
Do you worry almost constantly about a catastrophic event happening?
Does worrying cause distress in your everyday life?
When you worry, do your eating disorder symptoms get worse (such as bingeing/purging, self-starvation, compulsive exercise or an increase in body hatred)?

What is “normal worrying” as opposed to chronic worrying or anxiety?

People who constantly worry about situations – real or not – are sometimes called, “worrywarts.” Webster’s Dictionary defines worrywart as, “a person who tends to dwell unduly on difficult or troubles.”

You may be a worrywart if you can answer “Yes” to most of the questions above.

It’s normal to be worried sometimes, but most people can shake the worry and enjoy life. Others find it so difficult to quit worrying that it begins to affect every area of life – job, relationships, physical and mental well-being and more.

Worry is constantly thinking about something troublesome or bothersome. When worry is taken to extreme, you become non-productive and highly stressed. Sometimes worry can cause such distress that you’re paralyzed to do anything about it.

For example, if you’re worried about a deadline on a business project you must complete and the date looms nearer and nearer, you may get extremely stressed about the outcome – especially if you’ve done nothing to bring the project nearer to completion.

You may experience a sort of “paralyzed” state where you’re constantly thinking about the project, but are helpless to resolve it. As the stress continues to grow, you may become physically distressed and develop many problems associated with stress.

Sometimes worry can actually encourage you to complete a goal or task or change a bad situation. For example, if you’re worried about recent bad grades, you may make a study plan or go for tutoring.

If you do nothing about the worry you’re experiencing, worry can begin to take its toll in many ways. You may suffer physical aches and pains and your mind may be so focused on the worrying that you can’t concentrate on how to solve the problem.

Or your eating disorder symptoms can “kick in” to try to soothe some of the worrying. But as you know, this doesn’t solve the problem at its root, and experiencing an increase in your eating disorder symptoms can be equally distressing.

How Worry Can Negatively Affect Your Life

If you’ve determined you’re a worrywart because worry is interfering with your life, you should know the ways that worry can negatively affect your life and cause problems far worse than mental anguish.

When you worry to the extent that it interferes with your daily life and the worry becomes exaggerated or unfounded, you may be suffering from GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder).

GAD is usually an ongoing, rather than a temporary type of tension that occurs when you worry excessively and suffer more anxiety than most people. You may be worrying about health, relationships, work, money or a number of other matters – even if there are no reasons to worry.

Most people with GAD know that what they’re experiencing in the way of anxiety is much worse than the situation calls for. You can’t seem to shake off the feeling of impending doom.

If you’re suffering from GAD, you may suffer from sleep disorder, anxiety attacks and have trouble socializing. Physical symptoms might include headaches, tense muscles that lead to pain, shaking or twitching or excessive sweating.

You may have shown symptoms of GAD during childhood or adolescence, but it can occur at any time during adulthood – often triggered by a traumatic or stressful situation. It often comes on gradually and affects more women than men.

People with eating disorders are also unfortunately more prone to anxiety or its sister condition, depression.

Worry can affect both mind and body in the following negative ways:

Circulate more stress hormones in the bloodstream – When stress hormones circulate in your body for a long period of time, a toxic effect occurs. The stress on the glands, heart and nervous system may lead to such health problems as ulcers in the stomach, stroke and heart attack.
Cause muscle tension which can lead to aches and pains -- When you’re anxious or worried, your body tenses in response (similar to the “fight or flight” feelings). This tension can weaken your legs, causing shaking sensations, cause back pain and headaches. You might also suffer from diarrhea or constipation from the muscle tension.
It can lead to resurgence or worsening of eating disorder symptoms – although it may seem random that you are purging more, or having more “fat” feelings, or becoming more extreme in restricting, this is actually your body’s way of trying to soothe the anxiety and give you a break. The symptoms themselves, however, often cause distress and dangerous physical complications.
Disturbs focus on any task at hand – Worry about a deadline makes it very difficult for you to concentrate on the project and get it done. Your peace of mind is shattered and the negative thoughts permeate your brain and shut it down except for the worrying thoughts.
May lead to depression – Letting worry take the forefront of running your life may lead to depression that’s difficult to shake. You could even become paranoid about other people in your life and feel sorry for yourself most of the time.
Changes or loss of libido – When you worry, it’s difficult to let your mind and body relax enough to have enjoyable sex. Your health may also suffer and be a deterrent to fulfilling sex.
Your immune system may suffer – Your immune system is important to fight infections and diseases. Science has proven that anxiety and stress lowers the effectiveness of your immune system – two side effects of excessive worry.
Unable to absorb vitamins and nutrients -- When you worry, you’re likely to become neglectful of diet and exercise. This can speed the aging process in your body because you become dehydrated and your muscles and brain aren’t receiving what they need to work properly.
Insomnia may affect your health – Lack of sleep is one of the most serious side effects of worry. Insomnia leads to even more worry about not getting enough sleep – and on it goes, becoming a vicious and unhealthy cycle.

You may think there’s no way around worry and that it’s impossible to stop, but there are ways to alleviate worry and live a life that will keep you happy, healthy and (almost) worry-free.

7 Tips to Stop Worry in Its Tracks

When your anxiety and worry seems to have no solution and you feel as if you’ve lost control, it’s time to take decisive action to prevent the worry habit from causing physical and mental harm.

You may have tried talking to yourself about how futile worrying is – or you may also have tried distracting yourself. Nothing works and sometimes what you try makes the worry even more persistent.

Some of the tried and true techniques which may lead to solutions for worry include self-help and professional therapy. Self-help techniques provide you with tools you can use to force negative and worrisome thoughts out of your mind.

Below are some worry-busting tips that may help in your quest to avoid the anxiety that worry brings. If you use and practice them consistently, they can also help to alleviate eating disorder symptoms.

1. Give yourself a specific time to worry – This technique may seem contrary to avoiding worry, but trying to stop worrying by avoiding certain thoughts sometimes makes you focus more on the thought.

Postponing your worry session to a certain time means that you’re giving yourself permission to worry – but at a later time which is chosen by you. You’re in control. As you continue with this method, you’ll begin to realize that you’re more in control than you thought.

2. Know that uncertainty is an inescapable part of life – Worriers tend to be unable to tolerate uncertainty or doubt about any situation. They want to be able to predict an outcome and prevent bad things or outcomes from happening.

3. Be present in the moment with your worry –When you worry, you’re focused on future happenings. But, when you become mindful of your worries about the future, you focus your attention back to the present time.

In fact, stating out loud to yourself “I feel worried” has actually been shown in studies to decrease worry. Just saying it instead of avoiding it is like releasing a pressure valve.

This technique lets you observe your worry pattern as its happening and choose to let them go. It helps you acknowledge the anxiety you’re feeling and observe them from someone in the present rather than the future.

4. Evaluate the problem and determine if it’s solvable – Even the act of mulling over the worry problem in your head can distract you from the feelings of anxiety. You’re attempting to solve the problem rather than simply worrying about it.

You can ask yourself if the problem is a concrete one – that you’re facing right now – or if it’s imaginary (a what-if situation). Your concern may be realistic, but if it’s imaginary you can prepare to do something about it.

Evaluating your problems help you realize if you’re dealing with emotions or a problem you can work on to solve.

5. Challenge your worries as they appear – Much of your worry thoughts may stem from what is known as “cognitive distortions.” This means that you’re distorting reality in your mind and making it look negative or scary.

Even though you know intellectually that what you’re worrying over isn’t likely to happen or isn’t based on facts, you can’t seem to break the habit of these types of worries.

By identifying the worry and challenging its validity, you’ll gradually develop a perspective which will help you separate the irrational thoughts from true reality.

6. Stop the sense of urgency – Worriers tend to think they must solve a negative problem immediately or something horrible will happen. One of the best methods to combat that sense of urgency is to focus on the present.

To take your mind off the invisible time frame, learn how to turn your focus onto something else – exercise, listening to music or watching a movie are good ways to stop feeling the urgency of worry.

7. Learn some mental and physical relaxation methods – To help you through the most anxious moments of your worry cycle, take some time and effort to learn how to physically and mentally relax by learning certain techniques.

These techniques for relaxation can be as simple as deep breathing or more challenging methods such as meditation, Tai Chi, imagery or muscle relaxation.

The above techniques can only be effective if you practice them consistently. For some chronic worriers, these techniques may not work because you’ve gotten to the point of being a chronic worrier.

Professional therapy may be necessary if your worry patterns have progressed to the point where you can’t function properly within a job, relationship or other major areas of life.

Finally, if your eating disorder symptoms have escalated in order to soothe the worry, you may need more support and help to figure it all out and get relief. Don’t be afraid to ask for help – usually with the guidance of a qualified therapist who is trained in treating anxiety AND eating disorders, you can learn to tame anxiety and your E/D symptoms.

Does the thought of wearing spring clothes and swimsuits give you a panic attack?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:13:10 GMT

Here’s how to love your body during swimsuit season!

With spring in full swing, swim suit season is not far off and both men and women are already in an anxious frenzy about their bodies.

It seems that in the months just before summer, along with making plans to hit the sand or have pool parties with friends, many of us also get out the microscope and work up a sweat about our “flaws”.

The Dread Affects Men Just As Much as Women

When we think about insecurities and spring attire, we usually imagine how harsh the media and pop culture is against women’s bodies and their perfectly normal varying sizes, shapes and colors.

What might come as a surprise is that men are just as insecure and self-conscious about their own flaws as women.

In an article about how men feel in swimsuits, 10 men shared their thoughts, feelings, and insecurities. From back hair and ‘girly knees’ to ill-fitting suits and how the media shoves ‘beautiful’ bodies in their faces, men felt just the same as women did about being half naked in public – not good. (The Cut, 2015 - https://www.thecut.com/2015/07/10-men-on-bathing-suits-and-body-angst.html )

It seems that almost everywhere you go from grocery stores to your Facebook feed you're bombarded with articles talking about the 'countdown' to swim suit season and how to get ready for it like it's some type of competition that should be ruling your life.

These articles make it easy to understand the why we develop so much body insecurity and anxiety surrounding clothing, swimwear, and shorts, and sleeveless shirts and other “revealing” clothing.

You Don't Have to Feel This Way

If you're ready to start getting body positive and work on becoming a healthier and happier you, here's what you can do to start feeling good in whatever you're wearing, not just a swim suit.

If you tend to blow off social engagements because you won't feel comfortable in the 'appropriate' attire try to remember that the sizes and shapes you see in magazines and media are nowhere near a true representation of the general population.
Remember that the average women's size is 14 and researchers from University of Texas report that “the average size for "real men" in America is a 44 versus the 40 regular of male models. The average height is 5 feet 9 inches and the average weight is about 162 pounds among American men”. So there's a serious possibility that there will be plenty of other men and women there both smaller and larger than you at social events - and that's OK.
Do you attempt to avoid shopping for swim suits and other summer and spring clothes just because you feel you won't look right? Being miserable in the heat is no way to live! Try to focus on the experience you're going to have at functions and events when you'll be wearing these clothes - Is it a family member's birthday? Wedding celebration? Wear comfortable clothes that fit you properly, I promise no one will be focused on it; they'll be focused on the event too!
Try to remember that as much as you are nervous about your appearance in social outings, other people are most likely just as self-conscious (unfortunately)! They're not walking around preoccupied with how you're looking in your swim suit but wondering if they're looking OK too. You are your biggest critic so don't be so hard on yourself.
If you're adamant on 'changing your ways,' 'eating better' or 'getting fit' to look better in summer clothes, please do it for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. Moving towards better health is always a great idea, so instead of trying fad diets and crazy work outs that might not stick, try eating intuitively and joyful movement for exercise. You don't necessarily need to 'work out' to get healthy - you'll get there sooner and stay there longer if you engage in activities you enjoy doing - cycling, yoga, soccer in the park, swimming with your kids. Give it a shot and watch your self-consciousness melt away as you gain confidence.

What does it mean to be Body Positive?

It's no secret that over the years as fashion models got smaller, American men and women alike began to express an alarming dissatisfaction with their own bodies. For example:

- Just twenty years ago, models on average were weighing about 8% less than the average woman while today they are weigh a startling 23% less.

- Models have been in the plus size range (between size 12 and 18) before and were rocking the runways but today they've dwindled down to sizes 6 to 14.

The average American woman is a size 14, so why does the fashion industry deem that to be plus size? Surely, no one can come up with a good answer for that question.

To prove that point even further, most models are strutting down the runway with Body Mass Index's (BMI's) that meet the criteria for anorexia.

Is that really the message we want to be spreading across the world - that beauty is found only in those bodies that are, from a medical and statistical standpoint, unhealthy?

Luckily, Americans have started to catch on to that very idea and it has given birth to the Body Positive Movement. This movement is focused on loving your body just the way it is when you are eating according to hunger and exercising for fun and not weight loss.

Realizing that your worth is not centered on solely your image is just the beginning of a path towards happiness.

Changing negative feelings about your body can be a challenge. If you need more support and help, here is the link for my Text2bwell positive body image program: www.text2bwell.com or text the word behealthy to 44222.

Text2bwell is not a substitute for therapy (which you can also schedule by contacting me ), but rather a very low cost way to receive confidential group support and coaching from me in an online format, all from the privacy of your smartphone. I hope you will join so we can remain in contact!

Are you worried about your retirement?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 13:03:05 GMT

You’re not the only one!

Retirement is a big deal, for some it comes voluntarily and for others it does not.

You would think that those that have planned their retirement meticulously for years would be able to sail into their golden year’s anxiety and depression free. For some, this is the case, but for others, retirement can seem like a tidal wave coming all too quickly, washing over you with a myriad of complex emotions including joy, relief, confusion, regret, sadness and shock.

For those who have become casualties of their company’s down-sizing, developed a career-ending disability, or experienced continued failed attempts to get back into the workforce after a period of absence, retirement can hit you even harder - like a ton of bricks.

It’s a Myth That Retirement is Stress-Free

Did you know that retirement is rated as one of the top 10 most stressful life events on the Homes and Rahe Stress Scale ? Number 9 is marital reconciliation – both seem on the surface to be events that lead to a sense of peace and happiness, but looks can be deceiving!

Just at a time when you thought you were thrilled to leave your working days behind and have more time to move about life freely spending time with friends, traveling, or just getting more time in for hobbies and grand kids you suddenly feel anxious, begin to worry about what's to come or start losing sleep over the matter.

Retirement Isn’t Always a Choice

If you've been laid off or become disabled the worry and fear can be tenfold, you may not be ready financially or emotionally to leave work behind. You may have wanted to save more, get your ducks in a row, or you simply enjoyed your working life routine.

Suddenly, with retirement looming over you, there's a wave of emotions you can't explain. You could be experiencing anxiety or depression surrounding retirement. If you are, you should know that you're not alone.

Additional Worries in the Retirement Years Can Include:

Financial concerns – that you haven’t saved enough money to last the rest of your life, still having a mortgage or rental payments, still providing support for grown children (all too common!), health care bills eating away at your savings.
Caregiving stress for yourself and/or a significant other.
Social isolation or conflict with family members.
Medical costs during retirement.
Lack of stable income.
Fear of being bored.

What is Anxiety?

Anxiety and depression are unfortunately not just for the young.

Anxiety tends to cause a person powerful feelings of stress, apprehension, worry, fear, and even dread. What makes the difference between a normal fear or worry and an anxiety disorder is that it these feelings are more the norm and quickly become disruptive to your life.

Here Are Common Signs of Anxiety in Retirement

Are you overly concerned about a person/place/event/safety?
Are you avoiding social or once enjoyable situations?
Are you struggling with excessive worry or fear about the future, your health or your loved ones’ safety?
Are you experiencing disrupted sleep or sleep loss?
Are you feeling tense, weak, or shaky?
Have you become overly occupied with the need for a strict routine, and if the routine is disrupted you panic?
Are you self-medicating with prescription pills, drugs or alcohol?
Are you constantly checking your financial accounts?
Are you worrying more than usual about your health?

And even though boredom in retirement is a major concern — studies show that once a person retires that fear usually disappears . For people under 34, boredom is one of top three concerns about preparing for retirement. When you ask retirees, only 6 percent said they were worried about being bored. In fact, most retirees seem to be pretty satisfied .

The idea of retirement is difficult for many; there are many factors to consider. In fact, "A new poll conducted in October by the Associated Press and LifeGoesStrong.com found that 73% of Baby Boomers now plan to work past retirement, and 53% said they don’t feel comfortable that they’ll ever be able to afford a comfortable retirement."(anxiety-treatments.com)

What To Do Now

Anxiety is a feeling that many people have at one time or another, regardless of age. It is the hope that you will be able to spend time enjoying your later years, reveling in your accomplishments, and looking forward to a more relaxing phase of life.

Research shows that the prevalence of anxiety disorders actually declines between midlife and late adulthood. But what's interesting is that anxiety disorders are still the most common mental health issue older adults are facing (www.anxiety.org)

Anxiety, Left Untreated, Can Lead to Depression

If left untreated, the incessant worry and disruption to daily life that anxiety causes can lead to depression. Fortunately, anxiety is a treatable disorder. If you're experiencing life-disrupting anxiety symptoms surrounding your retirement, there are many things you can do to begin moving in the right direction. Focusing your energy on transitioning into or through retirement successfully should be your main goal.

Are You Struggling with an Eating Disorder as A Member of the LGBTQ Community?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:19:50 GMT

Over my 25+ years of helping individuals recover from eating disorders, I have treated many members of the LGBTQ community. Although the climate of acceptance for people of all sexual orientations has greatly improved over the years, being a part of the LGBTQ community still has its own unique stressors, and of course, it’s risks for being prone to eating disorders.

Additionally, an enormous amount of bigotry and discrimination still exists. I always feel saddened when a prospective LGBTQ patient has to come out to me over the phone before even meeting me to make sure I will not judge them or discriminate against them in therapy because of their orientation. Unfortunately, this happens all too often with other medical providers. It’s difficult enough to get up the courage to ask for help to recover from an eating disorder; to have the added fear that you will be harassed for your sexual orientation is awful.

To be quite honest, much more research is needed to even begin to crack the seal on the relationship between eating disorders and sexuality. The truth is, body image, gender identity, sexuality, and eating disorders must further be studied to find out how their relationships with one another effect individuals in the LGBTQ community, and how the balance between all these issues can be a recipe for developing these harmful conditions.

LGBTQ people are often faced with challenges that are unique to them, putting them at a greater risk than those of the general population for developing any number of eating disorders. As you know, stress is an enormous trigger for eating disordered behavior. While the research remains limited on eating disorders among LGBTQ+ populations, existing research shows that:

Rejection is a key factor

Whether one has “come out” or not can lead to some serious fear of rejection, even when seeking counseling.
On the other hand, experiences with coming out, rejection by friends, family, at school or at work can contribute to low self-esteem and poor self-image.
These experiences can lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) without receiving proper guidance and coping mechanisms.

Discrimination Is Real

In school, at work, and beyond, discrimination can occur with or without violence, emotional turmoil, and may even border on emotional abuse causing undue stress and PTSD.
Bullying is all too common, and is often experienced without justice or meaningful protection.

The Risk Starts Early

Gay males were seven times more likely to report binging and 12 times more likely to report purging than heterosexual males (neda.org)
Beginning as early as the age of 12, teens who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual experience higher risks of eating disorders, including binge-eating and purging.
Among the homeless youth community, up to 42% identify themselves as a member of the LGBTQ community.

Minorities among the LGBTQ Community are even more vulnerable

Research shows the prevalence of eating disorders increases among Black and Latina LGBTQ members,
Females who identified as “mostly heterosexual,” lesbian, or bisexual were nearly twice as likely to binge-eating at least monthly over the last year. (nationaleatingdisorders.org)

Limited Access and Barriers to Treatment

As if it isn’t tough enough to face all these risk factors, there are also mountains to climb when it comes to receiving quality treatment. Because those who identify as LGBTQ have so many unique aspects to their lives, it’s important for qualified professionals to be well-versed in the problems they face, in the reactions they may have during treatment, and to be able to compassionately offer care and treatment in a way that is suited for the best possible outcome of anyone going through these unique struggles.

If you’ve ever tried to get treatment for an eating disorder you may have experienced some of these barriers:

Challenges accessing qualified support or treatment.
Lack of culturally competent staff at support/treatment centers.
Insufficient knowledge or resources regarding eating disorders among culturally competent or LGBTQ experienced providers.

How Healers Are Making Progress

With more awareness and focus on LGBTQ issues and hardships has come a movement towards not only acceptance but paving the way towards more drop-in centers, alliances, community health and resource centers designed and developed with the intention of helping LGBTQ youth and adults alike to gain better access to treatment and resources.

More and more providers like me are striving for cultural competence and learning new and innovative ways to deliver counseling and therapeutic help in a way that will benefit you.

While the research remains limited, it is my goal and intention to bring access to well deserved treatment for all. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ community and you’re ready to start moving towards recovery from your eating disorder, there’s a few simple ways to start.

Self-Love and Self-Care

Once you’ve taken a few steps towards acceptance, it’s time to start working on self-love and self-care. Start by doing things just for you. If it’s difficult to believe you deserve quality self-care, talk with good friends or close family members to get support to start believing you do.

Give Back

When you get to a place where happiness and self-love reside in your heart, take the next step and give back. Give back to the people who helped get you to where you are, give back to your community, and give back to those who need it most. Moving in a positive direction where love and kindness flow freely from and to you helps keep your mind and body healthy and powerful to stay ahead of your eating disorder and negative behaviors.

_____________

Remember, if you’re a member of the LGBTQ community, youth, or the parent of an LGBTQ youth facing an eating disorder, there’s help for you. Please don’t fight this battle alone, reach out and get the help you need from a qualified eating disorder specialist. Jump starting your eating disorder recovery is just a phone call away. And remember that you are safe here.

Why Are More and More Doctors, Nurses, and Other “Helpers” Developing Eating Disorders?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:15:28 GMT

The pressure on the community of healers in our nation is sky high.

As teachers deal with over- crowded classrooms, under-funding, and the pressure to get all students ready for standardize testing above all else, medical professionals are dealing with long hours, case overload, and compassion fatigue.

In an attempt to break down barriers to treatment, I’ve been studying various professions prone to eating disorders. After all, it’s a common phrase to hear, “eating disorders don’t affect people like me!” and that’s a thought we sometimes tell ourselves to keep from acknowledging the truth and getting help.

Let’s debunk the myth and get more helpers on a path to wellness.

I recently read this thread on Reddit “When I was in treatment for anorexia for 6 months earlier this year, I met quite a few nurses (more nurses than any other profession). Do you think this is a coincidence or does it seem like nursing attracts people who are prone to eating disorders/provides an environment where they can come to the surface?”

For one nurse, her eating disorder started out with sporadic lunch times and being too busy to sit down for meals through out the day. Instead of listening to her body’s cues for hunger, she began skipping meals on a more frequent basis. Ultimately, when she found herself conducting google searches like, “What can I take to suppress my appetite?” she knew it was time to get help.

It sounds counterintuitive that even though nurses and other skilled professionals in medical and helping fields have access to and knowledge of eating disorders, they could be more prone than the general population to develop them. Doctors and other medical professionals learn to diagnose eating disorders and even to be familiar with the signs or symptoms of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Yet, many will fall into disordered eating without so much as a second glance from peers, family, or coworkers.

Why?

“While there is no link to certain occupations that trigger the development of eating disorders, it is important to consider how a person’s environment might be conducive to the progression of these diseases. Individuals who choose to enroll in medical school face a grueling and demanding road towards becoming a physician. Many medical students are overburdened with a high stress load that includes a demanding school/clinical load, increased amount of debt, and pressure towards succeeding in a rigorous field.” explains Eating Disorder Hope .

Rheumatology news reports: “... against the backdrop of a fat-phobic, diet-obsessed culture and those hard-driving personality traits, the uniquely stressful professional demands that are inherent in medical training and beyond may unmask disordered eating or sharply accelerate patterns left over from adolescence.”
If you’re a doctor, nurse, teacher, or on the front lines in other helping professions, ask yourself if you’ve been experiencing any of the following symptoms of compassion fatigue that could be causing disordered eating.

Listen to your body, it has a lot to sa y – let’s be honest, if you’re reading this article you’ve probably worried you may be suffering from some form of disordered eating. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you – that emotional eating, restricting or purging is just not good for it. Our bodies are powerful, self-sustaining, often if we just listen and feel we’ll recognize the cues that something is off.
Listen to your heart – Your mind can play tricks on you, especially with an eating disorder. For instance, it can tell you that you’re “fat” when you are dangerously underweight, or that your purging isn’t that dangerous to your body. This eating disorder “voice” can quickly whisk us off on untruthful seas that are hard to navigate. Rather, try listening to your heart – your feelings and emotions. Have you been depressed, anxious or stressed? Are you withdrawing from friends or loved ones? Are you becoming weary of constantly counting calories and weighing yourself? These are signs it’s time to seek support and help.
Stop judging and being hard on yourself – Qualities of perfectionism and drive most likely helped you successfully become a doctor, nurse, or teacher, but they can hurt you when it comes to an eating disorder. Do you judge every person who comes into your life, every passing stranger on their weight? Or on their size, their appearance or on their relationship with food? Do you judge your mom, your dad or your best friend on how much or how little they put into their bodies? Probably not… so you do not deserve the same treatment.
Move towards a path of self-love and self-care – I get it, this is a hard step. When you are a helper it can feel so much easier to express endless amounts of compassion for others. Finding the energy to love and care for yourself is tough when you’ve spent months or years picking apart your every flaw. But guess what? You can do it! Start with one small thought and one small action of self-care. You’ll get there.

Remember, if you are a doctor, nurse, teacher or other helper who is anorexic, bulimic or an emotional eater, you don’t have to suffer in silence. Reach out and request care from a qualified eating disorder specialist to help jumpstart your journey to eating disorder recovery. Treatment is confidential and private and will not harm your career – in fact, recovery will eventually help you be even better at what you do!

Are you a law student or a lawyer with an eating disorder?

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:09:39 GMT

You’re definitely not alone.

In over 20 years of helping people recover from eating disorders, I have been shocked at how many of my clients are attorneys or law students.

So I decided to conduct a bit of online research. And the results were astonishing.

In a recent, large-scale study of law student mental health from the Journal of Legal Education, 27% of law students (18% of male respondents and 34% of female respondents) screened positive for eating disorders (www.abovethelaw.com).

Brian's Story

One of the most famous attorneys brave enough to come out and disclose his troubled history with eating disorders is Brian Cuban, author of The Addicted Lawyer. In his book he describes a culture in the legal field that encourages over-functioning, stoicism and hard partying. In that type of environment, seeking help for any kind of problem (which is often misconstrued as weakness) can feel impossible.

In his popular blog , Mr. Cuban shares: “I felt completely stigmatized and alone in my eating disorder and did not feel that anyone could understand or help. Adding to the stigma was my profession. Not only was I a male with an eating disorder, I was a male lawyer with an eating disorder. How stigmatizing was that?”

Common Challenges Faced by Practicing Lawyers

For many years I have empathically listened to frustrated confessions from attorneys and law students who have had the courage to come see me for help with their own eating disordered behaviors (often combined with drinking or drug problems).

They describe work environments that place almost unbearable amounts of stress on them to amass as many billable hours as possible on the private sector side, and to handle an overwhelming caseload that could be easily divided among two or three attorneys on the public sector side.

Law students are often pushed to the limit to not only excel in classes but to endure the infamous “Socratic method” where students can be relentlessly grilled and criticized in front of their peers.

The Nebraska Law Review reports: The most common complaint against the Socratic Method is that it is cruel and psychologically abusive. Socratic professors are quick to criticize imperfect student answers, subjecting students to public degradation, humiliation, ridicule, and dehumanization. This torture often scars students for life.”

Add to that stiff competition for scarce internships, and the fact that most law school graduates face low starting salaries combined with huge amounts of debt; it is understandable that many law students and practicing attorneys can develop eating disorders and other dangerous behaviors to try and cope with the pressures.

What You Can Do

However, here are other steps you can implement on your own to enhance the progress of your counseling.

Physical Comforts:

Making a conscious decision to put your self-care first not last
Maintaining a balance of work and play
Practicing intuitive eating
Practicing joyful movement
Limiting exposure to high stress clients and diversifying your caseload
Respecting the limits of your workday schedule
Taking regular breaks
Eating lunch and taking a full hour away from your desk
Maintaining a safe, private and comfortable workspace
Delegating tasks you find joyless
Use of alternative therapies: massage, reflexology, aromatherapy, etc.

Emotional Comforts

Acknowledging when you help clients and improve their lives
Taking time for self-reflection and creative expression
Spending quality time alone
Praising yourself
Allowing yourself to cry
Seeking supportive counseling or coaching
Safeguarding your worldview (i.e. most people are good rather than most people are only out for themselves)
Separating professional disappointments from personal worthiness
Learning to say no
Celebrating small accomplishments
Not believing you work better under stress

Intellectual Comforts

Know the signs for compassion fatigue and burnout
Maintaining a realistic view of a client’s goals
Maintaining membership and participation in professional affiliations and organizations
Getting regular quality supervision or group supervision
Do something different professionally (i.e. write an journal article, give a lecture, mentor a law student)

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“I was bulimic and exercise bulimic (compulsive exercise with the primary goal of offsetting calories). Maybe you are dealing with one of those or the fastest-growing eating disorder, binge eating disorder. If you are suffering in silence as a law student or practicing lawyer, know that recovery is possible, but like with addiction, you have to take that first step forward regardless of the type of eating disorder.”

_____________

10 Life Saving Parent tips to help your child recover from an eating disorder

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 11:53:21 GMT

TIP 1: Choose the right treatment team from the start

So many of the parents I speak with wasted precious time taking their child to therapists and doctors who had little to no experience in treating eating disorders.

It wasn’t their fault!

Specialists can be difficult to locate, and when you are worried, desperate, and need to get help fast for your child, it is common to take a wrong turn.

If you choose a top notch outpatient treatment team from the start, not only will you avoid the disruption and the cost of going to the hospital; you will help your child learn how to cope in a healthy way with the stresses of everyday life.

TIP 2: Ask these secret superheroes in your child’s life for guidance

The best place to start is your child’s pediatrician. They’ve most likely done the legwork and have a vetted list of trustworthy treatment professionals to whom they refer over and over again because they know they are qualified and successful at what they do.

Your child’s school counselor or guidance department is another potentially valuable resource. Did you know that many colleges and universities have eating disorder treatment teams on campus and that your child may be able to receive free counseling there? It’s definitely worth a call.

Currently, up to 20% of individuals suffering from an eating disorder will do so for the rest of their lives. This staggering statistic would be greatly reduced if the person received the right form of treatment from the start.

Try hard not to panic, and take extra time at the beginning finding a qualified treatment team.

And don’t be afraid to ask for help from your secret superheroes!

If you’re wondering what questions to ask potential treatment team members, I provide several thorough lists in my parent guide .

TIP 5: Your child’s opinion counts!

Just because you feel comfortable with the therapist does not necessarily mean your child will.

Make sure to ask for your child's input when interviewing and selecting qualified treatment providers. It is important that she feel comfortable with and supported by the treatment team.

Don't be afraid to ask how a potential provider works with children as opposed to adults (the approach can be quite different in order to gain trust).

Having said that, keep in mind that many children and teens are afraid to give up their eating disordered behavior at first and can be resistant to treatment even with the most kind, qualified and supportive professionals.

A good rule of thumb is to observe whether your child feels uncomfortable with everyone you have interviewed, or just with one or two people. In the latter case, it will help build trust between you and your child to address her concerns and allow her to meet with additional candidates.

TIP 6: Yes, you DO need both a therapist and a nutritionist!

One of the most common questions I hear from parents and individuals seeking eating disorder treatment is: Do I really need both counseling AND nutrition coaching? Can’t I just do one or the other?

No, you can’t! Therapists, doctors and dietitians are trained differently. Therapists are not allowed to give nutrition advice and nutritionists are not allowed to provide counseling. And therapists and nutritionists are not allowed to give medical advice, ever! If one of these professionals routinely gives advice out of their area of expertise, run the other way and look elsewhere – it’s a bad sign.

You need the experience and guidance of professionals in all three areas for you or your child to get better. If you invest in a full treatment team from the start, recovery is much more likely to occur faster.

Don’t skimp on treatment by hiring a nutritionist/dietitian who is not an eating disorder specialist, or by not hiring a dietitian at all; you and your child will pay more financially and emotionally in the long run.

TIP 7: You don’t have to settle for the first therapist you see if it’s a bad fit.

Hiring a therapist (or a doctor, nutritionist, or psychiatrist) is like buying a pair of shoes. If you try a pair on and they do not fit, do you pay for them and wear them out of the store? No! You try on more shoes until you find THE BEST pair.

The same goes for hiring health care providers. If the fit doesn’t feel right, keep interviewing! You don’t have to buy the first pair of shoes you try on.

Remember the saying, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link”?

You cannot afford to have even one weak link in your child’s treatment team.

The stronger the links, the faster and more successful his or her recovery will be. If you receive good recommendations as outlined below, it should only take you a few days, weeks or less to shop around and find the right providers.

TIP 9: Get in the know about these insider insurance secrets

Did you know that insurance often provides partial reimbursement for out-of-network eating disorders treatment?

Call your insurance company and ask if they provide partial reimbursement if you use a therapist that is a specialist but out-of-network.

If there are no eating disorder specialists listed your insurance company’s list of providers, ask if they will create a single case agreement that will pay for the treatment sessions.

Additionally, ask your child’s providers if they offer discount packages to help ease the cost of treatment. It may take a bit of extra time, but if you combine a discount package with sending insurance claims in on your own, you are likely to be rewarded with a savings on quality care.

TIP 10: Know the difference between hospital, residential and intensive outpatient care so you can get the best insurance coverage.

If your child needs a higher level of care than an outpatient treatment team can provide, but you cannot afford the hospital fees, consider placing her in what is called an “intensive outpatient treatment program.”

In these types of programs, your child sleeps at home every night, but goes for treatment at the hospital or residential setting during the day. These programs can be a lot less costly than inpatient care , and provide daily support.

You need to be assertive with your insurance provider and ask them what types of eating disorder treatment programs they cover, and which ones they do not.

There is a difference between hospital based programs, residential programs and Intensive Outpatient Programs (also called IOPs). Sometimes one type of program is fully or partially covered. It is your insurance company’s job to explain the difference to you fully, but you need to ask them.

This list of power tips will give you strong guidance on how to secure effective help for yourself or your child when fighting an eating disorder!

What is it like at The Body Image Counseling Center? Ask Alexcia!

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 21:08:12 GMT

I am thrilled to welcome Alexcia Gutierrez as a guest blogger this week. Alexcia is a student at Florida State College at Jacksonville, and was assigned to reach out to a local mental health agency to learn more about their services. Luckily she chose The Body Image Counseling Center!

Alexcia Gutierrez | 25 January 2018
Florida State College at Jacksonville

Mental Health Agency Visit: The Body Image Counseling Center

_____________

Why did I choose The Body Image Counseling Center for my assignment? To be completely honest, I was intrigued with their website and the services they offered. A quick google search yields positive reviews, many publications, and praise for the clinical director, Lori Osachy, MSS, LCSW and her staff.

The small and intimate staff are quite knowledgeable in their respective fields. The featured blog on the website shows dedication to passing on knowledge and education freely in the hopes of bettering the lives of patients and loved ones.

A Visit to The Body Image Counseling Center

Nestled into a quiet neighborhood of San Marco, just off the main road, you’ll find The Body Image Counseling Center in a converted house. With much of the older neighborhoods’ charm intact, this small office is inviting and comforting as soon as you walk in. Furniture is welcoming, like you’ve walked into your neighbor’s living room to sit and have tea. The waiting area is clean and home-like.

_____________

Offices are quiet and well lit. The flood of sunlight is a welcome difference in contrast with hard lighting and dingy office furniture that you might find in a local clinic.

_____________

For those struggling with an eating disorder, this is certainly the opposite of uncomfortable and sterile inpatient or hospital waiting rooms to which many are accustomed. Lori was warm and welcoming. She openly shared knowledge and information openly and gave me the impression that the staff truly care about everyone they help.

Find the Right Resources for You and Your Family

The Body Image Counseling Center not only works to help those struggling with eating disorders, but their two Board Certified Behavioral Analysts and their Registered Dietician work together to help Lori take on clients who need a range of services from helping those with co-occurring disorders (eating disorders, substance abuse disorders, anxiety, depression) to parents who are in search of services to better their parenting skills and coping mechanisms, parents struggling with children who have feeding disorders, those needing nutritional counseling, couples counseling, and more.

Lori Osachy, MSS, LCSW specializes in a focused approach to solve problems and cope with life stressors by challenging the individual with homework assignments and personal responsibility. Emergency parent coaching is designed to help parents who’ve just been made aware of a child’s eating disorder. A recent diagnosis or hospitalization can leave parents overwhelmed and feeling lost or helpless. Emergency parent coaching will address any issues and answer many of questions a parent may have.

Nutrition counseling is just one part of the team approach to eating disorder recovery. Trained nutritionist Elizabeth Lagasse, RD/N specializes in eating disorder recovery to help clients address distorted thoughts and fears surrounding eating and nutrition, and helps clients learn more about nutrition and healthy/unhealthy habits.

Lori is also a skilled couples counselor. Through webinars, blog posts, and personalized couples counseling courses, she helps couples learn the basics of healthy relationships, strengthening and empowering couples to make the decision to stay and fix or move on and grow. She counsels couples wanting to make their relationship stronger, those on the edge of divorce, and those that are just unsure.

What Makes The Body Image Counseling Center Unique?

A full range of support is available to anyone suffering through an eating disorder.
A team approach is used to provide a comprehensive approach similar to what you’d get in an inpatient setting while remaining in the comfort of your natural environment and surroundings.
Treatment often includes the help of all four clinicians staffed at The Body Image Counseling Center.
Help is offered not only to the individual but for parents and loved ones.

_____________

Going above and beyond with services like home visits and telehealth this center is an excellent resource our community is lucky to have.

_____________

I would recommend a friend, family member, or client alike to this agency for so many reasons. I feel confident that at The Body Image Counseling Center clients are going to get personalized care tailored to suit their needs. I would also feel confident that I was not sending someone to an overworked, understaffed, or underfunded facility where the client would just be another number, most importantly.

This would absolutely be an agency that I would love to work for, intern for, or volunteer for. To be given the opportunity to make such a personal difference in other’s lives would be a gift. Though this center focuses and markets itself as an eating disorder center, they serve a variety of clients and issues.

Did You Know?

As Borst states in the text, Social Work and Health Care Policy Practice and Professionalism, “Social workers are professionally trained to provide services that are based on patient empowerment and the strength perspective,” no truer statement could be said about the services of The Body Image Counseling Center.

According to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), the last two decades have seen unprecedented growth among eating disorders yet research into the topic is largely under-funded, coverage for treatment is simply inadequate, and societal pressures on body image remain rampant (NEDA, 2018).

Clinicians like those who work at The Body Image Counseling Center strive to make a difference in the lives of many, helping as many as 25 to 50 patients overcome eating disorders each year, countless over Lori’s 25 years of experience. The value of centers like these is immeasurable for our communities and society at large.

Reference

Role of Mental Health Programs in the Community. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2018, from https://www.onlinepsychologydegrees.com/articles/role-of-mental-health-programs/

General Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved January 28, 2018, from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/general-statistics

O'Dea, J. A., & Abraham, S. (2000, May 02). Improving the body image, eating attitudes, and behaviors of young male and female adolescents: A new educational approach that focuses on self‐esteem. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1098-108X(200007)28:1%3C43::AID-EAT6%3E3.0.CO;2-D/full

Borst, J. (2010). Social Work and Health Care Policy, Practice, and Professionalism . Pearson Education. Print.

Has your child been diagnosed with an eating disorder? Here's what to do... and what NOT to do!

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:36:07 GMT

If you are reading this, it’s likely you have recently learned that your child has been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Receiving this kind of news can be shocking, frightening and painful, and it’s understandable if you feel paralyzed about what to do... and what NOT to do, in order to help them.

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, emotional eating and orthorexia are the deadliest of the mental health disorders, and the average person knows little to nothing about them until someone they love is affected. Lacking solid information and guidance combined with a crisis can cause total overwhelm, even terror. I’ve heard it in the voices of the hundreds of parents who have called me over the years desperately searching for help.

Remember that the most vital first step when you learn about your child or teen’s eating disorder is to make an appointment with their pediatrician or primary care doctor. The doctor is the leader of your treatment team and will rule out other physical causes for eating disorder symptoms, as well as point you in the right direction for hiring the other members of the treatment team: a qualified and experienced therapist, nutritionist and psychiatrist if necessary.

Once you have put a top treatment team in place, here are some lifesaving DO’s and DON’Ts that you can practice at home to aid your child in making a successful recovery.

What NOT to do at Home during Your Child’s Recovery:

Do not make the mistake of believing that your child is using her eating disorder to get attention, manipulate you, get in on a temporary fad, or to fit in with her friends. You may believe that if you call her out on the behavior, she’ll be able to make the choice to stop. Eating disorders are not a conscious choice. An eating disorder is a very powerful, subconscious coping mechanism that your child is using to handle extreme pain and stress.
Do not try to restrict the eating disordered behaviors by hiding food, locking cabinets, refusing to buy certain foods, standing guard by the bathroom, or interrogating her.
Do not keep track of how many days she has gone without engaging in the behaviors (this will put too much pressure on your child and causes many children to lie about what they are really doing).
Do not weigh your child at home – this can be done at the doctor’s office. The doctor can even take a “blind weight”; allowing your child to turn around on the scale so she is not stressed by a weight gain.
Do not become angry if your child “slips” and restricts her food, purges, binges or compulsively exercises.
Do not make food or appearance a main topic of conversation; focus on feelings instead.
Do not keep magazines in the house that promote fad diets, crazy beauty routines, or display anorexic looking models in their ads.
Do not offer rewards or punishments for stopping the eating disordered behaviors (this will just force her to go “underground,” making her more resistant to treatment).
Do not take your child’s eating disorder as a personal criticism or a reflection of your parenting skills.
Do not isolate and insist that the problem must be kept a “secret” from her friends or other family members; telling trusted loved ones is actually a very important step in removing the shame around the eating disorder.
Do not insist your child eat in order to gain weight, or stop eating as much in order to lose weight; the dietitian will help you learn how to talk to her about food and weight.

What to DO at Home during Your Child’s Recovery:

DO let her know that if she is having a difficult day with the eating disorder, she can come to you and talk about what is stressing her out that day.
DO express faith that she will be able to learn how to eat according to her natural hunger cues rather than out of emotion.
DO gently approach her if you think she is having a difficult day and ask her if she would like to talk about what is bothering her.
DO redirect her if she says she feels fat and ask her if something happened that day that upset her.
Do read about eating disorders and ask for help and guidance from the treatment team.
Do express your love and concern for your child, reassuring her that she has what it takes to conquer the eating disorder.
Do consider yourself an important member of the treatment team; following their suggestions is essential in helping your child get well quickly
DO buy a variety of foods without focusing on the words “diet,” “healthy,” “clean,” “fattening,” or “bad.”
DO encourage your child to stand up for herself and set boundaries with people who may be hurting her.
DO let her know that as a parent your primary job is to make sure she is safe, healthy and happy, not to be her friend.
DO consider your own relationship with food and body image, and be brave in facing the hang-ups you may have in these areas.
DO get her into treatment immediately with the best treatment providers you can find.
DO take care of yourself; don’t put your life totally on hold until your child is better. By taking time out for yourself you are modeling healthy self-care to your child.

By following these DO’s and DONT’s you can rest assured that you have a solid guide to being the best support to your child as he or she works on getting better. And remember you are not alone! Don’t be afraid to reach out to other parents, family and friends for support as your family works together to heal their eating disorder.

Is telling your child's school about their eating disorder a good idea?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:26:47 GMT

Are you trying to decide whether or not to tell your child’s school about their eating disorder?

Are you worried your child will be stigmatized, punished or judged by their peers and/or teachers if you tell them the truth?

Are you afraid you child will be kicked out of school or forced to repeat a grade if you disclose their illness?

When your child or teen is diagnosed with an eating disorder, you can feel all alone as a caregiver. Eating disorders are often surrounded by shame and guilt, especially for parents. In fact, many books and articles on eating disorders still tend to blame parents, especially mothers, for the development of their child’s symptoms.

For this reason, families often try to hide their child’s disorder from the school, in fear of being judged or punished.

This is truly a shame, because over my many years as a therapist helping families, I have learned that schools will often bend over backwards to help students in their recovery. Many times I see parents and the students themselves neglecting to tell the school about the problem, resulting in the child having to take a leave of absence or drop out of school completely.

The School's Role

Eating disorder specialists will know how to work with your child’s school to develop specialized plans to enable him or her to continue in school while modifying the amount of work and stress. Luckily, at least on the high school and junior high school level, I have found schools both public and private to be extremely caring and accommodating to families who are struggling with the life-threatening illnesses of anorexia, bulimia, and compulsive overeating.

Administrators and teachers are extremely flexible in modifying the students homework, time required to be in class, testing schedule, and assignments due, in order to allow the student to work on their recovery and keep up-to-date with their classmates’ schedules.

Just so you get an idea of how flexible the schools can be, here are some actual examples of what schools have done with my young clients to help them:

I’ve seen schools allow students to take the remainder of a marking period off in order to recover, using the existing grades to cover the entire semester.
It is also common for schools to allow students to attend for half days instead of full days so they can go attend therapy sessions and nutrition counseling, as well as take time to rest if they need to.
There are also programs to allow students to study virtually from home, either through a hospital homebound program, or through a specialized program where teachers send modified homework assignments.
Schools have also provided private areas were students can have snacks and additional meals in order to work on weight restoration without having to return home in the middle of the day.

And remember, it’s not your fault that your child developed an eating disorder!

We Work as a Team

Anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, orthorexia and compulsive overeating are extremely complex conditions that do not stem from one primary cause, such as your parenting. They arise from an individual mix of genetic, chemical and environmental triggers and they are the number one killer of all the mental health diagnoses. Please don’t waste your precious energy in fighting these illnesses by blaming yourself and feeling like you have to live with an unbearable secret.

Unfortunately, eating disorders are becoming a widespread epidemic, and schools are being forced to increase their awareness and resources available to help their students. They no longer have the luxury of ignoring the problem, and most of them have risen to the occasion.

Often it requires the help of a qualified treatment team to negotiate and communicate with the school to develop a treatment plan that is specialized to your child. But the good news is that, personally, I have never encountered a situation with the client where the school did not work hard to help the student be successful both at school and in their recovery.

Don’t be afraid once you reach out to ask the school to work with you and your child’s team to develop creative solutions that will disrupt their schooling as little as possible. Often parents do not know that these creative solutions are available. Schools want to help children be healthy and succeed! Give them a chance to prove it to you.

Are you having trouble keeping up with your New Years’ resolutions? It’s not your fault!

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 20:10:24 GMT

American’s top New Year’s resolutions are:

- Eat better
- Exercise more
- Spend less money

I track the top resolutions every year, and the truth is, they don’t change much. These are the top three nationally year to year, even though they may swap positions. Same resolutions, same problems and same disappointments when the goals are not met.

Most people, (maybe even you?), get amped up during the holidays to dig in to their new diet, new budget, and new exercise routine, only to fail a few weeks or months into the year.

Why? Just the fact that you think about resolutions and setting positive goals for yourself means you are most likely a responsible human being with a certain stick-to-itiveness. You’ve stuck with other goals, right? You graduated from school, held down a job, are raising those kids, AND you knit that entire sweater, didn’t you? (OK, maybe you didn’t finish the sweater, but the kids are fed and that’s more important).

So how come you can’t stick to a diet? Or get on the elliptical three times a week? Or only eat out once a month instead of four times?

Maybe We Need to Change our Perspective

It’s not because you’re a failure – rather, you have SET YOURSELF UP for failure by choosing goals that are based in punishment and deprivation. And that’s our culture’s message, isn’t it? Most of the ads we are exposed to drive home the same belief – we are not good enough, not achieving enough, not perfect enough, and we need to get SERIOUS with ourselves and make some major changes in order to have a satisfying life.

What if all of that malarkey isn’t true? Just think about it for a minute. I bet you’re pretty awesome and have many fantastic achievements under your belt. Why always this drive to achieve more? It puts us on a treadmill that never gets us to that coveted and impossible destination – perfection.

And what if you’re having a hard time in life? What if you have made mistakes (most of us have!)? What if you are at a low point, and you feel and know your life needs to change? Is setting up a bunch of stressful goals based in deprivation going to help you get out of that painful place?

When I’ve been at low points in my life, forcing myself to go the weight room or spend less money on shoes was not the answer – it was being more kind to myself and reaching out for support from people who truly love and care for me. The same goes for you!

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So it goes without saying that I believe your primary New Year’s resolution should be recognizing your strengths and being kinder to yourself.

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You Can Do It, Here's How

Apart from that, if you still want to achieve the top three resolutions listed above, here are some unlikely tips that may seem strange, but they will help you reach these goals a lot more easily! Why? Because they are based on adding more joy to your life, not subtracting it.

Stop dieting today! Diets DON’T work, period! If you stop dieting and start eating intuitively (according to hunger), you will achieve and maintain your natural weight easily, and for some that will mean losing weight. 95% of people who lose weight on diets ultimately regain the weight, and yo-yo dieting over a lifetime puts you in physical danger. In fact, it can set the stage for you to develop dangerous eating problems such as anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating or compulsive exercising.
In order to exercise more, do exercise that doesn’t feel like exercise. Never exercise with weight loss or calorie burning as a goal and I mean Never with a capital N. Change your exercise outlook, and start practicing joyful movement. If you stop exercising for weight loss or for burning calories, or for getting ripped, you’ll start to think about exercising for fun and feeling good in your body. Then you’re going to exercise more, and you’re going to be fit for life.

Be playful about exercise and try new activities, preferably with a group. For example, if you hate the elliptical, step off of it and on to volleyball court if you love team sports.

3. In order to spend less, don’t go on a money diet. Just like food, totally depriving yourself of spending on anything you deem “nonessential” will backfire and cause binge spending.

Instead, always pay yourself first, even if it’s only a few dollars, and also put aside some “fun money” that you can spend on anything you want guilt free. You are more likely to consistently save and avoid overspending with this approach.

Of course, if you need help to change your mind set in these three areas, you can always get coaching to help you along. You can call me for an appointment or set up a free 15 minute consult at The Body Image Counseling Center for help in achieving New Year’s resolutions without pain!

Is your child or teen refusing to go to school?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:50:24 GMT

Ways to Help Your Child

Is your child or teenager so anxious about school they refuse to go?

Are they having trouble getting out of bed in the morning and leaving the house on time?

Is your child obsessed over getting into the “right” college?

Does he or she tell you often that they “hate school” and/or feel suicidal because of school related stress?

Is he or she hyper focused on getting straight “A’s” even though you have reassured them over and over again that they do not need to be perfect?

If you're a parent and can relate to one or more of the above situations, you are definitely not alone!

As a therapist with over twenty years of experience counseling children and teens, I have noticed an alarming trend in my practice – more and more parents are calling me worried to death because their child or teen is too anxious or depressed to go to school. In most cases it started slowly – their child had a bad day or said they were “sick” so they were allowed to stay home. Increasingly it got worse, with their child developing panic attacks or suicidal feelings around having to go to class.

Statistics From the Field

The following statistics support what I am seeing on the front lines in my therapy practice:

Approximately 1 to 5 percent of all school-aged children experience school refusal.
More than ¼ of all youth will engage in some degree of school refusal during their school years, ranging from complaints and threats to avoid school, to missing school for months or even years at a time.
Boys and girls are equally affected.

Parenting has become even more of a complex juggling act in recent years, and our children are dealing with issues even more stressful than those we had growing up. On the one hand, you have compassion for your child or teen dealing with hormone changes, school and social pressures, but on the other, it can cause tremendous anxiety and stress for parents when their children and teens refuse to go to school. This can cause arguing and conflict out of worry, even though you love and support your child at heart.

What are the possible causes?

There are several complex reasons your child may be refusing school. They include:

What is the best treatment?

Many parents are afraid to seek therapy for school phobia because they are afraid it will hurt their child’s chances of getting into college or getting a job, but this is not true! In fact, the longer you wait to address the school phobia, the worse it will become, and can even result in agoraphobia - a fear of leaving the house at all.

The best treatment for school phobia is returning to school as soon as possible with therapeutic support called Applied Behavior Analysis or exposure therapy .

Additionally, physicians, parents and counselors should avoid writing excuses for children to stay out of school unless a medical condition makes it necessary for them to stay home. The sooner your child faces the fear with strong support, the better.

How Does Behavior Modification Help School Refusal in Children and Teens?

Behavior modification is successfully used to treat a variety of distressing teen problems, including aggression, acting out, and disrespectful attitude, and school phobia. Whether your child is struggling with mental health issues, social anxiety or making the right choices, our inhome behavior specialists can help your family create the positive changes you are desperately seeking in your child – all in the privacy of your own home.

Our coaches will help you learn that using positive reinforcers like praise, encouragement, or being given a privilege (such as getting to use the car, being allowed to have an extended curfew, or not having to do a certain chore) can do wonders in building courage in kids to face the stresses of school. Negative reinforcers such as ignoring yelling, screaming, threats or depressing comments can also do a great deal to stop negative thinking and school avoidance.

With in-home behavior coaching, your child plays an active role in their own life coaching, instead of parents or other adults dictating the structure of rewards and behavior changes.

This method also does not label your child a “problem” like traditional counseling approaches. It is presented as a form or tutoring or “life coaching” which eliminates the need say they are in “therapy”. We also use a team approach, including your child’s physician, school staff, and most important, YOU, to provide a strong system of support for your child as she learns to face her fears.

For some families, getting out of the house to attend sessions is extremely difficult. In that case, the help of an in-home ABA therapist can be a real life-saver, an additional plus to using this approach. In fact, a behavior coach can help you and your teen create and follow a written contract that clearly states the terms of the reward system. Most importantly, our ABA therapist will support and guide you as parents to stay on track with the plan for your child to face the fear of going to school and not back down.

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If your child or teen is refusing to go to school, please don’t give up.

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Our coaches can come to your home and help him face his fears, rapidly, and without conflict between you. It’s completely private and confidential. If you would like a free 15 minute phone consult to discuss your child’s specific situation and how we can help, just call us at 904-737-3232 or fill out a confidential appointment request form below. We will be in touch with you TODAY.

Are you trying to go cold turkey with your eating disorder symptoms? It won't work!

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:40:11 GMT

Going cold turkey to stop your eating disorder will not work, even if some doctors and therapists have told you it will. Unfortunately, I’ve had many patients over the years who saw therapists, doctors and even dietitians who advised them some form of the following: “You’re going to stop purging tomorrow and we’re going to count the days”.

Whenever the client would inevitably fail at this task (which happens to everyone, because it is the wrong advice), there would be disapproving or frustrated comments from the provider. Going cold turkey is a deprivation, all or nothing approach, and although these therapists and doctors mean well, they’re actually hurting their patients.

Why is "going cold turkey" not the right plan?

Eating disorders are not due to a weakness or a lack of self-control.

Rather, they’re the ultimate form of willpower. If you imagine a newborn baby, what’s the first thing a newborn baby does after it cries and breathes? It eats. And if a newborn baby is left to itself and not fed, what’s going to happen to it? It’s going to die. From the time we’re little and we are nursing or bottle-feeding, we are associating eating and having something in our mouths with being loved, being cherished and nurtured, being warm, being safe and surviving.

Hopefully as that baby grows up and develops other ways of feeling loved and nurtured and safe, she or he develops a diverse group of ways to soothe besides eating. However, if there is a traumatic event or if the child is shamed and not allowed to explore their world safely, they will soothe themselves by controlling what they put in their mouth when they’re under severe amounts of stress.

For example, if you ask someone who is bulimic what their experience is like, many will tell you that right before they purge and right after, they feel shame and guilt - but during the act, it’s extremely soothing. It’s a release. Purging is actually a lot like nursing. It follows that if you take away the eating disorder behaviors before you substitute other healthier ways of coping, it’s just imposing upon yourself a deprivation cycle that will causes symptoms to get worse.

Finding a better approach in coping mechanisms

Never tell someone with an eating disorder to just stop or go cold turkey with their symptoms no matter what they are – compulsively eating, overeating, binging, purging or starving.

Don’t tell yourself or someone else to “just eat.” or “just stop purging TODAY”. That’s not going to work. Eating disordered behaviors are usually the last symptoms to go, not the first. You have to substitute other healthier coping mechanisms in before you can let go of the eating disorder symptoms. If you try to resist your symptoms before learning why they are there or what to do instead, it will only lead to the symptoms returning with a vengeance.

Her Story

I want to tell you a story now about a client that I had years ago that will illustrate this point. She began therapy with me and we were starting all the work we needed to do to figure out the underlying reasons she was making herself throw up about five times a day. She was very discouraged because it was hard work to do.

One day she came in after about a month of therapy and she said “Lori, I bought a calendar and I’m going to cross out the days that I don’t purge. I’m going to start today.” And I said: “Well, if you need to do that, that’s okay.” But I told her why I didn’t think it was a good idea, that we must talk about the stressors that were causing her to purge.

I also kept reminding her that the eating disorders symptoms are the last to go, not the first. I encouraged her not to give up. I reassured her that people do get better. But she was, I think, in so much despair and so desperate to stop (like so many people suffering with these disorders) she just couldn’t hear my words at that point in treatment. So she replied: “No Lori, I’m going to keep the calendar.”

A week went by and she came in for her appointment and said “Look! I made it a week. I haven’t purged in one week.” I replied gently “Wow, okay. I know you feel really good about that and if you need to keep using the calendar, that’s fine. But let’s keep working on “why”; let’s keep doing the work we need to do.” Another month went by. She crossed a months’ worth of days off the calendar. And then 3 months went by. Then on about the 100th day after we began therapy, she recalled a memory that she had been molested by a family member when she was little.

The purging began again very badly as she recovered these memories.

But the good news is that there’s a happy end to the story.

She stuck with therapy and at that point she stopped crossing days off the calendar, stopped worrying about that. We had enough trust between us that she could begin to talk about what had happened to her and that’s when she began to start to truly get better.

We didn’t worry so much about how much she purged. She was working with a nutritionist and doctor to make sure she was physically safe; an essential component of treatment. But that’s when she really began her permanent recovery.

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If you are struggling with an eating disorder, you need help to discover the “why” underlying your symptoms. Let us help. If you would like to discuss your situation with me personally, just ask for a free 15 minute consult here and I will call you the same day.

Do you drop your routines over the holidays? It could hurt your eating disorder recovery!

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:31:46 GMT

I’m very happy to be able to help you with an extremely important topic when it comes to eating disorder recovery – explaining why it’s so important to keep up comforting habits and rituals during the holiday season.

You don’t have to suffer over the holidays if you have food and body image issues, and keeping up your self-care routines can really help.

Holiday Stressors

Have you noticed that each year holiday stress starts right around Halloween? You’re going along without a care in the world, and don’t remember it’s coming, but then… all of that Halloween candy shows up. The candy starts the entire holiday food parade, which marches on right through the New Year.

That’s an awfully long time to cope with food stress - October through January. That’s one quarter of every year of your life! There is a lot of rich holiday food around during the holidays that is normally not available. Just the presence of these types of foods can trigger eating disorder behaviors and low self-esteem around body image.

Be aware of the interruption of comforting routines over the holidays and have “backup” rituals to take their place.

Adjusting to Your Holiday Season Schedule

So many of our normal routines are interrupted over the holidays. If you’re a college student, you won’t have class for up to a month. You may have time off from work. Your meals might not be the same, especially if everyone is home at the same time, you’re trying to get organized, or there are many social engagements to attend.

It can be difficult to keep up with regular meals. You may not have your usual supports such as your therapist, or planned get-togethers with friends if they’re going out of town. If you’re on a sports team, they might not have practice over the holidays, for example.

Holiday time can result in interruption of routines that help you feel grounded. In fact, you might not even realize how grounded they make you feel until you don’t have them! It becomes all the more important to anticipate the interruption of these routines.

I suggest that you create special holiday rituals that will comfort you if your normal routines are not in place.

It is Ok to Grieve

If you’re coming up on the anniversary of the death of someone you love over the holidays, it would be important to plan a ritual to commemorate their memory. You might visit the cemetery, or light candles for them, or you could plan meeting for loved ones where you can all reminisce and talk about the person who has been lost.

Many people get “surprised” by the anniversaries of loss over the holidays and resulting grief. This is in large part due to our society’s erroneous message that one should “get over” feelings of grief and loss quickly and just move on. Grief does not work in this manner. It comes in waves. It can be triggered by a sight, a smell, a birthday, someone’s small comment.

Grief can arise years or even decades after a loss, and this is completely normal. Many feel shame over these normal feelings of sadness and loss, and as a result try to push them away. What would help a lot more is to acknowledge the feelings, bring them out into the open, and actually make a place for them.

Ideas for Comforting Holiday Rituals:

Make sure you schedule time alone to breathe and just relax.
Plan to pursue interests for which you normally don’t have time, such as taking a trip to the beach, taking time for a hike in the mountains, or maybe even just sitting down and reading a book for an afternoon.
Arrange to be in contact with your loved ones even if they’re out of town for the holidays. We’re so lucky these days to have Skype/FaceTime, and of course, our phones, as well as lots of ways to see and speak to the people we care about and love. Try hard not to isolate over the holidays.
Try to keep up some of the normal routines that make you feel grounded, if you can. If you have an exercise routine, you could try to keep it up during these months. Follow your meal plan and don’t skip meals. Take your dogs on their regular walk. Keep your weekly poker game going.
Keep up with volunteer activities over the holidays.

You probably won’t be able to keep all of your normal routines, but try to keep a few of them if you can; it will make a huge difference. And of course, if you need extra support around eating and body image issues over the holidays, we’re here at The Body Image Counseling Center to help. Just call for a free 15 minute consult and we will be in touch the same day to help!

Is your family’s constant dieting hurting your kids?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:25:56 GMT

Diets are prevalent in our culture.

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Studies show that the average age that girls start dieting is eight, and they start to talk about dieting even younger.
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They view the word fat as a negative word starting at age five! As a parent, you may think you are helping your child by encouraging her to lose weight through dieting – in fact, many doctors still encourage parents to put their kids on diets because of the obesity crisis in America. This is a case where the prevailing advice is wrong and even dangerous for our children.

Why? Because diets don’t work!

Intuitive Eating vs. Dieting

It’s very important to learn the difference between intuitive eating and dieting, and to make a promise to never diet again. You may be asking: what’s an intuitive eater? The best way to describe it--believe it or not--is to imagine a newborn baby.

Newborns, if they’re allowed to eat when they want, never eat past the point of being full and they never diet and eat less than they really want. They always eat just as much as their bodies need. We’re all born with the ability to eat when we’re hungry and stop when we’re satisfied. That’s what an intuitive eater is. Your body knows what it needs if you just listen to it. You were born with this ability, and you still have it within you.

Drawbacks to Dieting

Ninety-five percent of all people on diets will eventually regain the weight. Why is that? What don't diets work?

When you restrict your food, you’re basically on a diet. You’re putting yourself in a deprivation/ binge cycle where you deprive yourself, deprive yourself, deprive yourself; and no matter how long you’re on the diet, eventually you’re going to get hungry.

You’re going to want to intuitively eat and then most people regain the weight. But, instead of just eating to the point of being satisfied, they binge way past the point of being satisfied because they’ve been deprived for so long.

It’s very important to reject that diet mentality. Watch out for false information in the media, especially the Internet, about diet and exercise. This false information is plentiful. It seems that every other day we hear about a new diet or a new exercise program that promises to help us drop pounds and have that perfect body.

It takes a lot of mental effort to wade through all of that false information. The answer is truly so simple, if you trust it. Just be like you were when you were a baby; listen to your body, and it will tell you how to eat.

If you diet at home, please consider switching to a non-diet approach.

That means keeping diet foods out of the house, or not forbidding other “fattening” foods in your home. Not only will it help you reach your natural weight and stay there, it will help you not send your kids a mixed message about weight and body image.

It’s not good enough to tell your child that it’s okay for them to intuitively eat and be healthy, but not apply the same principles for yourself.

Going no-diet can be challenging. If you need help, please don’t hesitate to contact us . We have years of experience helping families learn the intuitive eating approach and avoid developing eating disorders of anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia and/or emotional eating.

Are damaging negative thoughts getting in the way of your recovery?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:12:39 GMT

oday I’m going to tell you about the healing power of affirmations for eating disorders recovery and healing from lifelong body hatred.

I know you’ve probably heard a lot in the media about using affirmations, and you may think it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

But I’m not talking about some new age hype, here. I’m talking about the role your recurring negative thoughts play in keeping your eating disorder around.

In fact, psychologists have been researching the extremely harmful effects that negative thoughts and beliefs have on a person’s mental and physical health for years – way before the New Agers!

On the Path to Getting Un-Stuck

Do you know that we think 95% of the SAME thoughts every day?

Really think for a minute about that! This means that if you are letting negative thoughts and beliefs about your body, food and ability to fully recover dominate your mind, you could repeat these messages every day for 95% of your life!!!

Now I’m not saying the reciting a bunch of affirmations every day is going to be the magic solution to recovery; however, if you don’t work on changing your negative beliefs and substituting positive ones, you will for sure remain stuck in your anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating, or body dysmorphia.

I’d like to show you the correct way to use affirmations that will help you to take any negative beliefs you have about food and your body, and kick them to the curb! But first, we have to identify what your negative beliefs are.

This work may be painful, but you have to pay attention to how you talk to yourself before you can become your own best cheerleader… because that’s what you have to do to get better. The good news is that once you realize what your negative thoughts are, and start talking back to them, it becomes automatic, and before you know it, that 95% becomes positive and life affirming.

Let's get started :)

The first step is to PAY ATTENTION to the way you talk to yourself when you…

1. Eat

2. Look in the mirror

3. Are in public

4. Are alone

Write down the messages you tell yourself every day, maybe without even realizing it.

Finally, ask yourself: “Would I talk to a child, my best friend, or someone else I love the way I talk to myself?”… If the answer is NO, then why do you deserve that kind of treatment?

This can be an eye-opener, but it’s essential in order to make a powerful change.

Now I know from working for almost twenty years with people suffering from eating disorders that they tend to be primarily people pleasers and givers. These are lovely qualities, in moderation, but when you’re always putting other people’s feelings and needs ahead of yours, you won’t make the time to take care of you.

Keep it Up - It's Worth It!

And making it a priority to do positive affirmations every day to challenge and change your negative beliefs is essential to achieve quick and permanent recovery.

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Yes, I said EVERY DAY.

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I know that we all have lots of responsibilities to take care of every day, especially when we’ve learned to take care of others before ourselves. These responsibilities include:

• putting food on the table

• paying the mortgage/rent

• taking care of our children

• doing our own class work/ working to support ourselves and our families

When you're busy with these monumental everyday tasks, it's really easy to skip doing the things that will give you the longer term payoffs. Positive affirmations and self-talk aren't urgent or pressing, and it can be difficult to truly believe in their transformative power, so you may be more likely to put them by the wayside.

I know that you are busy. I also know that the only way you are going to fully recover is if you start to shift your mindset. Starting TODAY.

Where Do I Start?

Do you know that it takes an average of 30 days of consciously changing a habit in order to make it stick? And most people “give up” much sooner than that!

Task for today:

1. Get out your list of the statements you use to “talk to yourself” during the course of the day.

2. If there are positive statements (and I hope there are!), number them on a new list, but make sure they are written in the present tense. (i.e. “I did a great job today, should become “I do a great job today”).

3. If there are negative statements (and I hope there aren’t, but usually there are), add them to the list, but first create its positive twin, and state it in the present tense (i.e. “I hated my body today”, should become “I love my body today!)

What to Do if You Feel "Blocked"

Sometimes my clients have trouble creating this list, so it’s OK if you do, too. There are several reasons why you may have a “block” in being able to create a positive affirmation list:

1) You still don’t fully believe that affirmations, repeated every day, can lead to powerful life transformations.

2) Your negative thoughts, or what some therapists call “limiting beliefs”, are still keeping you from being able to cheer yourself on.

3) You let “people pleasing” and pressing every day events come before setting aside quality time for yourself.

If one or more of these reasons got in the way of creating and using affirmations, don’t be too hard on yourself. These are all powerful forces that have kept your eating disorder active for weeks, months or even years. And you may have had a lifetime of repeating negative thoughts to yourself over and over again, for 95% of each and every day.

Your Support System

It’s so important to have people in your life that help you to challenge these blocks and encourage you not to give up – and remember, right now I’m your number one fan. I know that people can fully recover from eating disorders; I’ve seen it over and over again. You have the same wonderful potential to get better quickly as all of the unique and special individuals I’ve helped over the years.
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A change in mindset from negative to positive will not only be one of the most powerful tools to overcome your eating disorder, but will actually help you excel in all other areas of your life.
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This is an added incentive to go back and create that affirmation list if you haven’t already. Because you can complete that exercise to help with any area of your life in which you feel stuck, and use it to propel forward and achieve your goals.

For example, what if you are feeling hopeless that you’ll ever meet that “special someone”. What if you’ve had horrible relationship experiences in the past that have just confirmed your negative beliefs about relationships? Maybe some of these negative beliefs include:

• I don’t deserve to be loved.

• Anyone I’m romantically involved with will ultimately betray me or let me down.

• There aren’t enough quality, available men (or women!) out there for me.

These negative beliefs swirl around and around in your head, 95% of every day, day after day. Do you think those messages encourage you to get out there and take risks to meet someone? Do you think they help you to recognize potential mates that possess the qualities you seek? Not if you believe these people don’t even exist!!!

Just like with your eating disorder, changing your underlying negative beliefs about love and relationships creates fertile ground for you to find a mate who will adore you.

If you can complete this list for one area of your life, it will become easier to build one for the next area, and the next, and the next, until… your overall mindset about yourself, your life, and your potential becomes hopeful and positive.

Here is how to use your affirmation list to the best effect:

1) If you did not create your affirmation list, shake it off and try again! If you need help, ask a trusted family member, friend or your therapist to make the list with you.

2) If you did create the list (hooray!), then place it right by your bed and make sure you recite it EVERY MORNING when you get up. It should be the first thing you do each day. If you forget to recite it one day, do it as soon as you remember. Note how and if it changes the way you face the day and feel about yourself. If more negative thoughts arise, write them down and then rewrite its positive twin in the present tense, and add it to the list.

If you still need help, my positive body image texting program, Text2bWell.com is an inexpensive, but powerful way to receive weekly coaching through your smart phone on how to turn negative thoughts around. It’s completely confidential, you can use it on your own time, and you have access to a private forum where you can interact with others working on the same goals, plus receive personal coaching from me!

Are these 5 harmful holiday myths hurting your eating disorder recovery?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 19:03:05 GMT

Harmful myths abound during holiday time, and they don’t help matters when it comes to eating disorder recovery. Here are the worst offenders:

Myth #1: The holidays are a happy time so there’s something wrong with you if you feel blue or depressed.

There are many, many reasons why the holidays can feel sad. Yet, people often experience shame about feeling down during this time. When you see all the commercials on TV about being together as a family decorating, and how happy and relaxed everyone looks, you may make the mistake of believing you are the only abnormal one who feels low. As a therapist, I can tell you that I have seen hundreds of people over the years in counseling and many, many people get depressed over the holidays! It’s the rule, rather than the exception.

Myth #2: Holiday time is family time, so why is your family stressing you out?

I’m sure you know personally that family drama, stress and painful issues can arise during this time of year. For one, if you don’t see your family often, and then everyone comes together over holiday time, proximity can ignite tension in the family. You may also be commemorating anniversaries of the loss of loved ones, which can throw your grieving into overdrive.

Maybe this is the first holiday season where you are dealing with the divorce of your parents or your own divorce for the first time. I work with a lot of clients who are experiencing divorce and it can be very stressful and sad to figure out what to do differently for the holidays.

Another family issue for those with eating disorders is that, most often, there are other people in your family with undiagnosed eating disorder issues. They might be dieting all the time or compulsively exercising, discussing how fat they feel, or emotionally eating. When you visit them over the holidays, their undiagnosed eating disorder issues can trigger you.

What if you don’t have anywhere to go for the holidays? Many of my clients don’t have a family to go to, or it’s too stressful to be with their family, or they’re in college and they have that big month-long holiday break ahead of them. That can be a lot of time to have on your hands when you’re used to being busy. All of these situations can trigger eating disorder symptoms.

Myth #4: Everyone loves the holidays so if you don’t, you’re a party pooper.
There’s a lot of stigma about admitting you may not be happy for the holidays. I can’t tell you how many people come to see me for counseling and confess, “You know what? I really hate holiday time. I don’t mean to be a scrooge but it’s just so stressful. I can’t wait until it’s over!” Please know this - you are not a bad person if you dislike the holidays.

Myth #5: Everyone else is having an awesome holiday since they’re constantly posting about it on Facebook.

The perfect family images we see in the media and on Facebook are unrealistic, just like airbrushing models to make them look perfect for ads. It can be painful to see family members and acquaintances taking fabulous trips or having amazing parties and being with tons of friends over the holidays.

It’s not that those events are not true, but I’ve always believed we should have a Facebook called “the real Facebook” where people post information that isn’t so great, such as how stressful it was to get ready for those parties, or unspoken tensions between guests at the parties. People don’t post about those facts - Facebook filters out much of real life stress. So please try to take it with a grain of salt.

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Be aware all of these harmful holiday myths and try to let go of the guilt about feeling happy and perfect during this time. You’re not abnormal, okay? I almost forgot about one last harmful myth – the holidays are a time to relax and be happy, so you shouldn’t ask for extra support or help during this time. To the contrary! Putting support in place during, or ideally before, the holidays, will actually buffer you from symptom relapse.

If you are feeling holiday stress start to build up, you can always get support here at The Body Image Counseling Center. Having a place to vent and be validated that is totally confidential can do wonders. Just call us at 904-737-3232 or set up a free 15 minute consult and we’ll lend a shoulder right away.

Do I need to go to the hospital for eating disorders treatment?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:52:06 GMT

Should you choose inpatient or outpatient treatment for an eating disorder?

Eating disorders are not like other mental health issues people face, such as depression or anxiety, which can often be remedied by once-a-week visits to a qualified and empathic therapist. Complete treatment for eating disorders requires the work of a team of professionals who can treat the whole person.

There are two ways most patients receive access to this team of professionals. Treatment that takes place outside of the hospital or residential setting is known as “ outpatient treatment ,” and treatment occurring inside of a hospital or residential care setting is known as “ inpatient treatment .” While there are many advantages to inpatient treatment programs, there can be hidden disadvantages.

What to Expect at the Hospital

When a person goes to the hospital for eating disorder treatment, they receive 24/7 support, which includes:

• Psychotherapy several times a week;

• Nutrition counseling several times a week;

• Group therapy every day;

• Visits to the psychiatrist at least once per week;

• Meal planning sessions;

• Meal monitoring;

• Other therapeutic supports such as equine therapy, yoga or body movement therapy, art therapy, etc.

Things to Consider with Inpatient Treatment

The best inpatient eating disorder treatment programs can truly be lifesavers; however, there are two major problems that can arise:

1) They can be extremely expensive, sometimes even if you have health insurance. And if you don’t have health insurance, then they are highly unaffordable.

2) They usually do not adequately prepare you for going back to REAL LIFE (which for most people does not consist of daily therapy, yoga sessions, and not having to go to work or school!).

So while there are certain advantages to inpatient care, these solutions often serve as a temporary patch to a large, complicated dilemma.

An Introduction to Outpatient Treatment

The best model for eating disorders treatment that does not take place in a hospital or residential setting is the outpatient team treatment model . This outpatient treatment team approach essentially mirrors the setup of a hospital program, but allows much more freedom and less disruption of your life.

If you secure a quality outpatient treatment team quickly, there is a very good chance you can avoid inpatient treatment. The emphasis, note, is on “team.” If you go to only one provider without putting together a team, you are setting yourself up for failure in your recovery. Strong words, yes, but they’re true.

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Studies show that people with eating disorders have a better prognosis and recover faster when they are working with a treatment team similar to what they would have in a hospital setting.

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A diagnosis of an eating disorder is not an automatic life sentence of misery for you. By taking the right steps from the start, you are very likely to recover. However, if you do not get help, and the right kind, you could be sentencing yourself to months, or even years, of struggling with an eating disorder. In fact, the faster you secure quality treatment, the more likely you are to recover fully and live a happy and healthy life without being obsessed with food and weight.

TIP: Currently, up to 20% of individuals suffering from an eating disorder will do so for the rest of their lives. This staggering statistic would be greatly reduced if the person received the right form of treatment from the start.

Benefits of Outpatient Treatment

In addition to the comparative cost advantage, there are further benefits of quality outpatient care:
• You will usually still be able to attend school or work, at least part-time;

• You do not have to pay for accommodations and travel to the inpatient hospital, which is unlikely to be located in your town;

• You will be creating a team that will always be available in town if you relapse, so you can get back on track quickly;

• Remember that an inpatient stay is an emergency measure that is most often used to stabilize a person in grave physical danger. You still have to learn how to manage the stresses of your life when you leave the hospital. This is why the most dangerous time for eating disorder patients is immediately after they leave the hospital and return to their regular lives. If there are no supports in place when they return, they are likely to fall back;

• One of the most important therapeutic advantages of using an outpatient treatment team rather than going to a hospital is that you will learn how to manage the stresses that triggered the eating disorder in real life. You will then be able to practice the techniques in your own home, while you are still in school or work and engaging in your social life.

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The Body Image Counseling Center offers full outpatient team treatment services, including nutrition counseling, psychotherapy, and regular consults with the patient’s medical providers. If you’re still not sure which approach is the best for your situation, just contact us for a free 15 minute consult , and we will help you determine whether inpatient or outpatient treatment is the way to go in your recovery.

Another parting tip: we never take on a new patient who has an eating disorder until their primary doctor gives us a “medical OK” that they are physically safe to be in an outpatient treatment setting. If a therapist or dietitian does not include regular communication with your doctor in your treatment plan, look elsewhere for help!

Why can’t I just stop bingeing, purging and emotionally eating?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:48:04 GMT

Have you ever tried to “just stop” starving, bingeing or purging “cold turkey” out of frustration and despair? Here are some of the things people say to themselves when their eating disorder gets really bad:

“This is the last time I’m going to make myself throw up”

“I’m starting my diet today”

“From this day on, I’m not eating any more white sugar, carbs or other BAD foods”

“I’m going to mark off the days on my calendar that I don’t throw up, until I stop completely”

I’m sure it is extremely distressing to you not to be able to control your bingeing and/or purging or restricting when you’re doing pretty well in the other areas of your life. Although your desire to stop is very healthy, when you try to go “cold turkey” with your eating disorder behaviors you are actually depriving yourself of the behaviors that soothe you when you are under the MOST stress.

Your eating disorder is like a raft

This is how I explain it to my clients: Imagine you are floating on a large wooden raft in the middle of an immense ocean. There is no land in sight, and you’ve been on the raft for days. If someone said to you, “Hey, jump off that raft, push it away, and swim,” would you do it?

Of course you wouldn’t, because if you can’t see the land, then you’re going to hold on to the only thing keeping you afloat. If you jump, you fear and know that you will drown.

Your eating disorder is the raft. It is what you hold onto and is the only activity that truly provides relief (although temporary) when you are under extreme stress. And that is why going cold turkey NEVER works. You will always swim back to the raft and hold on… until you can see the land. The eating disorder is your will to survive.

This is why when my clients enter therapy to recover from an eating disorder, I tell them up front that the eating disordered behaviors are the LAST to go, not the first. It is my job to help them see the land, believe they can get there, and then to finally let go of the raft. Giving up an eating disorder is scary. Even though there are a lot of problems associated with bingeing, purging, restricting, and/ or compulsively overeating, these behaviors all help you feel comforted and safe.

The key to getting better is to create and regularly use a list of alternative comforts that better assist you in dealing with the stress and pain in your life. If you didn't have such a list or guidance and support in learning how to use it, why would you ever think of giving up an eating disorder?

How to let go of your raft

Remember that the first step in being able to let go of the raft – your eating disorder – is to truly know and understand that it is keeping you afloat in life. You have to change the way you see your eating disorder, that it is really your friend, not your enemy.

There are so many people who live a secret life, and sometimes a secret lifetime, battling an eating disorder. The physical, emotional and spiritual problems that manifest with eating disorders are so powerful and all-encompassing that it can be easy to believe that these are the primary symptoms that must be overcome.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. If you have spent any time reading books on eating disorder recovery, you know that an eating disorder is really an all-powerful coping mechanism that soothes enormous amounts of underlying stress. If you think back on when you first developed your eating disorder (it's often earlier than you first guess), it is almost certain that there was an accompanying stressful event(s) that occurred during that time period.

What do you think are YOUR underlying stressors and/or traumas that first triggered your eating disordered behaviors? It is only when you identify these and receive proper support to grieve, grow and heal that you will be able to let go of your eating disorder for good.

What my clients say

Here are a few comments from former clients of mine when they were asked this question:

“Good question. I can’t remember life without ED, so it’s hard to even start to think about what caused it. And when you can’t shut ED up enough to hear yourself it makes it harder to dig through the muck to find the underlying cause. It’s the most amazing (and most inherently flawed) coping mechanism out there. Life with ED is life on auto pilot. I don’t have to feel anything or deal with anything – ED does it all.”

“What’s scares me about recovery from an eating disorder is that all this other stuff is coming out…it’s like the eating disorder kept me from doing all this stuff that would hurt me and others…and now in addition to focusing on recovering from an eating disorder, I have to make sure that I don’t slip up on anything else…it’s a constant struggle.”

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If you’d like to read more about the raft and how to achieve full recovery from an eating disorder, you can download my book called 5 Simple Steps to be Eating Disorder Free here . And remember, you need coaching and guidance from qualified professionals to achieve full and lasting recovery. It takes a lot of courage to ask for help and walk into that first counseling appointment. If you would like to test the waters before jumping in, you can set up a free and confidential 15 minute discovery call with us to discuss your personal situation and see if treatment with us is a good fit.

If you want lasting love, make a deal breaker list.

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:25:26 GMT

In order to have healthy friendships and loving relationships, it’s crucial to make what I call a deal breaker list. When you look for an apartment or car, you have a list of things that are deal breakers, right?

For example, if the plumbing doesn’t work, or if the apartment is in a bad location or if it’s too small. Or if a car you want to buy is leaking oil, that’s a deal breaker. You should also have reliable list of deal breakers for friendships and love relationships.

A lot of people actually DO have a deal breaker list in the back of their minds. But sometimes they are attracted to someone so much, that they ignore their deal breaker list and date the person (or marry them) anyway! This decision usually ends up not working out very well, in fact, for many of my clients being in a harmful relationship can lead to destructive behaviors, such as drinking and drug use, development of eating disorders (such as anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating, and/or compulsive exercise), depression and/or anxiety.

Surface vs. Relationship Qualities - What to Look For

Here is what I think should be on your deal breaker list, and of course you can add more. What many people put on their deal breaker lists are what I call surface qualities . For example, the person needs to be tall, or blonde or they need to be educated a certain way. You wouldn’t believe, for example, how many women have told me in counseling they will not date a man shorter than them, even if he is funny, warm, kind and attractive! I understand physical qualities can be very important requirements to some people, but truthfully, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Surface qualities are not as important as relationship qualities.

4 Crucial Elements for Your Deal Breaker List

1. Substance abuse of any kind is a deal breaker. If a person is numbing out with drugs, pot, pills or alcohol, their primary relationship is with the substance, not with you.

2. "The four horsemen of the apocalypse" make up the second deal breaker and are signs of an unhealthy relationship. The term comes from the famous family therapists named John and Julie Gottman. They assert that if any of these four signs are present in a relationship, it is likely to end. In fact, John Gottman made the bold claim that he could predict whether a relationship was going to end within three minutes of observing a couple, based solely on whether or not these four behaviors were present.

The four horsemen are: contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling.

Contempt is looking down on your partner, acting and speaking like you’re better than him or her, and making your partner feel inferior to you.
Criticism includes name-calling, criticizing and berating your partner.
Defensiveness is the inability to admit when you’ve done something wrong; instead of taking responsibility and apologizing, this person defends him or herself, gets angry, or changes the subject.
Stonewalling is distancing. It includes being unable or unwilling to talk out a problem, or refusing to speak to your partner when upset or angry.

If one or more of the four horsemen are present in a friendship or a love relationship, and if you can’t work it out and stop using them, the relationship is likely doomed. Be on the lookout for the four horsementhey are all deal breakers! By the way, if you recognize these qualities in your present love relationship, do not despair. Gottman couples coaching can help you get rid of these toxic behaviors and replace them with healthier ones.

3. The third deal breaker is abusive or controlling behaviors. The reason I talk about this is, unfortunately, there is a terrible problem of stalking and abuse in our society. I’ve also heard a lot about abduction experiences where it is typically men controlling, and sometimes kidnapping, young women and holding them hostage for a period of time before letting them go. Men can also be victims of abuse in a relationship.

Abduction is an extreme version of abuse, and a crime, but I want to mention it because this terrible problem exists, and people don’t discuss it openly. It’s a secret problem that must come out into the open if things are going to change for the better.

I’ve also heard many sad stories about “text stalking,” where jilted lovers can’t let go when a relationship has ended, and they try to guilt you to come back through relentless text messages. They often try to control who you see, who you’re with and where you go.

This controlling behavior is a definite deal breaker, but sometimes people keep returning to their abusers. They can’t escape because the abuser makes them feel it’s their fault for leaving. If you are in an abusive friendship or relationship and are afraid to get outget help so you can find the strength and courage to leave.

4. My number four deal breaker is secretiveness, lying and/or having affairs. This is a very complex problem. But unless someone is truly willing to work in therapy with you and take responsibility for their history of lying, secretiveness and cheating, the relationship is not going to be successful.

It’s a good idea to consciously create a deal breaker list of relationship qualities rather than surface qualities BEFORE you start dating. If you’re not sure about the quality of your current relationship, it’s never too late to make the list and apply it to your own friendships and love relationships. And if you need help making the list or having the courage to cut ties, don’t be afraid to ask for support and guidance from a qualified therapist. If you would like to learn more about Gottman therapy and the four horsemen, check out my free webinar on the six signs of breakup and divorce here .

Are There Really Good and Bad Foods?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:21:03 GMT

Here is a question I saw in an eating disorder chat room the other day that I think speaks for so many people who are suffering in silence with eating problems, weight and body shame:

“I seem to go in a cycle of being healthy, where I feel really good about myself, and then I suddenly go to the other extreme of binging on foods that are bad for me. Then I feel so guilty I just have throw up until I can’t throw up anymore. And I know that throwing up is horrible. Not only does it screw up your hair, teeth, and skin, but it doesn’t even help me lose weight. How can I be one way and then completely the opposite the next?

The reason this person (and maybe you?) feel this way is because he or she has placed themselves in a deprivation diet cycle that is typical of most Americans. Unfortunately, we’re taught from a very young age that there is such a thing as good and bad foods. Nothing could be further from the truth! Have you ever seen a baby continue eating after she's had enough, or refuse to eat if she's hungry? Just like a baby, every person is born with a natural ability to eat when they're hungry and stop when they are satisfied.

A New Perspective

Over the years, our family and culture often separates us from this natural ability by convincing us we will become fat if we eat "bad foods," and will remain thin if we eat "good" or "healthy" foods, and in very limited quantities. All this does is set us up for a lifetime of yo-yo dieting, and sometimes more severe disorders like anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, and compulsive exercise. Focusing on good or bad foods actually keeps us from reaching our natural weight and staying there.

It may seem scary, but the solution is to actually do the opposite of what you have been doing; namely, to allow yourself to eat all kinds of foods in moderation. Stop labeling foods good or bad, and stop counting calories. If you want to eat chocolate every day, eat chocolate every day. If you want a piece of cake in the morning, have it in the morning.

Start to enjoy food and stop letting it control you. At first you may worry that you will eat these foods uncontrollably and gain weight. However, if you can truly allow yourself to eat all different kinds of foods when you want them, and stop when you are satisfied, you are much more likely to reach your natural weight and remain there without ever having to diet again.

And New Tools - Intuitive Eating

Instead of cutting out foods you think are "bad" for you, eat every meal in moderation and only to the point of being physically satisfied. If you eat beyond that, it becomes emotional eating, whether it's Thanksgiving turkey on the table, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Once the pressure to be "all or nothing" subsides, it won't matter what time of the year it is, the pressure will be off, and the answer to recovery will be the same every single day of the year. You will be able to turn off the "noise" of people around you who try to guilt you into restricting or overdoing and will cultivate a sense of peace, tranquility and control about food and body image.

For many people this “intuitive eating” approach is overwhelming and daunting. It flies in the face of most of the advice we hear from the billion dollar diet and weight loss industry. It’s OK if you can’t do it alone, because we can coach you to become an intuitive eater and be able to throw out your scale once and for all.

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At The Body Image Counseling Center, we help people end yo-yo dieting, quiet the calorie counting and body shaming thoughts, and find peace with their bodies and with food for a lifetime. Just take a look at our testimonial page to see how many people have found relief working with us.

If you’d like a free 15-minute consult on how you can end binge eating and dieting and relearn how to eat intuitively, please email or call me and I will be in touch, personally, the very same day. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

How do I help my child feel better about her body image and weight when she lives in a society obsessed with dieting?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:09:47 GMT

A few years ago I saw a story on Good Morning America about a married couple whose job is to scout for potential supermodels. The story featured three teenage girls (ALL already painfully thin, I may add) who were “discovered” by this pair. The agents were proud to disclose their regimen for transforming the teens into supermodel material.

First, they are put on a “bare bones diet” of “lettuce, carrots and egg whites”. Then they are expected to “train like professional athletes,” using the treadmill up to 10 miles per day. One of the teens was actually filmed pleading, “Feed me!” (Check out the full story here ).

When was the last time you saw a professional athlete eating only lettuce, carrots and egg whites? Michael Phelps eats a 12,000 calorie/day diet when training for the Olympics. Girls then see these supermodels, hear about their “lettuce, carrots, and egg whites” diet, and begin to adopt the same eat-very-little-and-exercise-too-much regimen.

These habits result not in the girls becoming supermodels; they result in the girls developing eating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia, emotional eating and compulsive exercising. Another not-so-surprising fact is that the modeling industry is notorious for having an astronomical number of members with eating disorders.

These twisted notions of what beauty is and how to achieve it need to be counteracted with healthy lifestyle knowledge.

How We View Ourselves Matters

In my psychotherapy practice I have had the opportunity over the years to talk intimately with hundreds of women and girls about how they feel about their bodies. What I've found is that, with the right kind of help, recovery from years of debilitating eating disorder symptoms is often relatively quick, but body hatred is much harder to eradicate.

A study done by the November 12, 2011 issue of Oprah magazine drove home this point. They compared women in their early 60s and girls in their late teens to find out how body image changes (or not) over the life span. When asked "Do you think you have a healthy body image,” 62.1% of the 60+ year olds said yes, compared to 56.8% of teens. Could it really be true that body image improves less than 6% over the course of 40 years?

In The Media

It's no wonder when we consider the way the mainstream media bombards women and girls with unrealistic images of the "ideal woman.” Case in point -- Brittany Spears participated in an article for Marie Claire where she allowed the magazine to place her original pictures next to the final airbrushed ads. Take a look here . The comparison is astonishing -- wrinkles and blemishes have disappeared, legs, waist and derriere slimmed several sizes, all with a few clicks of a mouse.

The more daughters see of the idealized, unrealistic versions of a woman’s figure, the more they compare these versions to their own real shapes. And just as these Photo Shopped pictures present unrealistic standards, so too do girls begin to attempt unrealistic means of manifesting these images in real life.

Achieving a Positive Body Image

You may ask how children can ever hope to experience positive body image when media images and society's messages about beauty are so distorted. Here are a few ways to start:

Tell your child to act "as if” and to tell herself regularly that she is beautiful even if she feels she’s not. Thoughts create reality!
Tell her not to allow herself any put-downs when she looks in the mirror;
Don't participate in turning women against each other by comparing their bodies. We all come in different and beautiful shapes and sizes;
Encourage her to look up to women who are admirable in character, achievements and kindness rather than looks;
Honestly examine your own feelings as a parent about dieting, weight and body image and get support to change them if they are unhealthy;
Write to magazines protesting their unrealistic portrayals of the female body;
If she can't stop repetitive thoughts in her head about feeling fat or ugly, remind her that these thoughts get worse when she is feeling stressed about something unrelated to her body image. Help her talk out what happened that day, or what she is thinking about that is bothersome.
Register her (and yourself, if you need help with your own body image) for our positive body image texting program Text2bwell . It is an 8-16 week program that helps fight negative body image through guidance and help from me on your smartphone.

Whatever you do, don't give up. Your child can achieve a healthy body image – it takes constant talking back to negative messages, but she can do it!

In the field with Lori Osachy, MSS, LCSW, Eating Disorder Specialist

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 18:04:55 GMT

Thanks so much to Skyler Williams from Tiffin University who interviewed me about my work with eating disorders a few months ago. I’m reposting our interview here with her permission. I hope it will help all of you to know me better, and why I am so passionate about my job!

In The Field with Lori Osachy, MSS LCSW, Eating Disorder Specialist

Skyler Williams | Tiffin University
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Navigation through a disorder can be a murky process. Learning to understand yourself, your disorder, how it alters your life and what you can do to change or adapt with it, can be a daunting and dubious process. Within the world of psychopathology, it is imperative that when one has gotten to the point of seeking help, they do so with someone with knowledge and experience in that field. The psychopathology of eating disorders is one of particular interest as there is still more understanding to be gained of this field, especially in classroom curriculum.

The following interview is with Lori Osachy, MSS LCSW, Director and Owner of The Body Image Counseling Center in Jacksonville, FL. Ms. Osachy specializes in the treatment of eating disorders and presents with a positive and upbeat approach to practice and in general. She entices the public through her website with a “Text2bwell positive body image program”, informative and easy to find interface, and supportive coaxing to contact “when you’re ready” at (904) 737-3232. The following interview was conducted via phone call with this writer:

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Ms. Osachy, thank you very much for this interview. This shouldn’t take too long so I’ll start with the first question:

Lori's Background

What is your job title?

Oh that’s no problem at all, I’m glad I could help! Goodness [chuckles] that would be a lot but I think I’d have to say my official titled would be, Owner and Operator of The Body Image Counseling Center.

What is your educational background?

I received my undergraduate degree in Political Science from Cornell University and my Master’s degree in Social Work from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research.

What licenses or certifications do you hold?

I have an LCSW which licenses me as a licensed clinical social worker. I am also a certified Gottman Educator.

What influenced your decision to go into this field?

To be honest with you it’s always been in the family [chuckles]. My father was a school psychologist and my mother was a teacher so it was already in my blood. Also, I had a very close friend in high school who almost died from an eating disorder and no one knew how to help her. Along with that I’ve always held an interest in women’s studies and issues; I worked for a crisis help line and did lots of research for my masters which only fueled my passion for this field.

What other settings have you worked in and which do you prefer?

I was involved with an outpatient eating disorder treatment center called The Renfrew Center. I did my internship work in youth treatment and with the homeless and severely mentally ill. My preference and true love is honestly private practice working with eating disorder clients and couples therapy. I’ve been doing it so long and there’s really nothing like it.

A Look into Lori's Day

What kinds of work related tasks do you do on a daily basis?

Oh goodness, everything having to do with running a business [laughs]. I mean I do of course, see patients, but since I’m also the owner of my business I also do my own marketing, I’ve done some writing, media appearances, product creation, research, bookkeeping and billing, I conduct supervision as well as lead team meetings.

What are the most common disorders that you diagnose and treat?

Bing eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, eating disorder NOS, Body dysmorphic disorder, orthorexia which is an obsession with clean eating and I see it especially in boys, primarily athletes, and compulsive over eating. I most commonly diagnose anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and compulsive over eating.

Do you see any common co-morbidity?

Yes I do actually. I see a lot of depression and anxiety, trauma – many people come in with PTSD - from abuse, such as sexual abuse. There’s drug and alcohol dependence, lots of marijuana addiction.

Which factors do you think predispose people for an eating disorder?

Yes, family history, there are genetic markers for anorexia and bulimia and history of trauma, being female in our culture, unfortunately rather predisposes women. There’s nature versus nurture, and a family history of dieting. It is a very complex group of disorders, and every individual has a unique story and contributing factors.

What is it Like at The Body Image Counseling Center?

Is the treatment more one on one or are there others (i.e. family or friends) typically involved in treatment? Does that help or hinder progress?

Teenagers come in with parents but usually adults come in by themselves. I offer parent coaching and education on the understanding the disorder. Usually after coaching parents, spouses and friends of our eating disorder clients feel a lot more equipped to help and support them.

What is the average length of treatment?

Three to six months in general.

What do you like about your job?

I feel it’s what I was meant to do, it’s never boring, it suits my strengths, and I enjoy running a business. People with eating disorders are usually high driven and high achievers and very invested in treatment. There are always problems to solve and you have to be able to change with the times. I get many of my patients and referrals online and years ago it was never like that.

What do you dislike about your job?

It takes a lot of determination to be successful in private practice. I also hate to see suffering, and these illnesses cause a lot of suffering to individuals and their loved ones until they find the right help. Luckily, I’m in a wonderful position to help end the suffering.

Looking Ahead

If you were selecting a profession would you pick this one again? Why? Why not?

[Laughs] To be honest with you, when I was a child I wanted to be a marine biologist. But I think I made the right choice. I would have ended up helping people in some way anyway – it’s my nature and gift. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have tried to find a way to do both what I’m doing now and marine biology. Maybe I would have counseled the dolphins [laughs].

What are some topics in the field you think need more research?

Oh that’s a good one. I think there needs to be more information in the field about how to get funding for treatment. Unfortunately many insurances do not sufficiently cover eating disorder treatment and I think if more people had access to it through funding they would take more advantage of it. Research on the nature versus nurture arguments, and better understanding of the changing genes that predispose someone for an eating disorder.

Maybe we could figure out how to alter these genes. They should also look into body positive ad campaigns and whether they improve the bottom line so we can stop worshipping ultrathin supermodels.

What changes do you hope to see in this area in the next 5-10 years?

Pretty much the same areas I’d like to see more research in. More funding so there’s access to treatment for all and hopefully more achievable ideals for men and women in beauty and body image.

What suggestions would you give to students to prepare them for a career in this specialty?

Get a business degree if you plan to go into private practice because if you want to be successful in it you need that business knowledge. They don’t teach you that in school. Do an internship and work in an accredited program for several years where you can learn how to treat eating disorders; don’t just wing it. In this type of field you really need to know what you are doing to be able to truly help people.

[End of interview]

At the conclusion of this interview, Ms. Osachy graciously wished me luck with my continued education and asked if I came across anyone who could use her services, to send them her way. It was easy to agree to her request. In accordance from classroom text and lecture, I was not surprised to hear about anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and compulsive eating.

Along with that, her information of trauma such as sexual abuse and genetic history predisposing someone for a disorder aligned with what I had previously learned. Treatment of an eating disorder often has to deal with treating not just the eating disorder but a comorbid disorder as well, typically depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) which are life-long disorders that require life-long monitoring and treatment.

Learning New Things

During the course of this interview, my eyes had been opened to information I previously had no knowledge of. For instance, the cultural differences and demographic differences (which part of me expected based on textbook and lecture information) and yet some of it is still surprising to hear from someone working in the field.

While I have heard of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), from the textbook definition it as classified as an Obsessive-Compulsive related disorder (Davey, 2014) and not an eating disorder. However, I can see how preoccupation with appearance and an eating disorder would be related to each other. Olivardia et al., (2004) studied men’s preconceived notions of muscularity, fat index, self-esteem, mood disorders and eating disturbances and found that men were more concerned with having more muscle then more fat. Self-esteem issues, mood disorders and eating disturbances were more significantly correlated with men seeing themselves as less muscular than female ideals.

Ms. Osachy also mentioned orthorexia nervosa, which was a disorder foreign to me. Promotion of clean and healthy eating is frequently seen in the media by celebrities, chefs, athletes and fitness trainers. The United States, heralded as one of the fattest nations with obesity running rampant, gains spokesperson after spokesperson to change the way Americans eat and adopt healthier lifestyles. According to Dr. Karin Kratina of the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), orthorexia is not an officially recognized disorder according to the DSM-V, however it is an eating problem that has been recognized since 1996, first coined by Dr. Steven Bratman.

People seem to be leaning from one extreme to the other. Understanding why Ms. Osachy works with two other nutritionists in her practice is suddenly very clear. Getting people to understand, and not just recognize the truth of themselves physically and what they eat, but also “how” to eat properly is just as important.

An Inspiration

I can’t say for certain whether I can see myself as an eating disorder specialist, as Ms. Osachy is - as I am much more passionate about the educational system - but she has compelled an interest in me to look into research in cultural and demographic differences in eating disorders: exploring the notions of the African – American community in regards to eating disorders, male versus female eating patterns and onsets to orthorexia, and even monitoring the eating patterns of male versus female school age children.

Across cultures it has already been found that cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are increasing and that it is not just a western civilization (or Caucasian) disease (Makino, Tsuboi & Dennerstein, 2004). There is much more research to be conducted in this field and I’d like to contribute something to it.

REFERENCES

Davey, G. (2014). Psychopathology: Research, assessment and treatment in clinical psychology . West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Kratina, K. (date unspecified). National eating disorder association: Orthorexia Nervosa . Retrieved from https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/orthorexia-nervosa .

L. Osachy, personal communication, July 25, 2015.

Makino, M., Tsuboi, K. & Dennerstein, L. (2004). Prevalence of eating disorders: a comparison of western and non-western countries. MedScape General Medicine , 6(3).

Olivardia, R., Pope Jr, H. G., Borowiecki III, J. J., & Cohane, G. H. (2004). Biceps and Body Image: The Relationship Between Muscularity and Self-Esteem, Depression, and Eating Disorder Symptoms. Psychology of Men & Masculinity,5 (2), 112-120.

Are you trying to make it through college with an eating disorder?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:37:12 GMT

Many college students have untreated eating disorders before they leave for college, and they leave home without fully planning ahead.

They may be recovering from an eating disorder but can’t adequately handle the stresses at college without relapse. Or they never had an eating disorder but developed one in college because they didn’t have the support, knowledge, and tools to avoid it.

Twenty-five percent of college students will suffer from an eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge eating disorder, or orthorexia. You don’t have to be one of them. It’s not something that’s just a fluke, and there are definitely many steps you can take to prevent and shield yourself from eating disorders.

Planning Ahead for Your College Years

Your college years can be either the very best years of your life or the worst, especially if you have an eating disorder. I’ve counseled many college students who went through college trying to handle their eating disorders symptoms and succeed in school at the same time, and it did not work out very well at all.

These days, kids from elementary school age are hammered with the message that they need to prepare academically for college. When I was getting ready for college years ago—I won’t say how many—I really didn’t start thinking about college until maybe the end of sophomore year and the beginning of junior year. In contrast, my children were given all kinds of information about college starting in middle school, so the pressure is on earlier than ever to decide about college.

Although students are given tons of information on how to get into college, there’s practically zero information on how to prepare emotionally for the transition to college; and they’re given zero tools on how to succeed emotionally in college.

I see it as a question of IQ (intelligence quotient) versus EQ (emotional quotient). There’s a lot of academic support on how to get into college, but what young people also need desperately is sound information and advice on how to be emotionally healthy at school.

Zero tools. IQ versus EQ. In terms of emotional intelligence, young people are often not prepared.

Taking Care of Yourself Starts Now

If you think or know you have an eating disorder or eating disorder symptoms, don’t think it will get better on its own once you go to college. I see it every year. High school seniors come to see me for counseling and tell me, “Yes I have an eating disorder but I don’t need help,” “It’s going to get better once I leave for college and start a new chapter in my life.”

Or, more than often, I get students who come to me for therapy and they’re already at college. They had the eating disorder before they left, and they never got treatment at home. Now they’re dealing with all the stress of college AND trying to get better from the eating disorder. It’s a disaster.

So if you think you have symptoms or you think you have an eating disorder, be brave and get help NOW.

Recognizing Symptoms

Get help before you leave for school and remember you don’t have to fit a diagnosis in order to suffer from eating disorder symptoms. Symptoms that seem mild can escalate quickly once you leave for college. For example, if you’re compulsively exercising, it can quickly turn into exercise purging once you start to deal with all the change and responsibilities of college student life.

If you’re only purging once a week and the diagnosis for bulimia is twice a week, (that’s the official definition); you still need help, or it will get worse once the stress builds. But here’s some good news. With the right help you can get better quickly and go to school healthy.

In fact, when high school seniors come to see us at The Body Image Counseling Center in April or May, we usually can get them off to school symptom-free by September. Just make sure you go to a qualified therapist and nutritionist who know what they’re doing.

Please don’t be afraid to get help before you go.

Parents, this is the most important tip for you:

If you think or know your child has an eating disorder, do not let them go to college before they get quality treatment. You need to leverage your power with love to force the issue and help them push through any denial, and make sure your child is completely healthy before they leave the safety of home.

Once again, I am sad to say I receive calls from parents every year saying: “My child just turned eighteen; they’re a legal adult, they have an eating disorder, now they're refusing treatment” and the parents have lost a lot of power to get them the help they so desperately need. You don’t want to be in this situation. You want make sure you use your legal power, leveraged with love, before they turn eighteen.

There are actually ways you can turn things around and “convince” your child to get help after that age (I cover a lot of these techniques in my Parents' Quick Start Recovery Guide ) but it is a lot more complicated and stressful to be in that situation. Be brave and get support as soon as possible to make sure your child doesn't head off to college sick, hoping they’ll get better on their own. If they’re already in college, it’s never too late. They may need to make some tough decisions about what they need to do to get healthy, but it’s not impossible.

How can we help?

Please remember we offer emergency parent coaching sessions (even on the weekends!) and free 15 minute consults to help answer your questions, address your worries, and come up with a solid plan for your or your child’s recovery.

How to love your pregnant body

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:21:53 GMT

Pregnancy is certainly one of the most challenging experiences of a woman’s life. It brings about so many changes: emotional, financial and social just to name a few. One of the most obvious, however, are the changes in a pregnant woman’s body and how she feels about those changes.

Women's Stories...Can you Relate?

Some women revel in the rounding of their bellies, feeling more beautiful and alive than they ever have. Cynthia is one of those women “Finally I felt that it was alright to eat what I wanted whenever I wanted because I was growing a little life inside of me. My husband thought I was gorgeous – he loved my curves, and that helped me feel sexy. I experimented with different kinds of clothing and really let my personality come through. It was a terrific experience”.

Other women experience negative feelings about their bodies when they become pregnant. Angie had a difficult time feeling attractive: “I felt totally out of control of my body during that time. I had always been the same weight and all of a sudden I had to buy clothing that seemed enormous. People looked at me differently and sometimes treated me like I was fragile or incapable. Friends made comments to me that I was gaining a lot of weight, and it totally freaked me out.”

Clarissa also felt self-conscious: “I was throwing up almost every day and felt bloated and tired. It’s hard to believe you’re beautiful when you feel so sick all the time”.

History Sheds Light on How We View our Bodies

Why do so many women, like Angie and Clarissa, feel bad about their bodies during pregnancy? Part of the reason can be found in the history books. In Western culture, the female reproductive system has traditionally been viewed as unclean. In the 1800’s, women were encouraged to conceal their pregnancies with heavy clothing and confine themselves to the home.

Dr. Marion Olmsted writes: “Today, pregnancy and childbirth have an illness status in our society. The pregnant body is directly opposite to the cultural ideal for women, and, as a result, pregnant women tend to be culturally invisible. (They are often) seen as asexual, unattractive beings”.

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Over the years, medical views about how much weight a woman should gain during pregnancy have fluctuated greatly.

1920s: Doctors believed that weight gain should be limited to 15 pounds to promote easier labor and to preserve women’s “figures”.

1940s: The medical world had come to believe that there was a relationship between preeclampsia and excessive pregnancy weight gain.

1960s: Many doctors encouraged women to restrict their weight gain in order to avoid “complications”.

1970s: Opinion shifted as researchers discovered that low birth weight was related to maternal weight gain. Women were finally encouraged to eat according to their appetites.

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Do you Feel Self-Conscious? You are Not Alone.

There is not much research on pregnancy and body image problems, but what does exist suggests that body image is often poor during pregnancy and worsens over the course of pregnancy.

Studies suggest that 72% of pregnant women are afraid of being unable to return to pre-pregnancy weight; 24% are distressed by weight gain; 28% dislike changes in their hips and thighs. Low body self-esteem was more common in women who had a history of dieting. In contrast, 30% of women surveyed are less concerned about their weight during pregnancy.

One study found that compared to the “ideal American woman”, pregnant women saw themselves as more ugly, awful, dirty, older, slower, heavier, larger and fatter. When comparing their pregnant partners to the “ideal American woman”, men rated them as larger, fatter, more tense, and weaker.

Pregnancy and Eating Disorders

In severe cases, pregnant women can also suffer from eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Research has suggested that during pregnancy, 7% of women develop eating disorders, 6% diet, %5 binge eat, and 25% overeat. Dr. Olmsted’s research found that women who struggle with eating disorders can adversely affect their infants and children after birth. Infants may experience poor nutrition and poor growth, and approximately 15% of infants experience deliberate calorie reduction because of their mothers’ preoccupation with weight.

With these societal pressures, it’s no wonder that many pregnant women feel out of control and ashamed of their rapidly changing bodies. They may have tremendous guilt satisfying their normal hunger cues when there is pressure to maintain a limited weight gain by their doctors. Even if you are experiencing these difficulties, there are ways in which you can learn to love your pregnant body.

First, try to remind yourself what a miracle it is that your body is creating another life. Read about all the physical work your body has to do to make a healthy baby, and remind yourself that it needs the proper nutrition to do so.
Trust your internal hunger cues. Your body will tell you what it needs to eat in order to make a beautiful baby. Try not to panic if you feel hungry for more than you think you “should” be eating. As long as you are eating in response to hunger rather than sadness, boredom or anger, it’s always OK to eat.
Remind yourself that pregnancy is a temporary state that women move in and out of. As long as you eat in response to hunger, your body will regain its normal pre-pregnancy weight (give or take a few pounds), within a year of birth.
Get angry when you see our culture or the media ignore or denigrate pregnant or larger sized women. Remember, only 2% of women are born with a body type that fits the “ideal American woman”. Remove magazines and TV programs from your surroundings that promote unrealistic images of female beauty.
Seek out doctors and/or midwives that do not shame you about weight and eating, or pressure you to overly restrict your weight gain. If you feel too much pressure, switch to another provider.
If you still are having trouble feeling beautiful as a pregnant woman, or if you fear you have an eating disorder, seek support from a trusted therapist, to help you explore whether there are underlying issues that cause your low body self-esteem.

Remember, every body is beautiful, especially a pregnant body!

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If you are pregnant with an eating disorder, we can help you get better – please do not suffer any further and ask us for help !

You're a good parent

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:17:25 GMT

I'm Glad You're Here

It's Lori, here from The Body Image Counseling Center and I'd like to applaud you for taking the first step to getting help for your child's eating disorder by visiting this website and searching for the right information to help your child recover from a dangerous eating disorder. I’m concerned, however, that you may be feeling ashamed or guilty despite your best efforts to help them.

Many of the parents who come to me at the Body Image Counseling Center somehow feel that they've done something wrong, that it's their fault their child is suffering from anorexia, bulimia or compulsive eating. Let me reassure you, the fact that your child has an eating disorder does not make you a bad parent. On the contrary, you are seeking help for your son or daughter. You care. And to me, that makes you a good parent. A loving, concerned and involved parent.

I know parenting can be very hard, particularly these days when we are no longer surrounded by family in the sort of tight-knit communities of previous generations. There are a lot more pressures on your children too. Pressures that can too often lead our young people to develop eating disorders.

You're Doing the Right Thing By Asking For Help

As a parent you probably feel exposed and alone. There is a problem with your child and you don't know how to fix it. That's pretty much how you'd feel if your car broke down in the middle of nowhere when you were on a long trip.

What do you do? You could lift the hood and poke around a bit hoping something would make it work but you're not likely to have much success unless you know a lot more about car mechanics than I do. No, you wouldn't do that; you'd call a mechanic to come fix it.

Is it a sign of weakness to call a mechanic to a broken car? Of course not! It makes sense. You'd never be able to fix it poking around in the engine getting nowhere whereas a good mechanic could have the car running smoothly again in just a few short hours.

Your child's body and mind are a bit like that auto engine – they’re complicated, they’re sensitive, and they need the right treatment to get well. When your child is suffering from an eating disorder, her body and mind are not running as smoothly as they should. And just like it's not a sign of weakness to call a mechanic for the car, it's not a sign of weakness to ask for help to get your child's body and mind working properly again.

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Don't struggle any longer trying to fix your child's eating disorder. Seek out the right help and help her get better quickly. And remember, you can schedule a free 15 minute consult or schedule an appointment for your child right now if you’d like to talk to me more about your family’s situation. I will give you my full attention and expert advice. Just click here to schedule, or call 904-737-3232, and I will be in touch right away to help.

Yours as another concerned parent,

Lori

What does losing my dogs have to do with eating disorder recovery?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:50:50 GMT

Don't let your despair win.

When you're in the depths of despair you might feel there's no hope, no-one can help, what's the point? Well that's not true – it's just your despair talking.

If you've reached that level of despair you need to trust people and ask for help because you just can't do it alone. And you'll always find there are people you can trust who are willing and able to help you.

I'm a Dog Person, Here is My Story

There was a time a couple of years ago when I was in the depths of despair…

I'm a dog person. I had two dogs at the time that I loved dearly, a dachshund (you can see Buster below!) and a golden retriever. Sometimes I even brought them into the office to help with my work as therapy dogs. So you can imagine my distress the day the lawn mowing guys accidentally left my gate open and the dogs escaped into the street during rush hour. I didn't even notice they were gone for 45 minutes because I was seeing a patient.

I was distraught. I searched and searched – no sign of them anywhere. I was frantic. After several hours of searching I pulled up to a local park and started calling their names (it looked like a place I'd like to play if I was a dog!)

A guy playing Frisbee called out to me "Are you looking for a dachshund?"

Yes! I certainly was.

Turns out a lady had found a dachshund, with a golden retriever, about half an hour earlier. But he didn't have her name or number.

Where was she now? Where were my dogs? Some kind-hearted person had them and was probably looking for me but I had no idea how to find her.

Hope dashed. Despair overwhelmed me.

Then a wonderful thing happened. Several people walking their dogs in the park came over and started asking about the situation. They reassured me they all knew each other and they would help me find that lady and my dogs. They all took my name and number and started to spread the word.

I went home - there wasn't anything else I could do at that point. But I was worried, despairing of ever seeing my pups again. All I could do was trust the strangers in the park.

The next morning the phone rang! "Are you the woman who's missing a dachshund and a golden retriever?"

Yes! She had my dogs, and they were just fine. I was quickly reunited with the animals and gave the woman a big hug.

But I never would have found them if I hadn't been willing to ask for help from all the kind people in the park. If I hadn't trusted those people to be able to help me they wouldn't have been able to give that lady my number. If I'd just sunk into my despair and given up on my dogs I may never have seen them again.

Don't Be Afraid to Ask for Help, We All Need it Sometimes

So, even if you're in the depths of despair with your eating disorder, whether it be anorexia, bulimia, compulsive exercising, or emotional eating, you need to trust others and ask for help. There are people who are willing and able to help you – you only have to muster the courage to reach out and ask for that help.

At The Body Image Counseling Center, you will find the right people to help and support you. Trust takes time to build, and we know that. Remember you can always take us up on our offer of a free 15 minute consult to speak with me in person and get a good feel for who we are before you schedule your first appointment.

Don't try to recover alone, don't let your despair win – you only need to trust people and ask for help.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Lori

What if we have already found a therapist but my child’s eating disorder is not getting better?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:48:06 GMT

Getting the Help You Need

The biggest mistake that therapists make when it comes to eating disorders is to not ask about them at all. Many therapist and treatment providers do not have an adequate eating disorder assessment section in their intakes.

I have counseled hundreds of people over the years who have eating disorders and unfortunately I hear the same story over and over again, which is either “my therapist never even asked me about eating disorders in the intake so I never told me that I was throwing up 5 times a day” or “they assessed me very quickly but they never asked about it again.”

Jennifer's Story

If you are in this situation with your son or daughter, I want to give you some encouragement and advice about what to do, but first let me tell you about Jennifer, (name changed to preserve her confidence) who was a client of mine several years ago.

She's now back at school studying hard and taking part in the sports she loves. She's happy, healthy and smiling once more.

But it wasn't always like this.

As a twelve year old early developer she started being bullied and teased at school about her weight and her developing figure. She hated the comments and decided she had to do something about her weight. She started dieting and exercising, determined to lose any surplus pounds. Then, unhappy with how slowly the weight was dropping, she started to make herself throw up after just picking at her meals, and she started to exercise much more compulsively.

Can you relate? Perhaps I'm even talking about your daughter?

The Challenges She Faced

The months went by. Jennifer was eating so little she was barely keeping herself alive. Her sunny personality had disappeared. She was moody and irritable with everyone. Her parents were beside themselves with worry; they didn't know how to help. Mealtimes became battlegrounds. Arguments escalated out of hand. And family life was now entirely cantered on Jennifer and her eating disorder.

She saw a therapist every week for 8 months – alone, because the therapist wouldn't encourage her parents to be part of the therapy.

But Jennifer and the therapist never talked about her eating disorder, and Jennifer was still throwing up and felt there was no solution.

By the time she was fifteen Jennifer was deeply unhappy and extremely ill. She felt fat even though she was severely underweight for her height and build. The taunts at school had changed – now they whispered behind her back about how ill she appeared.

Recovery is Within Reach

One day, her mother heard about The Body Image Counseling Center and contacted me. Here's what she wrote to me after Jennifer came to see us and reached recovery:

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"Thank God we found you when we did. You have done so much for Jennifer and for our family. It's so wonderful to have our daughter back from the brink, once again happy and healthy. We cannot thank you enough."

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Please know it is possible for people to recover from an eating disorder that seems to have taken over their life and their personality. And it is possible to recover relatively quickly once you have the right information and the right support , but that is the key!

If you have never used a therapist before, it can feel uncomfortable and difficult to ask him or her about their qualifications and treatment approach, but it is very important that you do so. A good therapist will not make you feel ashamed or stupid for questioning them about your treatment; in fact, they should welcome your questions and concerns and offer you a session or phone consultation in order to answer them.

The Importance of Team Treatment

It is very important to use the team treatment approach with eating disorders and a treatment team ideally consists of the patient’s primary doctor, psychiatrist, therapist, nutritionist and sometimes community and family members who are supportive.

Now, while I can't work with everyone face-to-face, I can share the same information I gave to Jennifer and her family that helped her to recover and can help your loved one to recover too. And unlike some therapists I firmly believe in including parents in the whole treatment experience. I consider that you, as parents, are crucial to the success of any treatment program. And I believe, deep down your child does want to have a loving relationship with you even if it doesn't seem like that at times!

We have helped dozens of young girls like Jennifer to fully recover from eating disorders. And we've helped dozens of parents of girls and boys like Jennifer to know what to do and how to help their daughters or sons to recover.

For more specific information on how to get the right kind of help, you can download my parent guide on Amazon kindle right away by clicking this link , and/or schedule a free 15 minute consult with me right here , and I will be in touch right away.

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Please don’t give up, even your first attempt at getting help for your child has not worked – full recovery is possible!

Teens and Religion

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:49:30 GMT

Is your teen’s questioning or rebelling against your religious beliefs worrying you?

Holiday Memories From Our Childhood & Teenage Years

The other day a friend and I were sitting over a cup of coffee and reminiscing about how we celebrated the holidays with our families when we were teenagers. “I loved Christmas when I was a little kid,” said Angie. “My brothers and sisters and I would wake up before dawn and sneak down to see if Santa had eaten the cookies we had set out for him, and then wake our parents so we could open presents under the tree”.

“What about when you were teenagers?” I asked her. “Well, the holidays were never as much fun,” she replied sadly. “It’s what I call holiday let-down. I thought the holidays were cheesy, and I really just wanted to be with my friends. The old traditions were OK, but they had much less meaning to me. I was beginning to wonder about who or what God really was, and the answers I was getting from my parents and my church were not helpful at that time. I guess the holidays really are the most fun for small children.”

Looking Back and Having Questions

Angie’s mixed feelings about the holidays – nostalgia combined with a sense of loss -- are very common for teenagers and their parents. Holiday rituals that were exciting and joyful for young children, whether lighting the Hanukkah candles, opening presents under the Christmas tree, or participating in the Kwanzaa Karamu (community feast), can sometimes feel boring to teenagers.

At this stage in their social development, teens typically turn outward towards their peers for friendship and entertainment. Criticism of family or religious traditions can be part of this stage. They begin to grapple seriously with life’s difficult questions – Is there a God? What happens when we die? Why do bad things happen to good people, and vice versa?

Although this criticism and questioning is a necessary part of becoming an adult, it can be a heartrending time for parents. They see their children beginning the process of “leaving the nest”. Parents may feel rejected when kids no longer want to participate fully in holiday traditions that hold much meaning, and memories. Some teens rebel against religion altogether, which can frighten parents and make them feel they may have failed in teaching them values.

Approaching Holidays as a Family

Although these situations can cause pain and conflict for families with teenagers, they can also be seen as an opportunity for the family to grow and change together, rather than distance and grow apart. In fact, by rebelling and testing limits, teens play an important role in the family by pointing out what is outdated and not working effectively. But parents are by no means obsolete! They continue their all-important function of being an anchor for their children, a flexible boundary to push up against but not break.

The differing views of parents and teenagers can combine to create something new and revitalizing for the family, by helping to rebuild and update rituals of celebration.

Reconstructing Religious Rituals

Being in a family by definition means encountering flux and change, and religious beliefs are no exception. Rather than helplessly watching your teenagers go through the motions of participating in traditions that may have lost meaning for them or downright refusing to participate, try to have a judgement free zone family meeting.

Step 1: Ask questions. Pose the question: “How do you feel about the way our family practices our religion?” Encourage your kids to be open and honest about what they enjoy, and what feels stale. Similarly, be honest about your own feelings. It’s all right to disagree, as long as it’s done respectfully and with the understanding that there can be compromise.

Included in the conversation should be the question: “What are religion and the holidays really about for us?” Is it a time to give presents? A time to give thanks? A time to celebrate our beliefs? Like my friend Angie, your teenagers might have some serious criticisms and doubts about their religious faith. Use this as an opportunity to let them know you are not afraid of their questioning. Allow them to share their feelings without being defensive or judgmental. Let them know if you sometimes have (or had) similar doubts or feelings of frustration, especially when you were their age. Then you can talk with them about how you are able to find meaning or faith despite them.

Step 2: Brainstorm ideas. Propose that you have a “brainstorming” session, where everyone will be encouraged to reinvent the ways your family practices religion. At this stage, no idea should be considered too silly or impossible. Suggesting whatever comes to mind can spawn creativity, so don’t automatically negate the proposal that you all take a trip to Africa, or paint the house red and green, or send potato latkes to all of your relatives. This kind of joking around, combined with proposing serious ideas, can be a real ice- breaker for teens and show them you believe their opinions and ideas matter. And don’t forget to include the tried and true activities that everyone still enjoys.

Step 3: Choose your favorites. After you have finished making your list, go through each item and decide which activities are realistic for the family to try this year. Then, choose only one or two of those activities rather than most or every one. You want to experience success rather than bite off more than the family can chew.

For example, after creating this type of list with their children, one family I saw in my practice decided to sponsor a child overseas through a well-known charity that expressed their religious values. They are still sponsoring that child three years later, and are even planning to visit his country as part of their holiday activities next year. Once you incorporate some of these new rituals, you can add more the following year. In fact, the “pre-holiday family meeting” can become a yearly event itself, keeping the family communicating and changing together.

Be Friendly

A key component to getting your teens excited about trying these different ideas is to include their friends in some of the family rituals, as well as allow them time to go out with their friends over the holidays. Expecting your children to remain solely with family over the holidays is a recipe for resentment on their part. By welcoming their friends into your home, and encouraging social time away from the family, your children will feel you understand their needs, and will seek out the family time without needing to be begged or persuaded.

Here are some more suggestions for adding new religious traditions

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Volunteer to help the needy together as a family. Every year let a different family member choose the cause they wish to support and how the family will do so.
Have a family discussion where you share with each other what each person feels they achieved during the past year, what they regret, and what they hope to accomplish in the year to come.
Try cooking a big holiday meal using a holiday menu from a different country or culture.
Have a “family exchange” holiday, where your children spend a day with a friend who celebrates a different holiday from yours, and the friend then comes to learn about your family’s traditions.
Have a family “night hike” where you take a picnic to a beautiful spot in nature and watch the sunrise together.
When your kids have a party, encourage them to invite someone new and to help them feel welcome.
Do a family history project where your children interview parents and grandparents about how they celebrated their religion when they were children. Have grandparents and parents interview the children about how they experience the holidays. Encourage your teenagers to create an audio or videotape of the discussions.

If you’re having trouble with your teen’s pushing the limits, remember the therapists at The Body Image Counseling Center are here to help. We can facilitate family communication and help you end fighting and conflict through family counseling. Just click here to request a free 15 minute consult to get advice and learn about the ways we can help.

Eating disorder, Not just a teen girl problem

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:43:14 GMT

Eating disorders – they’re not just a problem for teenage girls!

I thought it would be powerful to highlight just a few of the groups of people who suffer from eating and body image disorders that we rarely hear about. In the media, the most common stories on eating disorders often sensationalize anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating in young, white women (usually celebrities).

I would argue that eating disordered behaviors and body image distortion affect a much greater number of people, but either because they don’t fit within a defined “diagnosis”, or are not celebrities, we hear very little about the many other groups of people who can suffer a lifetime with low self-esteem and destructive eating behaviors.

Groups the Media Doesn't Talk About

Did you know that male bodybuilders are at increased risk for developing eating disorders? In their study of 108 bodybuilders, Pope found that 2.8% of bodybuilders reported a history of anorexia, which is much higher than the 0.02% average for American men?

They also found an intriguing trend which they named “reverse anorexia syndrome” where 8% of bodybuilders believed they were too small, even though they were very large and muscular. These men reported that they often declined social invitations, refused to be seen at the beach, or wore heavy clothes in the heat of summer because they feared they looked too small! How often have we heard about that in the news?
We most often hear about the sad plight of teenagers with eating disorders, but did you know that the potential to develop eating disorders is very high in the middle aged and elderly, too ? In fact, researchers Gupta and Schork found in their research that the appearance of wrinkles and other signs of aging could trigger anorexia in late life.

I have seen this in real life in my private practice, where I am treating more and more patients who are middle aged and older seeking help for anorexia when they never had it as a young person.
Another group who is prone to eating disorders that I bet you’ve never heard about (unless you are a member), are underweight boys and men. Another body image researcher (Mickalide) studied underweight males and their attitudes toward their bodies and found that they are extremely prone to feelings of shame and failure. Underweight is a much greater social taboo for men than for women, and he states this taboo has plagued men for centuries.

Harmatz discovered in his research that underweight males viewed themselves as “less handsome, less good natured, and having less sex-appeal” than control groups. They also wished to be less shy and physically stronger than they were. Underweight men dated less, believed they’d be turned down more, and were lonelier than controls.
Did you know that our male soldiers have a very high incidence of eating disorders ? In her study of eating disorders among military men (and women), Navy Captain Peggy McNulty found rates among active duty military men of 2.5% for anorexia, 6.8% for bulimia, and an enormous 40.8% for other types of eating and body image disorders.

Most important and striking, 49% of the men studied who were not “officially diagnosable” did display disordered eating behaviors including dieting, intentionally vomiting, and using laxatives or diet pills. Much of this behavior has been attributed to the high stress environment of the military, focus on meeting physical readiness tests, and encouraging ritual and perfectionism.

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As we continue our fight against eating and body image disorders, let’s be aware of how far a reach eating disorders and body image hatred actually has. We must include all people who suffer, often in silence, with body hatred, destructive eating and exercise habits, and social isolation caused by these behaviors. Everyone deserves our empathy and proper mental health treatment so we can truly eradicate these problems for EVERYONE!

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As always, I appreciate your thoughts, and if you happen to belong to one of these groups discussed today, please know we’re here to help, and you CAN get better. Free and confidential 15 minute discovery calls are always available, and I’ll contact you the very same day. Just click here to register and I’ll be in touch soon.

Lori

How Do I Know If My Teenager Has An Eating Disorder?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:38:35 GMT

Male and Female Cases

Eating disorders are a growing and alarming problem among teenage girls. Girls may chronically overeat, or at the opposite extreme, may starve themselves in an effort to look thin.

When a person diets to the point of losing 25% or more of her normal body weight, she is suffering from a condition called anorexia nervosa. Another common disorder, bulimia nervosa, involves a destructive cycle of binging and purging, either by vomiting or with the abuse of laxatives or diuretics.

Men and boys are feeling worse about their bodies, too. Research shows many are dieting excessively, over exercising, and using steroids to achieve a muscular physique. Athletes are particularly vulnerable to these problems. More males are suffering from eating disorders and steroid abuse than is currently assumed, and they often have nowhere to turn for help.

What We Know So Far

The statistics are frightening. Studies suggest that as many as 10% of American youngsters will develop an eating disorder during their teenage years. We also know that between 5% - 20% of the teenagers who develop anorexia or bulimia will ultimately die from their disease. Of those who survive, one in four will continue to suffer these conditions for the rest of their lives.

Remember that anyone can develop an eating disorder. They affect people of every socioeconomic level and of every race, although they are most prevalent among white, upper-middle class females between the ages of 13 and 30. Since teenagers with eating disorders often feel a great deal of shame about their behavior, they rarely seek help from parents, teachers, or other mentors. For this reason it is extremely important for the adults in a young person’s life to learn the signs of eating disorders, and how to help.

7 Warning Signs of Eating Disorders in Girls

Has she had a large weight loss (25% or more of normal body weight) with no known medical illness causing it?
Is she intensely afraid of gaining weight and does she talk a lot about dieting?
Is she eating large amounts of food, which may or may not be followed by vomiting or laxative abuse?
Is she constantly exercising, despite feelings of fatigue and weakness?
Is she secretive about dieting, binges and vomiting?
Has there been a noticeable change in her mood with increased proneness to anger, irritability, and depression?
Does she have a history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse?

7 Warning signs of Eating Disorders in Boys

Is he preoccupied with the desire to become more muscular and “in shape”?
Is he so dissatisfied with parts of his body (such as his chest, waist, stomach, shoulders, or height) that he feels ugly?
Does he constantly exercise, despite feelings of fatigue and weakness, and feel extreme guilt when he misses a workout?
Does he binge on high calorie foods, and/or purge by vomiting or laxative use?
Does he use steroids to increase his muscle mass?
Has there been a noticeable change in his mood with increased anger and irritability, or depression?
Does he have a history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse?

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If you recognize these signs in your son or daughter, please don’t despair. Help is available and your child CAN recover. Worried? Have questions? If so, you can always call me for a free 15 minute consult about the next steps you should take to help your child get better. Just go to our appointment request page , and write “I would like a free 15 minute consult” in the message box, along with your name and contact information and I will contact you within 24 hours. All consults are kept strictly confidential as well!

Did You Know These Seven Powerful Ways to Build Healthy Eating Habits in Children?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:35:21 GMT

1. Build positive and predictable food rituals

In our fast food culture, mealtime in many homes is no longer a time of family togetherness. Find your family’s own ways to express gratitude for bounty and to appreciate food (after all, we need food in order to live. You can also give your child responsibility for one part of each meal -- saying blessings, setting the table, or choosing the menu, for example.

2. Present foods with variety and an attitude of celebration

Kids innately like to try new things -- all you have to do is put new foods in front of them and they'll usually take a taste. Try to avoid giving in to complaints and providing foods they'll eat with no problems. That may work in the short run, but it could result in unhealthy eating habits which become life-long. It’s better to approach food as a way of enjoying life in its variety, not just as “fuel” to be gobbled down.

3. Avoid labeling certain foods as “forbidden”

Within your value system and dietary restrictions, present all kinds of food in moderation. The key is to set reasonable limits, then let the kids choose freely within them.

4. Do not use food as a reward or a punishment

Although it may be tempting to take away dessert or dinner to punish negative behavior, avoid the impulse. Use other disciplinary tactics, such as removing a favorite activity or TV show for an evening. You do not want your kids to associate food with sadness, anger, or with pleasing others, only with sustenance and pleasure.

5. Do not pressure your children to lose weight through diet or exercise

Help kids to recognize the feeling of being comfortably satisfied after a meal and to stop eating at that point. As long as they are presented with a variety of foods in moderation, most children will naturally reach and maintain their appropriate body weight. Approach exercise as a fun activity that makes your body feel good, and help children find a type of exercise that doesn't feel like a chore.

6. Limit the amount of television your child watches

Unfortunately, television and movies are brimming with images of dangerously thin women and musclebound men. When your child does watch TV, help him to challenge these unrealistic and idealized body images. Make an effort to show that people come in all different shapes and sizes, each one valuable and special. Regularly point out positive qualities in others that have nothing to do with physical appearance.

7. Be aware of behaviors and messages you model to your children, both verbal and nonverbal

Try not to give your children negative messages about their eating habits and bodies (“You’re eating like a pig”, “You’d be so handsome if you’d just bulk up a little”). Focus more on giving your child positive messages about who he or she is as a person (“You have a beautiful smile”, “You are so generous to your friends”, “You are a wonderful helper”). Most importantly, try hard not to give your children mixed messages about food and body image. For example, if you tell your daughter she is beautiful, but you are constantly dieting and worrying about your own weight, she will be confused and will have trouble believing what you say about her.

8. Remember that help is available

Don’t feel that you have to handle all problems alone. There are many caring professionals, including pediatricians, therapists and teachers, who possess a wealth of information about these issues. Reaching out to them can often be the best decision you make in supporting your child’s personal growth.

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When it comes to healthy eating and positive body image, the good news is that parents have a much greater influence on their kids than they may think. Despite kids’ attempts to push against limits and assert their independence, they still look to you for guidance and praise. For that reason it is important that you examine your own behaviors and beliefs about eating and appearance. If you find a lot of negativity and shame in the way you view your own body, get support from a friend or counselor to feel better. You won't be the only person to benefit -- your kids will too!

Is Parenting Stress is putting your Relationship in Jeopardy?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:32:55 GMT

Are you and your partner experiencing relationship difficulties due to parenting stress? Parenting can be one of the hardest jobs in the world, and stress is amplified when your relationship is caught in the crossfire. Here are some ideas to consider and tips to improve the situation before your relationship is beyond repair.

Are You and Your Partner on the Same Parenting Page?

Do you and your partner have different parenting styles, with different philosophies when it comes to:

Chores
Free time
Discipline
Structure
Academics
Recreational activities

Differences in parenting style can create a split that savvy children exploit to their advantage. Communicating ahead of time about important issues and learning to compromise helps keep you on the same page.

This way, you are able to support each other as a team.

Do You Both Share Parenting Responsibilities?

If one of you feels the other isn’t doing their fair share, it creates resentment. This is especially true if there is parenting stress. It’s not helpful if only one of you is handling the situation while the other is either minimally involved or not involved at all. Effective parenting must be a team effort.

Do You Blame Your Partner for Parenting Stress?

As I’m sure you already know, blaming each other never really helps the situation at all, but we still do it sometimes when under stress. Certainly, it doesn’t help your child. Does one or both of you blame the other for the current stressors occurring in your family? Such as:

Not playing an active role in your child’s life
Being emotionally unavailable
Not supporting your partner when they need it
Unnecessarily creating conflict between yourself and your child

Granted, there may be some issues that truly do interfere with the family dynamic, such as alcohol or drug use. However, blaming each another isn’t going to fix these problems. Nor does it help change your child’s behavior. What you can do is calmly seek to understand what your role is and how your actions either help or hurt the situation.

How We Can Help

Our therapist can help your family get back on track, working to solve the issues causing parenting stress. She will spend time with you as a family in your home and assess how each of you interacts with one another. Then, she will provide recommendations for how to improve communication in a supportive way. For your child specifically, the therapist can also help implement behavior modification techniques to stop the following problems:

Talking back
Acting out
Defiance
Disruptive behaviors
Being disrespectful

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All families and parents experience stress occasionally. After all, no one ever said parenting was easy! However, if parenting stress is affecting your relationship with your partner, you should seek help right away. Don’t be afraid to utilize the expertise of our in-home therapist. Through behavioral modification techniques, you can alleviate parenting stress and strengthen the love between you.

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Is Your Child a Picky Eater and Losing Weight?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:28:04 GMT

Is your toddler, child or teen reluctant to eat in front of other people?

Does he or she have only a few foods that they prefer and are those options becoming fewer and fewer over time?

Does your child complain of physical symptoms that do not have an actual medical cause?

Does he or she complain about the “textures” of foods and refuse to eat those foods?

The “Picky Eater” is a common experience for most parents who have toddlers. In fact, it’s actually part of the normal development process for children, particularly as they begin to make basic decisions for themselves.

Issues arise when picky eating causes health problems, such as weight loss and food phobias. This can signal a more serious issue, and can also affect children, teens and even adults if it isn’t dealt with effectively early on. Fortunately, there are concrete solutions parents can use to address the problem.

Avoidant-Restrictive Food Intake Disorder

Also known as ARFID, Avoidant-Restrictive Food Intake Disorder is a medical condition that may affect more than eating habits, but your health too. According to nationaleatingdisorders.org the symptoms include:

poor appetite with little interest in eating
fears related to eating, such as the possibility of choking on food or throwing up
being an extremely selective eater of foods including being extremely sensitive to textures

In addition to the above symptoms, people with AFRID also have at least one of these additional symptoms:

inappropriate nutritional levels
a significant drop in weight or inability to gain weight
needing nutritional supplements or a feeding tube
psychological issues

If you suspect that your child has more than just a picky eating problem, make an appointment with your pediatrician to determine if it could be AFRID.

What Can Parents Do About Picky Eating?

There are some things parents can do at home to address picky eating with their children. For instance:

Have set times consistently for meals. Note that for small children it may actually be hard to sit for long periods of time. Try to limit meals to no more than 30 minutes.
Include in meals one food your child likes and will eat, but include different foods too. Set an expectation that they must try everything on their plate before having seconds or dessert.
Be firm yet also understanding. Make the expectations about eating and behavior clear. However, also understand that this is a real struggle for your child.
Don’t forget dessert! It’s okay to have dessert. This isn’t about punishment or deprivation, but encouraging your child to eat a variety of foods.

With picky eating, there will be times when you have to “choose your battles.” Simply try to be patient with your child and keep in mind that, for kids with AFRID, this is a difficult process.

Using Applied Behavior Analysis with AFRID

If you and your child are still struggling with eating issues consider getting professional coaching help. This is where our in-home behavior therapists can be of assistance. By utilizing in-home Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA),they can do the following:

Work with both you and your child to help understand why your child has eating issues.
Analyze your child’s eating behaviors and pick out patterns that emerge.
Teach your child better ways to cope with the stress and anxiety that come from having an eating problem.
Help make changes to you and your child’s lifestyle to reduce the potential for picky eating and low weight to happen in the future.

Again, if you believe that your child is suffering from more than just pickiness, don’t hesitate to reach out for professional support. For more information on how The Body Image Counseling Center therapists can help with picky eating and other eating-related issues, click here .

How to Put a Stop to Backtalk, Door Slamming, and Other Teen Drama

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:23:31 GMT

The words drama and teenager seem to go hand-in-hand. At one time or another, every teen goes through a period of defiance and push back towards their parents. These can be frustrating times, but there are many things you can do to put a stop to the backtalk and navigate through this challenging time.

Stay Calm When Your Teen is Defiant

Perhaps the best thing you can do when your teen is pushing back is to remain calm and in control. Of course, this can be really hard when they are slamming doors in your face or hurling insults. Letting your anger spill out only pours gasoline on the fire, making the situation worse. Here are ways you can stay in control:

Practice breathing exercises before and during the argument
Note your teens’ behavior without taking things personally
Refrain from yelling at your teen
Ask to pause the discussion if you think it is getting too heated
Walk away from the situation if you feel yourself about to lose control

The less negativity that you can avoid injecting into the argument, the more you will be able to stay in control.

Hold Consistent Boundaries with Your Teen

Hold firm and consistent boundaries with your teen. These could include:

Temporarily losing privileges such as computers, cell phone, or gaming devices.
Apologizing to siblings for their behavior.
Making amends, such as working to pay back anything that was broken or destroyed.

When you hold boundaries make sure that they are reasonable, and not over-the-top punishments exacerbate the problem. For instance, being grounded for a year isn’t a boundary that your teen will take seriously and will actively undermine.

Have Conversations with Your Teen

After you both have calmed down, make an effort to have conversations with your teen. This helps you understand their perspective and even their motivations for being defiant. They also have the chance to understand you and where you’re coming from. By creating understanding, you can lay the groundwork for building a better relationship.

Use Positive Reinforcement

If you see your teen engaging in positive behaviors, use positive reinforcement to encourage them. A compliment or thank-you can go a long way. Just make sure that your comments are authentic, as teens can see through “fake” compliments. Or, develop a system for your teen to earn privileges.

Be United Regarding Teen Drama

When addressing teen drama, make sure that you and your partner are united when it comes to behavioral expectations and consequences. Teens will try to “split” parents who are not on the same page when it comes to expectations. This can cause even more problems as your teen will try to play off each of you in order to get their way. You can avoid this trap by sitting down with your partner and developing a behavior plan. If you are separated from your partner, try to make this communication happen if at all possible.

What if Nothing Works?

If it seems like you’ve tried everything but nothing is working, consider hiring professional help. This is where Caitlin Young, BCBA can help your teen and your family get back on track. Caitlin is an expert in Behavior Therapy, a technique that utilizes positive and negative reinforcement to aid your child in learning new behaviors. She will also work with you as a parent to provide guidance and support as you learn new skills to address your teens’ behavior. She will even come to your home to provide this support in a private and confidential setting.

An important part of being a teenager is learning how to become your own person and create an identity for yourself. However, when your teen becomes disruptive and disrespectful it can have a negative impact on your whole family. Using concepts such as holding consistent boundaries, communication, and not reacting can help. But if these methods don’t work, Caitlin can provide the professional support your family needs.

Is Your Child's Oppositional Behavior Ruining Your Home Life?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:20:14 GMT

Here are some tips you can start using TODAY to bring peace back to your home.

Are you struggling with your child’s oppositional behavior? Do they talk back, refuse to do chores, and “push your buttons?” Oppositional behavior can be frustrating to deal with as a parent. When it’s happening, you may feel like there’s nothing you can do to stop it. However, there are many solutions within your control that you can start using today to improve the situation.

Avoid Excessive Criticism

The first step is to avoid excessively criticizing your child. Instead of helping, heaping on the criticism only causes children to push back. If your go-to is criticism when your child does something wrong (such as not doing a chore), why not try something different? A gentle reminder is a lot more helpful than criticizing, which only makes it “personal” and leads to hurt feelings.

Look for the Positive

Another way to “extinguish the negative” is to compliment your child when they do something positive. Believe it or not, this actually works! Let’s say your child remembers to do their chores. Why not say “thank-you? This helps break up your child’s perception that you are:

“Mean.”
Don’t recognize their work.
Refuse to acknowledge when they do something right.

Compliments and positivity allow your child to see you more as a person and less as an authoritarian figure.

Use Appropriate Consequences

Consequences are necessary and useful for putting limits on problem behaviors. However, many parents make the mistake of going “over-the-top” with consequences. In the moment, emotions can get heated on both sides, and you might not make the best disciplinary decision. For instance, you may say that your child is grounded for three months. An excessive consequence like this only

Reinforces to your child that you are unreasonable.
That you shouldn’t be taken seriously.
That you don’t really understand them.

When you create a consequence, make sure you are in the right frame of mind. If you need time to cool down, let him or her know you need a time-out, then come back to the issue as soon as you can. And remember, a consequence that lasts 1-3 days is sufficient and has the most impact for any offense!

Be Consistent with Consequences

Consistency is another important factor when giving and enforcing consequences. If your child breaks curfew and you don’t give them a consequence, but then come down heavy with a consequence the next time it happens, you send a confusing message. Kids want fair, consistent messages and reliable parenting. When they perceive parents as being inconsistent it inspires oppositional behavior.

Don’t Let them Push Your Buttons

Children, especially teenagers, are very good at knowing your buttons and how to push them. Why do they do this? To see how you will react. In fact, if they have seen you react before, they know that they can get you to and will do it again. Why let them do this. Instead, try to keep a positive attitude and not allow it to get to you.

In-Home Behavior Therapy Can Quickly STOP Oppositional Behavior

Have you tried the above suggestions but continue running into roadblocks?

Consider signing up for in-home behavior coaching with The Body Image Counseling Center! Our in-home therapists can work with you and your child using Applied Behavior Analysis techniques. This method can quickly help you and your child overcome oppositional behaviors by:

Learning about your child’s specific situation and what needs to change.
Designing specific instructions about how to stop the problem behaviors rapidly.
Coaching and supporting you as caregivers so you don’t back down and helps you stay consistent with your child.

Don’t let your child’s oppositional behavior ruin your relationship or home life. It’s OK to get professional help to become closer as a family and bring peace back to your home.

By using positive reinforcement, creating consequences that make sense, and not allowing your buttons to get pushed, you can make headway against negative behaviors. Moreover, employing Applied Behavior Analysis can add the extra level of support both you and your child may need to have a healthier relationship.

How to Help Your Teen with Self-Care Skills & Money Management without Going Insane!

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:16:46 GMT

Tools for Short Term and Long Term Goals

Are you concerned about your teenager’s ability to manage money wisely? Today’s financial landscape is more complicated and risky than that of previous generations. However, there are ways to empower your teen to make smart money choices now, as well as provide skills that will help them become more independent adults.

Why Teach Money Management?

In our modern economy, it’s necessary for teenagers to be financially literate. There are many opportunities to establish a strong financial foundation that can last the rest of their lives. Yet, without basic money management skills early on, they will likely find it harder to take care of themselves as adults later.

Potential problems include:

Not saving money for emergencies or major expenses.
Not understanding how to plan and stick to a budget.
Inability to secure a mortgage and buy a home.
Not having enough money later in life to retire.
Getting sucked into the black hole of credit card debt.

Knowing how to avoid these traps is especially important considering so many young adults must take out student loans to pay for college. According to an article from CNN Money, 40 million Americans have student loans with an average balance of $29,000.

Teens need to learn and practice how to manage their money early to avoid missteps that will follow them throughout their working lives.

Start with a Checking and Savings Account

Open up a checking and savings account with your teen. Make sure it’s a joint account so that you can access the account information and keep an eye on spending. Whenever your child receives a financial gift or gets paid from work, make sure they place 10% in their savings account.

Use a Debit Card to Teach How to Spend Wisely

Attach a debit card to the checking account so that your teen can practice making purchases. If you already provide the money for items like clothing, deposit that money in their account and let them practice making those financial decisions themselves. Coach your teen on how to make spending decisions. For instance, is that really cool, really expensive shirt necessary, when the same amount could buy three more reasonably priced shirts? An advantage of using a debit card, too, is that the funds are drawn on the checking account. There is no temptation to only pay a minimum balance, a big problem with credit cards.

Advise Your Teen on Creating a Budget

Teach them to track their spending for a month, which is easy to do with online banking tools
Show them how to divide their expenditures into groups (food, clothing, entertainment, etc.)
Help them determine how much money they actually need to meet their expenses

After organizing the budget, brainstorm how they intend to pay their expenses.

Set Financial Goals with your Teen

Another way to empower your teen is to set financial goals.

Plan a trip or student exchange program
Choose to make a major purchase, such as their first car
Pay for college

Encouraging your teen to have these discussions gives them a better understanding of how money works and an appreciation for the fact that items have a cost to them – and they’re worth planning for.

I Need Help Teaching My Teen Money Management!

Caitlin Young, BCBA is a great resource for helping your teen better understand money and personal finance . She can work with your child to develop a contract establishing a reward system for positive financial decisions.

These positive reinforcements are part of a powerful coaching method called applied behavior analysis.

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In the modern financial world, knowing how to use money wisely is a self-care skill that all teens need to learn. With help from their parents and specialized coaching from experts like Caitlin, teens can learn more than the value of a dollar, but also how to become financially savvy, independent adults.

Problems Communicating? 7 Ways to Help Your Child or Teen Learn Social Skills

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:09:00 GMT

Are you worried about your child or teen’s lack of social skills?

Do you think your child is too shy, doesn’t have any friends, or is pushing potential friends away?

Is your child struggling to communicate effectively with you or others because they become frustrated or angry?

Does he or she seem unable to understand the complex social situations they face at school?

You're Not Alone in Your Concerns

Just take a look at some of the worries I discovered on the internet expressed by concerned parents:

_____________

“My son told me last night he's upset because he feels he has no friends. I've been worried about him for a while because when school is out, he spends most of his time at home, usually playing Minecraft on his laptop. When I asked him why he doesn't try to arrange things himself and invite people from school, instead of waiting for other people to invite him, he said he didn't think that would work. He also said that when he hangs out in groups, he feels like the other people in the group are just 'tolerating his presence' rather than actually wanting him there.”

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“My seven year old son has social anxiety that has gotten to the point where he usually doesn't want to leave the house. He's ok going to school and to some other activities he's enrolled in. However, getting him to go and play at the park is near impossible. If we do get him there, he doesn't want to play if there are other kids there. He pretty much refuses to interact with strangers.”

Kids and Teens Worry Too

Young people are also often upset about their troubles with social skills and ask for advice on their own, as you can see from these last two comments, found in an internet search (the language and spelling are cute, but the angst is all too real):

_____________

“Okay, So Like Im 14, Im Super Shy Around New People. & The Big Thing About It Is That Im Going On A Cruise & They Have This Like Teen Club Thing & My Step Mom Wants Me To Hang Out There When I Want To. But Im Really Shy So I Don't Really Know, Sooo I Need Some Advice BIG Time!! Please & Thankies!!”

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“I dont wanna be shy anymore? Im really shy im 14 and a girl i hate being shy its no fun no boys wanna talk to you and you dont have many friends what do i do?”

Fortunately, there are ways your child or teenager can better master social skills, thanks to Caitlin Young, BCBA and Applied Behavioral Analyst.

What is Applied Behavioral Analysis?

Applied Behavioral Analysis, or ABA, is simply a therapeutic technique that involves collecting information based on how a person responds to situations. For instance, take note of how your child interacts with others (teachers, peers, and parents) when stressed. Using that information, you can create a treatment plan to address their behavior, thereby teaching her new skills to better cope with these situations.

Method #1: Scenarios

One way to teach your child new social skills is to create scenarios. Caitlin can develop scenarios for him to practice (such as how to start a conversation, or talk to girls). This way, when these situations come up in real life, he can be better prepared. Some ideas include:

Making requests to teachers or peers appropriately.
How to make eye contact with others.
Remembering to use social norms such as please or thank-you.

Method #2: Role Modeling

Your child can also watch other young people or adults model appropriate behaviors. This could be done in real-life or by watching a video. Then your child will have a resource to refer to when practicing the new technique.

Method #3: Self-Critique

As part of role modeling, your child or teen may also be recorded while practicing a scenario. They can then watch the playback to critique themselves on how they handled various situations. If your child is hesitant, remind them that professional athletes do this all the time to improve their performance on the field!

Method #4: Journaling

While at school, your child can take notes in a small journal about how they handled social situations. When they meet with Caitlin, they can look back on these entries and review them together. For instance, they may be encouraged to ask questions like:

What happened?
How did I handle the situation?
What could I have done differently?
What method would have been more effective?

In this way, they become scientists, recording data they can later use to improve their own social skills.

Method #5: Art

Art can also be used for developing social skills. Art is a powerful medium for expressing oneself as well as for learning. Your child could:

Write a story about characters who learn new social skills.
Draw a picture or comic of social situations and how to best resolve them.
Make a song to remember when facing a difficult social situation.

With art, the only limitations are your child’s imagination and creativity.

Method #6: Games

A way to use positive-reinforcement for appropriate social skills is by making a game out of it. Your child can create characters that earn lives, points, levels etc. for successfully completing challenges related to social skills. This could be effective if your child likes board games, video games, or is interested in game development, as it harnesses their interests for emotional learning.

Method #7: Reward Systems

Another way of designing positive-reinforcement is to create a rewards system. For instance, if your teen struggles with getting frustrated easily, but uses a breathing technique to calm down, they can report the skill used and count it toward a reward. This can help them earn reward points, stickers, etc. for something significant they would like, such as free time of their choosing.

As you can see, there are many solutions available for teaching your child or teen social skills. With the help of Caitlin Young, they can master these skills and overcome their frustration and anxiety.

Soon, they will be better prepared for whatever social situations arise.

How to Help Your Shy Child Relax and Have a Fulfilling Social Life

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:29:23 GMT

Does your child struggle with anxiety, especially in social situations?

Do you want your child to feel relaxed and enjoy a more fulfilling social life?

It’s possible. Even better, they can get the help they need at home, where they feel the most comfortable. Soon, your child can feel confident and prepared for what the world has to offer.

Step 1: Keep Track of Your Child’s Social Interactions

By maintaining a log of how your child interacts in the world, you can begin to develop a clearer picture of their challenges and strengths. If your child is old enough, ask them to keep a diary of these interactions for a week. Have them note the day and, if possible, the time. Ask them to write what happened, the situation, and the outcome. For instance, on Monday, John wanted to play the group game, but was too shy to ask. The outcome was that he didn’t get to play and felt sad.

Step 2: Review the Data

At the end of the week, sit down with your child and review the data. You can get them excited by making this into a research experiment for which they are the scientist. Have your child organize the interactions into two categories:

Interactions with a satisfactory outcome.
Interactions with an unsatisfactory outcome.

Together, review the information. Are there any trends that either of you notice? Does your child see a pattern?

Step 3: Brainstorm Solutions

Again, working with your child, brainstorm possible solutions. In the previous example above, John might approach just one child, instead of asking the whole class to participate in the group activity. That way, it’s not as intimidating as having to talk to everybody. Make a list of similar solutions.

Step 4: Practice New Skills

Before applying these social solutions in real life, your child can practice these new skills at home. Set up some scenarios that recreate scenes in your child’s everyday life. Your child can practice what to do differently at home to develop a sort of mental “muscle-memory” before having to do act in real life.

Step 5: Provide a Reward

You can reinforce positive behaviors with your child by offering rewards for a job well done. Let’s say, your child, again, is on the playground and wants to participate with the group. Instead of not playing, he or she asks an individual student if he can join. By the end of the game, he has been able to interact with everybody and may even have a new friend! When he gets home and makes his report, you can provide a reward for trying something new. Some ideas include:

Eating out at their favorite restaurant.
Attending a park, mall, or movie theater.
Earning a certain amount of time for your child to choose what to do.

You can create a scoreboard or other tracking method in your home. Have it in a place of prominence, such as the refrigerator.

Consider Professional Help for Helping Your Child Relax

Not sure if you can implement this on your own? Why not bring in a professional to help? Caitlin Young is a board certified Behavior Analyst who can help you and your child through this process. Together, in your own home, Caitlin can coach your child on specific strategies that will help them overcome shyness and allow them to participate more socially.

Social situations don’t have to be overwhelming.

Practicing these skills at home offers privacy, support, and the boost of confidence they need. By analyzing your child’s interactions with others and applying new learning strategies, your child will be empowered to meet social challenges head-on.

Successful Relationships Secret #2: Overcome your shyness.

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:26:04 GMT

What if It's Hard to Meet New People?

Our first secret in finding fabulous friends and love relationships was, ironically, to learn to enjoy being alone. But what if you’re fine being alone, but have trouble meeting people? Often I counsel people who are very, very shy and experience social anxiety. They have a lot of trouble taking social risks. They can entertain themselves just fine, but they are afraid to talk to people.

Many introverts say they like their own company but still crave deep, meaningful friendships and love relationships. You can’t discover those relationships if you spend most of your time alone.

I am not demanding you become a social butterfly, but finding quality relationships requires taking some social risks . You may feel that most people are out there whooping it up, asking other people to get together and having a great time and you are the only one sitting home alone. As a therapist who has counseled literally hundreds of people over the years, I know for a fact that this is not true.

Technology Has Changed How We Interact - You Can Still Have Meaningful Relationships

With all the electronics and social media available these days, people are not communicating face to face very much anymore. The truth is that most people wish that someone else would make that first move to get together socially. Since it has become harder for people to take social risks in this information age, it is even more important to practice and develop that skill.

In fact, if you become skilled at approaching people and asking them to get together with you on a regular basis, you are going to be ahead of most of the population. In fact, you’ll find others will be drawn to you. They will be thrilled that you asked them, and you’ll have a much greater chance of making lasting friendships and love relationships.

Just take one small social risk every day. You can use our old friend the scale of 1 to 10, but instead of using it for intuitive eating you use it for assessing fear. Let me explain further.

Using the 1 - 10 Scale to Take Social Risks that are Right for You

Imagine another scale from 1 to 10. Number 1 represents no risk or fear at all (i.e. you don’t ask anybody to do anything and there is no anxiety). The number 10 represents total panic attack level (i.e. you ask everybody over to a party that you are hosting at the last minute).

Never choose a social risk that is close to 1 or a10. Pick one that is about a 5. So it might be sending someone a little message saying hi or asking them to go to a movie. You always want to be a bit uncomfortable when you take a risk; otherwise it is not a risk. But you don’t want to be unable to breathe, either!

How to Handle Rejection

Next, it’s essential to rethink fear of rejection. What if the person you ask to get together says no, or stands you up, or doesn’t call you back? Here’s a way to think about rejection that will help you continue to take social risks even when they don’t all work out:

Now forgive me, all you baseball fans out there, because I am not a huge baseball fan, but apparently a .400 batting average is fantastic for baseball. But what .400 actually means is that the player only hits four out of ten balls that are pitched at them.

Remember you are going to strike out a lot socially in order to be successful, and that’s not something personal against you. It is just the nature of the beast. If you know that 6 out of 10 times you are going to strike out when you take a social risk, but 4 times out of 10 you are going to hit a home run, it takes a lot of the pressure off of you. And remember, that’s true for everyone, even the most popular and confident person you know!

My Challenge to You

If you are struggling with loneliness or social anxiety, I would advise you to take one social risk every day. It may mean just calling and saying hi to somebody or texting them hello when you normally wouldn’t. Or it may involve sending them a Facebook message. Or maybe walking up and asking someone to go for coffee, someone in your class you think you may like. Take one small risk a day and you will be on your way to making lifelong friends and wonderful romantic partnerships. And if you experience rejection, keep swinging, don’t throw down the bat - eventually you are going to hit some amazing home runs!

College Eating Disorders

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:22:21 GMT

Secret #1 Learn to enjoy being alone

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"To let a fool kiss you is stupid. To let a kiss fool you is worse.” - E.Y. Harburg

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As a certified Gottman educator and a couples coach, I talk to a lot of people who are either in strained and unsatisfying love relationships, or who are desperately searching for Mr. or Mrs. “Right”. I thought it would be helpful to offer a blog series on the 13 secrets I’ve learned over twenty years as a couples coach on how to find fabulous friends and love relationships.

When I was planning this blog series, I actually didn’t plan to have 13 secrets at first; but by the time I was done there were 13 on the nose. I’m not a naturally superstitious person, but even I was wondering if 13 was too unlucky a number for love advice! Then I realized it would be better to turn that negative thinking around and call it our lucky in love number 13!

Drum roll, please!

13 "Lucky in Love" Tips for Finding Relationships: Tip #1

Learn to enjoy being alone.

It may seem counter intuitive, but one needs to learn how to be alone before one can successfully attract high-quality friends and lovers.

It's essential to learn the difference between aloneness and loneliness.

Loneliness is a very normal emotion; sometimes we pine for other people or we wish we had company. However, a critical task in life is learning how to be alone, how to enjoy your own company, how to not need other people to entertain yourself or feel good about yourself. It’s a very important part of living a full and happy life: learning how to be alone and not lonely.

Unfortunately many people don’t want to face being alone, so they spend much of their lives fearing aloneness and keeping themselves artificially busy. This can lead to being a workaholic, just to avoid alone time. Being alone with oneself can be daunting.

Why are People Afraid of Being Alone?

If you’re afraid to be alone, the causes can be deep, subconscious fears. For example, perhaps you are afraid to face feelings about a painful experience; perhaps you are afraid to think about experiences or people that have hurt you in the past, or situations that are hurting you now. You may feel uncomfortable with those emotions, so you stay super busy in order to avoid them. Or, if you have low self-esteem, you may tend to think badly about yourself when you’re alone.

Many fears of being alone originate from fear of death and mortality. If you don’t sit still, then you don’t need to think about the fact that life is not permanent, or that you don’t have a plan for your life, or that you may be disappointed or feel “stuck” in your life.

These are difficult feelings to manage, and a lot of people I see in counseling are terrified to be alone for one or more of these reasons. And I’ll tell you what I tell them: even though these issues are difficult, it is extremely important to learn to face them. You need to discover that you’re worth knowing and that sometimes it’s better to prefer your own company to hanging around people who haven’t earned your friendship and love.

How I Worked Towards My Goal

The goal is for you to be able to confidently say, “If I didn’t have any friends or love relationships, I would still find lots of cool stuff to do and things to think about on my own because I like myself.” You need to truly believe to your core that you’re an awesome person if you want others to think so, too!

I want to tell a personal story about how you can start to practice being alone and facing your fears, whatever they are. I have to make a confession; before I went to college, I was a bit of a TV addict. I grew up watching a lot of television and the TV was always on in my house.

When I arrived at college my freshman year, I decided to live for an entire year without television and break my “addiction” to it. I’m really not sure why I made that decision, except that it’s my nature to challenge myself, and I knew deep down that television was filling a void and deep uneasiness I had about being alone.

I had a little apartment and the first few months without TV were excruciating. I didn’t know what to do with myself! I was alone with my feelings. I was alone with myself. I realized I didn’t know who I was. Those first few months were extremely stressful. I was climbing out of my skin. I wanted to go out and buy the biggest TV I could find!

But I avoided my impulse to do that. Instead, an interesting thing happened. As I sat with my feelings and the discomfort of being alone, I started to calm down. I began to do a lot of cooking, and I started new hobbies. I regularly had friends over for dinner. I would sit quietly for hours and think about issues that were meaningful to me. I read. I became calmer and less anxious. I discovered a lot of things about myself I liked.

I no longer dreaded being alone.

I did that for an entire year and changed for the better as a person. It was a very healthy experiment for me.

How can you bring that experiment into your life?

You certainly don’t have to cut TV out of your life for a whole year like I did, but you could do it for a week. One of the assignments I give my clients is to sit by themselves alone with no distractions for 15 minutes a day. Some people find it extremely uncomfortable even to do that.

Just keep trying!

Tolerate your discomfort, and eventually it will pass. You’ll learn what an awesome, magnificent person you are! And if you need help managing difficult emotions that arise when you find yourself in stillness, remember a good therapist can help you to cope and move forward.

Let me know how you do if you try the “no distractions” exercise, and I’ll be back next week to share secret number 2 to creating healthy relationships!

Lori J

College Eating Disorders

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:18:40 GMT

Don’t send your child to college with an eating disorder

It’s that time of year again when young people head back to college and school. Unfortunately many of them take more than their bedding and books with them; up to 25% of college students also return with an untreated eating disorder.

To give you an idea of how prevalent the problem is, take a look at the following real-life comments and questions I found on the subject after just five minutes of searching the internet:

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“I’m going away to college with an eating disorder. I think I’ll stop because I think it would be so hard to get away with it when I have a roommate... so is it possible to stop just like that? I’m not really sure I want to stop... so what should I do?”

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“I think the college way of drinking is contributing to my eating disorder. I can’t eat at all before I go out, or I'll end up throwing up before I start drinking. I want to drink because I hate not having a drink in my hand when I’m out because I’m shy around people I don’t know.”

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“I am heading off to college in a month and am wondering what is going to happen to my anorexic/bulimic tendencies. Are they going to get worse due to stress, or will they get better because maybe I will have more fun in college? Any advice?”

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“I am sooo stressed out about college apps/ SATs/ essays/ grades/ etc., that over the past 5 months I've developed an eating disorder. I've always had body issues (mostly just like thinking I'm too fat- I like myself other than that, even though I'm a normal weight). But, once all of this stress is over, sometime in March, will my disorder go away?”

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“I was recently diagnosed with an eating disorder. I'm not sure how severe it is, but I am 5'7, 95 pounds, and I eat anywhere from 800-1000 calories a day. I want to get better, but I also want to stay in school. How time consuming will treatment be? Will I be able to stay and do well in college while dealing with my eating disorder?”

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“I’min college and have an eating disorder,and it’sgetting worse. I don't have anybodythat I can really trust here. My friend back home says I need help, but I’mscared. Anyonehave any advice?”

Statistics: The Prevalence of Eating Disorders in College

Of women surveyed on a college campus, ninety-one percent had attempted to control their weight through dieting. Twenty-two percent dieted in all these cases. Here is the most sobering statistic of all:

Twenty-five percent of college women engage in binging and purging as a weight management technique.

I didn’t even give you the statistics on boys and men, because they suffer from eating disorders too. In this book we’re going to talk about particular signs to watch out for if you’re a young man or if your son is in college and might be prone to an eating disorder.

As you can see from the young people quoted above, many college students have untreated eating disorders before they leave for college, and they leave home without fully planning ahead. They may be recovering from an eating disorder but can’t adequately handle the stresses at college without relapse. Or they never had an eating disorder but developed one in college because they didn’t have the support, knowledge, and tools to avoid it.

As I said, twenty-five percent of college students will suffer from an eating disorder. Your child doesn’t have to be one of them. It’s not something that’s just a fluke, and there are definitely many steps you and your child can take to prevent and shield themselves from eating disorders.

How to Prepare for and Achieve a Positive College Experience

Your child’s college years can be either the very best years of their life or the worst, especially if they have an eating disorder. I can teach your child how to make them the best. I’ve counseled many college students who went through school trying to handle their eating disorders symptoms and succeed academically at the same time, and it did not work out very well at all.

For lots of advice and information on how to help your high school or college-aged child, please consider getting a copy of my book How to be Eating Disorder FREE in College .

In the book, I cover a variety of topics including:

How to plan before you even leave for college in order to be free of eating disorders.
Foolproof ways to avoid the freshmen fifteen and reveal ways to keep up joyful exercise in college.
Secrets to making fabulous friends in love relationships in college.
How to learn to be alone.
How to take good care of yourself.
What all that has to do with eating disorders—and it’s a lot.
Partying and its close relationship with eating disorders.
Tools to rock their grades without spending life in the library or using eating disorder symptoms to cope with stress.

If the book is just not enough, remember that we can help your high school or college student recover from an eating disorder, so they can fully participate and enjoy their college years. Please don’t hesitate to call me at 904-737-3232, or fill out an appointment request form. I answer all calls personally, and will help you come up with a treatment plan specialized to your child’s unique situation.

To your recovery,

Lori J

Eating Disorder Therapists

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:12:46 GMT

Do eating disorder therapists REALLY know what they're doing?

The last few days I have been reading some of the comments posted in eating disorder online support groups, and there seems to be a lot of negative thinking and despair about the ability of therapists to be able to truly help people with eating disorders.

Too many people have reported bad experiences with therapists and other helping professionals when trying to seek relief and recovery.

I can understand these feelings because I've had many people walk into my office over the years and tell me horror stories about therapists/dietitians/doctors/nurses who told them that they were specialists in eating disorder treatment, but ended up either shaming them more, giving faulty advice that made the eating disorder worse, or were so uncomfortable with discussing the eating disorder symptoms that they just stopped talking about the eating disorder all together in during office visits.

Finding A Specialist with Appropriate Experience

I don't mean to disparage all helping professionals; I am one myself after all! And I know that there are many, many excellent eating disorder experts out there in the world, but I also know there are many who claim to be eating disorder specialists and end up doing more harm than good. For example, did you know that in order to be considered an eating disorder specialist for most insurance companies, a therapist needs only to check a box - without providing any evidence of training or knowledge in the field of eating disorders?

I used to be on a lot of insurance panels, and I never had to provide evidence of additional training or expertise when I checked that box. It's all dependent upon the law. In my home state of Florida, you cannot claim to be a sex therapist unless you provide proof of hours of specialized training completed. Unfortunately this just isn't so with other diagnoses including eating disorders.

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Does this mean you should not seek the help of a therapist in your attempt at recovery? Absolutely not! It just means you have to be an educated consumer.

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That's difficult to do when you don't know what goes on behind the scenes of insurance companies and therapy clinics. After all if your insurance company or the clinic assures you that a therapist is a specialist, you would tend to believe them, wouldn't you?

Hopefully as the years go by and more and more people advocate for quality eating disorder treatment, state governments will require a therapist to provide proof of expertise and success in treating eating disorders.

What Can You Do?

I always suggest that you interview several therapists before choosing the one who will give you the best investment for your time, money and emotional vulnerability in talking about your eating disorder. In order to help you I am providing in this post the checklist of questions to ask a therapist before you begin treatment with them that I include in my book Five Simple Steps to be Eating Disorder FREE .

Question checklist to ask a potential therapist:

How much training and experience do you have treating eating disorders?
What is your basic approach and techniques for treatment? Will they be easy for me to understand and use?
How long can I expect treatment to last before I start to improve?
How long and how frequent are the treatment sessions?
Do you accept health insurance and/or offer a sliding fee scale or discount package?
Will you build and communicate with an outpatient treatment team, and how often?
How are you going to address the eating disorder symptoms right away in order to help me regain my physical health?
What are your thoughts on use of medication?
Will you be working with a dietitian who is an eating disorder specialist, along with my primary doctor and psychiatrist?
How many eating disorder patients have you treated over the last two years, and how many of them have recovered fully? What is your definition of full recovery?
Do you have any complaints against you?

And Yes, You Can Do It

It takes so much courage just to pick up the phone and call a potential therapist. For some people it may seem unimaginable to interview them about their qualifications. But let me tell you a secret - a good therapist will not be offended by being asked about their qualifications and their ability to help you.

In fact, it will be a sign to them that you are a client who's serious about your recovery and wants to secure the best treatment possible.

If the therapist makes you feel ashamed for asking them about their experience, that's a signal you should cross them out and interview the next therapist on your list. And don't forget to use websites like edreferral.com and edap.org to locate specialists in your area. Websites like these actually provide a much better screening process of therapists, demanding that they provide proof of experience in eating disorders field before they will list them on the site.

The Body Image Counseling Center Can Help

I hope this message removes some of the feelings of hopelessness and despair out there about being able to find a great therapist. Please let me know what other questions you may have about the eating disorder treatment world and I’ll be happy to try to provide guidance and support. It’s my goal to help people with eating disorders find the right help and support the first time they try, as quickly and affordably as possible.

If you need counseling and help with your eating and body image issues, we can help and support you. Just click here to schedule a counseling appointment and we'll be in touch the very same day.

Also, summer is here and so are body image issues - fear of wearing bathing suits, shorts and other summer clothes. I've been posting lots of supportive articles and messages on my FaceBook page. You can check it out here, and please "like us" to show support for our mission!

Do “Fat Feelings” bother you day and night?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:08:15 GMT

I’ve worked with hundreds of men, women and children with eating disorders over the past twenty years, and I can tell you that without a doubt, fat feelings and body image distortion are even more difficult to get rid of than the actual eating disorder symptoms (such as purging, compulsive exercise, dangerous weight loss, and laxative abuse).

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Why are fat feelings and fears so hard to conquer?

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History of Psychology Lesson

It may seem as if our society has been obsessed with fitness, thinness and body perfection forever, but this is definitely not the case. Eating disorders barely existed over a hundred years ago.

If any of you have studied psychology, you probably know the name Sigmund Freud. He was the father of modern psychology, and where all of those jokes about lying on the couch during therapy come from! Freud had a counseling practice in the 1800’s, and most of his clients were wealthy white women. His notes and books from the time do not mention eating disorders at all! In fact, the most common symptom these women experienced were what Freud called “hysterical” symptoms. These symptoms were characterized by “anesthesias”, or imagined paralysis.

For example, a woman would come in for treatment complaining that her arm was frozen or paralyzed, from the elbow down to the hand. All medical tests would show that there was nothing medically wrong at all, that the arm could function perfectly! Some women felt paralyzed in their hands, their arms, or even frozen in their pelvic regions – and all were deemed to be perfectly healthy physically.

Freud was intrigued by these hysterical symptoms, and was determined to figure out the mental issues that must be causing them. In his ongoing therapy with the women, a common theme began to emerge, and that theme was… SEX! In Victorian times, the time when Freud was alive and practicing psychoanalysis, the greatest taboo of society was to be overtly sexual, and also to have sexual feelings or desires of any kind. Of course, we now know that sexual feelings and desires are a natural and healthy part of being human. But Victorian women felt an extreme shame and guilt over being and feeling sexual in any way.

How did they manage these feelings of guilt and shame? Well, they couldn’t do it consciously, so their unconscious mind created symptoms that basically kept them from being sexual. If your hands, arms or pelvis was paralyzed, it would be pretty difficult to have sex, wouldn’t it? This temporarily solved the problem for Freud’s female patients – if they couldn’t have sex, then they wouldn’t feel the overwhelming and crushing guilt that plagued them day and night.

How This Affects Our Challenges Today

Why do I tell you this story about Freud and Victorian times (aside from the fact that it’s fascinating, don’t you think?). It’s to show you that symptoms of the “mentally ill” are often a reflection of societal beliefs of the time.

Just as there were few eating disorders during Freud’s time, we do not hear about “hysterical” symptoms today (they still occur, but are extremely rare).

What has become the great taboo of our time? Since the turn of the century being fat has become the great fear of the masses, fueled by industrialization, changing roles of women, and an billion dollar diet and cosmetic industry that increasingly shames women and men about the need to be physically thin and perfect.

Getting "Unstuck" From Your Fears

So, how can this short history lesson help you if you are plagued by fat feelings day and night? In order to rid yourself of body hatred and fat fear, you need to know where those fears came from, and know they did not always exist.

Just as our society has healed from many of our fears about being sexual, we can rid ourselves of the fear of not being dangerously thin and physically flawless.

It’s a tall order to fight against societal norms. Freud himself was laughed out of the room when he presented his discoveries to his colleagues. Even they were too repressed to talk about sex! But we know today that Freud was right about the source of hysteria being sexual repression (and sexual abuse, actually, but that’s a topic for another day!).

Looking Forward

One day, I hope that a more enlightened society will look back on our time and realize that our obsession with thinness and ideal beauty was a sign of our own limitations and fears. Right now, what you can do is become more vocal about the need for society to embrace more realistic and diverse standards of beauty. The more you speak up and get angry about these unrealistic standards, the less your fat fears and feelings will become.

For more specific ways about how to fight "fat feelings" and negative body image, my book " How to be Free of Weight Obsession and Body Hatred: 21 life changing techniques you can start using today to stop obsessing over your weight and body image foreve r " can help.

If that's not enough, remember you can always come to see us for private coaching on how to feel better about your weight and body - just fill out a confidential appointment request at www.bodyimagecounseling.com , or reply to this email, and I'll be in touch right away.

To your recovery,

Lori J

Stop Parent Blaming for Eating Disorders

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:02:53 GMT

Find the Help You Need

I've had a lot of distraught parents calling me in the last few weeks because they just found out their child is suffering from anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating or body dysmorphic disorder.

Many of these parents had called doctors, counselors and other medical providers who had been either been unable to help, had implied it was somehow the parents' fault, or hadn't even called them back!

The only thing worse than finding out your child has a potentially life threatening condition is to be continually frustrated in finding qualified help. For this reason I wanted to send out a supportive article this week to parents encouraging you to follow your intuition about what is right for your child, and not to waste precious time blaming yourselves.

Don't Blame Yourself

Many years ago, when I was first beginning my social work training as an eating disorders therapist, one of my supervisors gave me a chilling piece of advice that I never forgot. In a conspiratorial tone she confided, “ My primary goal in therapy is to rip daughters away from their mothers. ”

Although I was a young person myself and not yet a mother, this advice filled me with unease. Didn't children need their mothers, and their fathers for that matter? Even though I'd had many conflicts and disagreements with my own mother during adolescence, I still loved and needed her (and still do today!).

The view of my former supervisor is not uncommon. Although I was originally trained to act on the premise that most children develop eating disorders because they have controlling mothers and under-involved fathers, over the years I quickly realized that this is most often simply not true. Parents of children with eating disorders are generally kind, hard- working, and fair parents who are racked with worry about the health of their child.

The Role of Parents in Recovery

Eventually, I followed my instincts and quickly discovered that if I included parents in the treatment process and took into account their astute observations about their child, the information they provided helped me to accelerate their child's recovery. I also realized that in most cases parents had an overwhelming amount of love and dedication to their child's recovery but were lacking the knowledge to put them to the best use.

(Continued on page 9 of Parents’ Quick Start Recovery Guide: Finding Help Fast When Your Child or Teen Has An Eating Disorder )

Resource: Parent Guide

… I reprint this section of my Parent Guide today because I want to offer parents much needed support in this article. I regret to say that even today, over TWENTY YEARS since that fateful conversation with my supervisor, I am still counseling parents who have been blamed unfairly for their child’s eating disorder. This blame can feel humiliating when they are doing their very best to exhaust every avenue to find quality treatment for their child.

Why does the counseling community still overwhelmingly demonize parents when it comes to eating disorder recovery?

This is not to say that there aren’t fantastic therapists out there who don’t blame parents, but they are, in my experience speaking with parents, few and far between. My guess as to why this harmful attitude is still so prevalent is:

Even from the beginning of psychology as a recognized profession, the founders’ views were skewed towards parent-blaming, especially mother-blaming. These views are over 100 years old and still ingrained in counseling curriculums.
There is a biased emphasis on the role of the family in mental illness, and a lack of focus on societal pressures to be perfect, beautiful, thin and successful.
There is a lack of FUNDING for treatment, research and prevention of eating disorders, so it’s “easier” in a way to blame the parents instead of these larger institutional problems can feel overwhelming to solve.

Helpful Tips

In the meantime, what is a parent to do when faced with these formidable obstacles?

As a parent, listen to your gut about what your child needs. If your child’s doctor, therapist or psychiatrist is not including you on her treatment team, speak up! You are one of the foremost authorities on your child and your input is priceless. If a health care provider doesn’t ask for that input, it’s a huge red flag.
Remember that there are many complicated factors that contribute to the development of an eating disorder, and parent influence is only one. If a therapist suggests there are elements you need to change in your parenting style, that’s one thing; if he or she blames you for the eating disorder, look elsewhere.
Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion. No therapist or doctor should become defensive if you tell them you would like to get more input about your child’s eating disorder. Personally, I encourage potential patients to interview several therapists, doctors and nutritionists before they decide to bring their child to see me. I see this as a sign that the parents are devoted and involved in the treatment process, and those are the parents who are invaluable to ME in my work to help a child get better quickly.

Please remember that I offer emergency Skype and parent coaching , even if you live across the country or around the world! Your child CAN get better, and without shaming parents.

To your child’s recovery,

Lori

The 6 Most Common Mistakes People Make When Trying To Help Someone With An Eating Disorder

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:58:26 GMT

Even though I truly love being a therapist, one thing about my job that is very difficult is receiving the weekly calls from parents and loved ones of people with eating disorders who ask the same heart-breaking question:

“I know my child (wife, sister, brother, mother, or friend) has an eating disorder, but when I beg them to get counseling or see a doctor, they refuse and deny they even have a problem. What can I do to get them help? ”

One of the biggest misconceptions about parents of people with eating disorders are that they are controlling and cold, and one of the primary causes of the child’s eating disordered behavior. In my twenty years of helping families combat eating disorders, I have found that in the majority of cases THIS IS NOT TRUE .

Tips For When, As a Parent, You Feel Helpless

In fact, the opposite is often the case… most parents and loved ones of people with eating disorders are extremely caring, but worried sick, paralyzed about what to do to help. They often feel they have tried everything, and would do anything to help the one they love recover, if only they knew what would work.

An eating disorder will take over the personality of the one you love. Although it is, at its root, a powerful coping mechanism, it can destroy your loved ones quality of life or even take their life. It is excruciating for family and friends who are aware of the problem to feel so helpless to stop this destruction. Many loved ones watch the progression of the eating disorder in horror, afraid to make it worse, and at a loss as to what kind of help will work. Does this sound like you?

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Eating Disorder Recovery

In this article, I am going to post a list the common mistakes I see parents and loved ones with eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, exercise purging and/or compulsive overeating) make over and over again. These mistakes are made with the desire to help and shield their loved one from emotional pain, but unfortunately that is often exactly the unintended result.

MISTAKE #1

Not seeking treatment for the eating disorder right away. I cannot state this often enough… especially if your child is under 18, DO NOT wait and hope the eating disorder will get better on its own with time. Once someone with an eating disorder is a legal adult, the tools you can leverage as a parent go down exponentially. I’ve seen adult children cut off contact with their parents, move to other states, and refuse to keep doctor appointments once they turn 18 in order to stay in their eating disordered behavior. The time to act is now.

MISTAKE #2

Sending your child to college when they have an eating disorder out of fear they’ll lose an opportunity. This may be difficult to hear, but DO NOT send your child to college if you know they have an eating disorder. Colleges are very understanding about helping students pursue health so that they can be truly successful at school.

College is a huge stressor to young people who have eating disorders, and will exacerbate the problem, not make it better. It is much wiser to defer college for a semester or a year and send your child mentally and physically prepared once they have received quality treatment.

MISTAKE #3

Getting caught in ongoing arguments with your loved one around the symptoms of the eating disorder: i.e. trying to rationalize with them that they are not fat, that their clothes are not too big, or that they need to consume more calories or a larger variety of food. You cannot win an argument with the eating disorder by being rational. It will just create distance between you and your loved one, and exhaust the both of you.

MISTAKE #4

Not setting limits with your child or loved one out of fear you will make the eating disorder worse. Your loved one NEEDS limits and boundaries more than ever in order to recover from her illness; in fact, one of the most powerful methods to force a child/loved one into treatment is to set firm limits about what she will or will not be allowed to do based on her poor health.

MISTAKE #5

Allowing an athlete to continue in a sport that puts his body in danger. If you have the power, DO NOT allow an athlete to continue in a sport when he’s not receiving proper nutrition, or engaging in dangerous behaviors such as purging and taking laxatives or diet pills. Parents often do not want to remove a sport because it’s a positive influence, and the child often begs to be allowed to continue.

You can keep the message positive: “We want you to participate in your sport, and as soon as you consent to treatment and reach a healthy weight and let go of your eating disordered behaviors, you can go right back stronger than ever.” I have seen too many parents allow their children, out of fear of disappointing them or making them depressed, continue to participate in sports teams when they are not consuming enough calories to be safe participating.

MISTAKE #6

Allowing the person with the eating disorder to split family and friends and keep secrets. It is very common for a person in deep denial about an eating disorder to convince the people who love them to keep their secrets and protect them from conflict with others who are worried about the eating disorder.

The arguments can be very convincing, ranging from “I’ve just been depressed, that’s why I haven’t been eating”, to “I have stomach problems, which is why I can’t keep food down right now”, to “Our business is private and I can’t handle everyone meddling in my life. Please keep them away from me.” Your desire to is protect the one you love, but in this case you may just be enabling the eating disordered behaviors.

There is Hope

If you recognize yourself in these mistakes, please do not despair. I am not listing them to make you feel ashamed or like a failure. These are common mistakes that are made out of love and caring and a lack of knowledge and support about how to successfully combat a dangerous eating disorder. Sometimes you have to know what to STOP doing in order to move forward and discover what truly works. Luckily, there are several powerful and effective tactics that, if used properly and with guidance from a trained professional, can lead your loved one to break through the denial and finally seek treatment.

Please know I also offer emergency coaching for parents and loved ones to help you create a powerful plan of actions specific to your family’s individual circumstances. You don’t have to go it alone – and you don’t have to repeat the mistakes others have made, even out of love. Just call me at 904-737-3232 or fill out an online appointment request and I will be in touch right away to set up an emergency parent appointment with you.

Have faith and courage. With the right information and support, your loved one can recover.

Troubled Teens

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:52:55 GMT

Do you feel at the end of your rope with your child or teen’s difficult behavior?

By Caitlin Young, BCBA

Does he or she argue all the time and refuse to follow rules, leaving you exhausted?

Is he or she getting poor grades, despite high intelligence and capability?

Does he or she have trouble keeping up with self-care skills such as time management, money management, household chores or regular grooming?

Is he or she abusing alcohol or drugs?

Has he or she become more violent, breaking property, running away, skipping school or physically threatening you and other family members?

Is your teen unbearably shy and have trouble maintaining or starting conversations and friendships?

At the Body Image Counseling Center we have helped hundreds of families over the years, and many of them have experienced similar problems with their kids. Unfortunately, these are not problems that most parents want to admit they have with their children, and as a result, they are often ashamed or afraid to ask for help. If you are one of these parents, please know you are not alone! Asking for help is hard, but once you do, these problem behaviors can be eliminated relatively quickly – with the expert help of our Applied Behavior Analyst, Caitlin Young, BCBA.

How Does Behavior Modification Stop Unwanted Behaviors in Children and Teens?

Behavior modification is successfully used to treat a variety of distressing teen problems, including aggression, acting out, eating disorders, and disrespectful attitude. It is especially helpful for troubled teens struggling with substance abuse. Whether your child is struggling with substance abuse, mental health issues, social anxiety or making the right choices, Caitlin can help your family create the positive changes you are desperately seeking in your child – all in the privacy of your own home.

Caitlin will help you learn that using positive reinforcers like praise, encouragement, or being given a privilege (such as getting to use the car, being allowed to have an extended curfew, or not having to do a certain chore) can do wonders in reinforcing good behavior and eradicating bad behavior.

Negative reinforcers such as ignoring yelling or screaming, taking away privileges, such as phones, ipods or car keys can also do a great deal to stop bad behavior.

I can almost hear what you’re saying now: “ Wait! We’ve tried those things and they just don’t work. We’ve taken away the phone, we’ve tried to offer rewards and the changes never last. How will this be different?” Great question! To answer I would ask you to be honest and ask yourselves:

Have we been consistent with setting limits over the long term?
Have followed through with consequences EVERY time?
Have we been firm with the rules despite our child’s attempts to argue and get us to back down?
Have we consistently stayed positive and rewarded good behavior even when our child tries to push our buttons?

If your answer to some or all of these questions is no, don’t feel bad or think you are an awful parent. It’s extremely difficult to be consistent with a hormonal, energetic and emotional child or teen. That’s why in-home coaching with Caitlin can make such a huge difference in your success with upholding limits with your child and stopping the stress and conflict between you once and for all.

It's Ok to Ask for Guidance

Think about this for a minute – did Michael Jordan, Richard Branson, or Adele achieve such great levels of success without employing coaches and advisors along the way? The same principle applies to parenting. It’s OK to ask for coaching and help to guide your teen to extraordinary behavior. Having an in-home coach will teach you to consistently create a supportive and caring environment that will show your teen the consequences of continued poor choices and help them learn how to make better decisions in the future. In fact, Caitlin can help you and your teen create and follow a written contract that clearly states the terms of the reward system. Most importantly, she’ll support and guide you as parents to stay on track with the plan and not back down.

Here are some of the behaviors Caitlin can help your child develop:

Social skills:

Engaging in appropriate, non-eating disorder related conversations
Using eye contact
Completing chores the first time asked
Ending sarcasm, arguing and back-talk
Having courage to talk on the phone
Engaging in leisure activities with peers
Meal time interactions (Making meal times more enjoyable and less anxiety-provoking)

Daily living skills:

Trying new foods
Cooking meals
Meal planning for the day/week
Creating a budget
Self-care skills

Independence skills:

Cooking meals independently (not relying on others to do so)
Meal planning
Grocery shopping independently
Tolerating being alone without using drugs
Living independently
Going to appointments independently
Getting a part-time job

If you have been at the end of your rope with your child or teen’s behavior, don’t give up. Caitlin can come to your home and coach you on how to stop the conflict and dangerous behaviors rapidly, and also help you and your child feel closer. It’s completely private and confidential. If you would like a free 15 minute phone consult with Caitlin to discuss your child’s specific situation and how she can help, just call us at 904-737-3232 or fill out a confidential appointment request form below.

Do You Know About This Hidden College Epidemic?

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:47:53 GMT

Do you know about this hidden college epidemic: substance abuse and eating disorders?

An excerpt from my new book brings it to light.

_____________

Do you know there has been a dramatic increase in marijuana use on college campuses, even in states where it’s not legal? I’m finding more and more that when people come to see me for help with eating disorders, they’ve also been regularly drinking to excess and/or using marijuana daily.

Contrary to common belief, marijuana is addictive. Estimates from research suggest that about 9% of users become addicted to marijuana. This number increases among those who start young (to about 17 percent, or 1 in 6) and among people who use marijuana daily (to 25-50 percent).

( www.drugabuse.gov ).

Marijuana use among young adults aged 18 to 25 was found most responsible for the rise. Drug use among college-aged students has jumped from 19.6 percent in 2008 to 21.5 percent in 2010. ( www.usatoday.com )

There has also been a dramatic increase in abuse of prescription drugs on college campuses. College-aged men and women are abusing a number of prescription medications, over-the-counter drugs and illegal drugs, including Adderall, alcohol, cold medicine, OxyContin and medical marijuana.

Among adults ages 18-25, abuse of prescription drugs is second only to abuse of marijuana, according to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Hundreds of thousands more of today’s college students are abusing prescription drugs than was the case in the early 1990s, and the number of students using marijuana daily has more than doubled to approximately 4 percent.

According to a Columbia University study, almost half of full-time college students binge drink or abuse prescription drugs, and almost a quarter of those college students meet the medical definition of having a problem with substance abuse or a dependence. That is three times the rate of the general population. ( www.drugwatch.com ). Misuse of prescription drugs is second only to abuse of pot. So you can see from these statistics that a lot of students, almost half of full-time students, binge drink or use prescription drugs and almost a quarter of those college students meet the medical definition of having a problem with substance abuse or dependence. This is almost three times the rate of the general population!

This is so very dangerous, because on the one hand, research proves college students are using and abusing drugs more than normal population. Combine that with a culture that normalizes it as just partying and having a good time, implying that you’re a loser if you aren’t doing it, then you get an extremely deadly combination.

Substance abuse often coexists with eating disorders

Drinking and drug use are disinhibitors that can lead to bingeing and purging and other anorexic or restricting behaviors. A disinhibitor is something that takes our defenses away. They make it much harder for us to use good judgment. Did you know that one half of individuals with eating disorders abuse alcohol or illicit drugs compared to 9% of the general population? And up to 34% of alcohol or illicit drug users have eating disorders compared to 3% of the population? If you have an eating disorder, you must be extra careful about your alcohol and drug use because you’re more prone than the general population to develop a problem.

The 73-page report by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University was released by CASA president and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph A. Califano, Jr. shows that:

up to one-half of individuals with eating disorders abuse alcohol or illicit drugs, compared to nine percent of the general population. Conversely, up to 35 percent of alcohol or illicit drug abusers have eating disorders compared to three percent of the general population. anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the eating disorders most commonly linked to substance abuse and for the first time identifies the shared risk factors and shared characteristics of both afflictions. The report lists caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, diuretics, laxatives, emetics, amphetamines, cocaine and heroin as substances used to suppress appetite, increase metabolism, purge unwanted calories and self-medicate negative emotions.

Remember too, women are more prone to alcoholism than men:

“The main reason is the ratio of water and fat in the body that is different for the sexes,” said Prof. Manfred Singer. Thus, the liquid content for men is about 70 percent, while woman’s is only 60 percent. But women have a higher fat content. “The fat takes up no alcohol, so it spreads to less liquid,” said the alcohol expert. The result: Even when drinking the same amount of alcohol, women have a higher blood alcohol concentration or more blood alcohol in the blood than men. This is the case even when both sexes weigh the same.” ( http://rapidnewsnetwork.com/ )

_____________

If you are in college and have an eating disorder, or fear someone you love has one, it’s essential to also be on the lookout for substance abuse. For more information and help on what to do if you are a college student who has eating problems, or a parent or loved one of a college student, you can order my new book “How to be Eating Disorder FREE in College: Avoid the freshman 15, leave home without fear, find fabulous love relationships, all while rocking your grades” on my Amazon page here . If my books are helpful to you, please remember to leave me a positive review – it will help others find my books and gain access to this life-saving information!

To your recovery!
Lori

Why You Need Professional Help To Get Better From an Eating Disorder

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:39:30 GMT

The Importance of Keeping Yourself Informed

Many people with eating disorders wonder if professional treatment is absolutely necessary for them to get well. Eating disorders are mysterious to the average person, and individuals often lack full understanding of this complex and dangerous problem.

When a person lacks information and guidance about a stressful problem, they can be prone to minimizing it or denying its seriousness. This can unfortunately lead to disastrous consequences. I have spoken to many people with eating disorders over the years who have insisted that:

_____________

“I’ve gone through stages where I’ve been better with my symptoms. If I just wait it out, I know this bad period will pass and things will get better.”

_____________

“I know I’m going to have to live with my eating disorder the rest of my life. The best I can hope for is that I can keep the symptoms under control the best I can.”

_____________

“I’m not going to pay a lot of money for treatment when all I need to do is eat or have enough will power to stop bingeing and purging”

_____________

“I already have a therapist and the doctor on board. A dietitian seems like overkill. I’ll add the nutrition part later if I need to.”

The Challenges in Approaching an Eating Disorder and Getting to Full Recovery

Eating disorders are illnesses cloaked in secrecy and denial. Do not make the mistake of believing that you can recover without professional support and guidance, or that if you just try hard enough, you’ll be able to make the choice to stop. Even with the understanding you gain from reading self-help books like this one, you are still affected by your personal history of distorted thinking and behavior about food and body image, plus being bombarded every day by society’s pressures to be thin and perfect. It is also likely that you have extremely painful underlying issues that you may have never faced and learned how to cope with in a positive way.

"Eating disorders are not a conscious choice. An eating disorder is a very powerful, subconscious coping mechanism that you use to handle extreme pain and stress."

Most people I treat for these problems are models of responsibility and self-control. They are highly perfectionistic and people-pleasers. If they could control the eating disorder symptoms, believe me, they would, because they like to control everything else. Eating disorders are not like other mental health issues people face, such as depression or anxiety, which can often be remedied by once-a-week visits to a qualified and empathic therapist. Complete treatment for eating disorders requires the work of a team of professionals who can treat the whole person.

Having a Support Team is Essential

If you secure a quality outpatient treatment team quickly, inpatient treatment is in most cases unnecessary. The emphasis, note, is on “team.” If you go to only one provider without putting together a team, you are setting yourself up for failure in your recovery.

Strong words, yes, but they’re true. Studies show that people with eating disorders have a better prognosis and recover faster when they are working with a treatment team similar to what they would have in a hospital setting.

A diagnosis of an eating disorder is not an automatic life sentence of misery for you. By taking the right steps from the start, you are very likely to recover quickly and permanently (in months, rather than years). However, if you do not get help, and the right kind, you could be sentencing yourself to months, or even years, of struggling with an eating disorder. In fact, the faster you secure quality treatment, the more likely you are to recover fully and live a happy and healthy life without being obsessed with food and weight.

"Currently, up to 20% of individuals suffering from an eating disorder will do so for the rest of their lives."

This staggering statistic would be greatly reduced if the person received the right form of treatment from the start.

A Look at Outpatient Care

In addition to the comparative cost advantage, there are further benefits of quality outpatient care:

You will usually still be able to attend school or work, whereas hospitalization can cause you to take FMLA or drop classes, which creates more stress in your life and potentially trigger a relapse;
You do not have to pay for accommodations and travel to the inpatient hospital, which is unlikely to be located in your town;
You will be creating a team that will always be available in town if you relapse, so you can get back on track quickly;
Remember that an inpatient stay is an emergency measure that is most often used to stabilize a person in grave physical danger. You still have to learn how to manage the stresses of your life when you leave the hospital. This is why the most dangerous time for eating disorder patients is immediately after they leave the hospital and return to their regular lives.
If there are no supports in place when they return, they are likely to fall back;
One of the most important therapeutic advantages of using an outpatient treatment team rather than going to a hospital is that you will learn how to manage the stresses that triggered the eating disorder in real life. You will then be able to practice the techniques in your own home, while you are still in school or work and engaging in your social life.

Who Should Be on Your Team?

Ideally, the members of your outpatient treatment team should closely mirror those you would have in an inpatient setting. At the bare minimum, the team should consist of your doctor, a qualified therapist, and a qualified dietitian. Depending on the resources available in your geographic area and your specific needs, your team may also include a qualified psychiatrist, a family therapist, and a group therapist. The role of each person on the treatment team, and how often meetings should be with each professional, are outlined in more detail in my book Five Simple Steps to be Eating disorder FREE , which you can purchase on my amazon page.

In this detailed guide , I show you how to create a top notch support system. This treatment team will be the best use of your financial resources and will help you quickly and permanently recover from your eating disorder.

You Can Be Successful

Remember the statistic I shared earlier that 20% of people with eating disorders will never seek help or die from complications of eating disorders? It is my goal to help you avoid becoming one of the 20%. If I didn't help people recover successfully from the emotional and physical devastation of eating disorders every day, I wouldn't be doing the work I do.

"You CAN recover from an eating disorder quickly and permanently."

By taking action as soon as possible and following this five step quick start guide , you will be taking one enormous step towards placing yourself in the 80% who leave an eating disorder behind them forever. If you would like to speak with me personally about how to successfully set up your outpatient treatment team, just fill out a confidential appointment request form here and I’ll be in touch by phone or email within 24 hours. You don’t have to suffer with an eating disorder any longer. Have the courage to reach out for the right kind of help and you, too, can be eating disorder FREE!

Lori

3 Powerful Ways To Keep Up Healthy Exercise During the Holidays

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:33:48 GMT

Our Exercising Habits

Around this time of year, starting in October, I hear about two main fears that overwhelm most of my clients with eating disorders:

1. I’ll eat too much (or not enough) food over the holidays, going back to my eating disordered behaviors

2. I’ll either over-exercise to deal with the stress, or not exercise enough.

My last blog post addressed the first fear. If you missed it, you can read it here . Today I’m going to help you with the second fear. Our comforting routines are often disrupted during holiday time. There is a lot of free time, a lot of food, and a lot of pressure to fulfill social obligations. These pressures can cause us either to over-exercise (called “exercise purging”), or to slack off on exercise, which can lead to depression and a resurgence of eating disorder symptoms. Here are my three top secrets on how to keep up healthy, joyful movement over the holidays

Secret #1 Exercise for the fun of it

Never exercise with weight loss or calorie burning as a goal and I mean never with a capital N. If you haven’t already, make the switch from seeing exercise as a “necessary evil” to a desire to put joyful movement into your life every day. This can be quite a challenge, combined with holiday pressures put on us about making exercise “resolutions” for the new year (combined with lowered gym membership offers!), one can easily start to overdo physical activity, or just go hide under the bed without moving at all!

What is joyful movement? Our bodies are meant to move. We’re not meant to sit all day and be still. We’re meant to move, but we’re not meant to hurt when we move. We’re supposed to have fun when moving our bodies and enjoy them. But the media and our culture has brainwashed us to dread exercise and see it as a chore. This actually results in us exercising less!

A lot of times people come into my office and say: “I hate exercise, I just don’t want to do it!” Then they try to hoist themselves up on a treadmill or put themselves in a spinning class. I’m not saying spinning is bad, some people love spinning, but a lot of people don’t like it. Most people force themselves do an extreme workout program they see on TV or a “bootcamp” of some sort which promises the result of having a perfect body.

Before some of you write me and tell me “I love fitness boot camp!” I do acknowledge that some people do truly enjoy these types of exercise. However, most people hate them and cannot sustain that type of exercise program over the long term. If you change your outlook to joyful movement you will actually want to exercise and move your body.

Change your exercise outlook. If you stop exercising for weight loss or for burning calories, or to “get ripped”, you’ll start to think about it for fun and feeling good in your body. Then you’re going to exercise more, and be fit for life, I promise. Exercise should never hurt—find exercise that “doesn’t feel like exercise”. What does this mean?

_____________

Be creative and come up with fun ways to move your body.

_____________

For example, do you know that The American Heart Association actually has bathing a dog on their approved list of exercises?

Secret #2: Move to feel good not to look good

When you practice joyful movement, try to concentrate on how your body feels, not how it looks. Again I know I talk about this a lot, but I’m trying to deprogram you from all the advertising that we’re bombarded with day in and day out, from the moment we’re little until the day we die.

Advertisers have conditioned us to focus on exercising for the sole purpose to create a perfect looking body, rather than a body that feels happy and energized. It’s a model built on low self-esteem and shame, telling you that if you don’t look perfect then you’re a failure. Luckily, THEY have the answer with their compulsive exercise system or their program.

Let’s get out of that shaming model and turn towards a pleasure filled, joyful model.

A perfect body is either unattainable or requires ongoing compulsive exercise and food restriction to achieve and maintain. Think for a moment about all of those compulsive exercising programs that you see on TV. I don’t want to say the names, but you know which ones I’m talking about (i.e. maybe it takes you ninety days to get that body – wink, wink).

Keep up activities that you will want to participate in for your entire life, including over the holidays. Getting on the exercise perfection treadmill only leads to low self esteem, and potentially physical harm. Too much exercise can hurt you, so don’t try to be perfect and have a perfect body. Move to feel good!

_____________

Just as you need to listen to your body about the food it needs to intuitively eat, you also need to learn to listen to your body’s signals about exercise.

_____________

Many people push themselves to exercise when they are in pain. When they’re aching from the last workout, they push themselves through it and that’s unhealthy. You can get injured. Your body will tell you what it needs and sometimes it needs to rest, not to move.

Secret #3: Exercise can cheer you up

It’s important to think of exercise as a depression and anxiety fighter and a brain energizer, rather than a weight control method. Even though there is a lot of pressure to look and feel happy over the holidays, depression actually gets worse for many people during this time of year. I always say that joyful movement is the number one natural depression fighter!

If you focus on exercise as a way to lift mood and ward off anxiety and depression, you will be much more likely to stay active your entire life. Remember that exercise increases endorphins, which are a feel-good chemical for your brain. These are so much better goals to think about than losing weight and having the perfect body.

Anti-depressant medication has its place, especially to help chronic depression or anxiety. But I also believe in using as many natural methods to fight anxiety and depression as you can, before you try medicine. Exercise is by far the number one way, if you talk to doctors, to lift depression and anxiety, because it floods the body with endorphins. That’s very similar to what psych medicine does, and exercise can do that naturally. This is another great reason to keep exercising throughout your life besides exercising for weight loss.

_____________

Plan in advance to have a joyful movement routine over the holidays, and you will insulate yourself from your eating disorder symptoms, depression and anxiety. If you’d like to learn more about joyful movement and other natural deterrents to eating disorder symptoms, check out my latest webinar 10 Proven Tips & Tricks for Successfully Handling the Holidays Without Overeating, Purging or Starving .

Parenting Can Be Hard And We Can Help Do you feel at the end of your rope with

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 04:25:26 GMT

Do you feel at the end of your rope with your child or teen’s difficult behavior?

Does he or she argue all the time and refuse to follow rules, leaving you exhausted?

Is your child or teen refusing to do chores, talking back, lying, or showing other disrespectful behaviors?

Is he or she getting poor grades, despite high intelligence and capability?

Does he or she have trouble keeping up with self-care skills such as time management, money management, household chores or regular grooming?

Is your teen unbearably shy and have trouble maintaining or starting conversations and friendships?

Do you worry that your shy child will never have friends or always be lonely?

Is your young adult having difficulty completing college classes, holding a job, and being able to live on their own?

Does your child spend hours and hours in his or her room on their phone or video games, and refuse to participate in family life?

You Are Not Alone in These Challenges

If you're a parent and can relate to one or more of the above situations, you are definitely not alone! Parenting has become even more of a complex juggling act in recent years, and our children are dealing with issues even more stressful than those we had growing up. On the one hand, you have compassion for your child or teen dealing with hormone changes, school and social pressures, but on the other, it can cause tremendous anxiety and irritation for parents when our little angels act out over and over again!

Luckily, as parents, we don't have to go it alone, although it can sometimes feel that way.

At River Shores Counseling we have helped hundreds of families over the years, and many of them have experienced similar problems with their kids. Unfortunately, these are not problems that most parents want to admit they have with their children, and as a result, they are often ashamed or afraid to ask for help. If you are one of these parents, please know you are not alone! Asking for help is hard, but once you do, these problem behaviors can be eliminated relatively quickly.

I want to tell you about a form of life coaching called ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) or behavior modification. It is a strong solution for helping young people of all ages empower themselves, learn new skills, and be successful in life... and it can put a STOP to problem behaviors within a matter of weeks - really!

How Does Behavior Modification Stop Unwanted Behaviors in Children and Teens?

Behavior modification is successfully used to treat a variety of distressing teen problems, including aggression, acting out, eating disorders, and disrespectful attitude. Whether your child is struggling with mental health issues, social anxiety or making the right choices, our in-home behavior specialists can help your family create the positive changes you are desperately seeking in your child – all in the privacy of your own home.

Our coaches will help you learn that using positive reinforcers like praise, encouragement, or being given a privilege (such as getting to use the car, being allowed to have an extended curfew, or not having to do a certain chore) can do wonders in reinforcing good behavior and eradicating bad behavior. Negative reinforcers such as ignoring yelling or screaming, taking away privileges, such as phones, Ipods or car keys can also do a great deal to stop bad behavior.

With in-home behavior coaching, your child plays an active role in their own life coaching, instead of parents or other adults dictating the structure of rewards and behavior changes. This method also does not label your child a “problem” like traditional counseling approaches. It is presented as a form or tutoring or “life coaching” which eliminates the need say they are in “therapy”.

Why Haven't Your Efforts Worked So Far?

As a parent myself, I can almost hear what you’re saying now: “Wait! We’ve tried those things and they just don’t work. We’ve taken away the phone, we’ve tried to offer rewards and the changes never last. How will this be different?” Great question! To answer I would ask you to be honest and ask yourselves:

Have we been consistent with setting limits over the long term?
Have followed through with consequences EVERY time?
Have we been firm with the rules despite our child’s attempts to argue and get us to back down?
Have we consistently stayed positive and rewarded good behavior even when our child tries to push our buttons?

If your answer to some or all of these questions is no, don’t feel bad or think you are an awful parent. It’s extremely difficult to be consistent with a hormonal, energetic and emotional child or teen. That’s why in-home coaching can make such a huge difference in your success with upholding limits with your child and stopping the stress and conflict between you once and for all.

Think about this for a minute – did Michael Jordan, Oprah, or Adele achieve such great levels of success without employing coaches and advisors along the way? The same principle applies to parenting.

It’s OK to Ask for Coaching and Help to Guide Your Teen Extraordinary Behavior

Having an in-home coach will teach you to consistently create a supportive and caring environment that will show your teen the consequences of continued poor choices and help them learn how to make better decisions in the future. In fact, a behavior coach can help you and your teen create and follow a written contract that clearly states the terms of the reward system. Most importantly, she’ll support and guide you as parents to stay on track with the plan and not back down.

Here are some of the behaviors River Shores Counseling can help your child develop:

Social skills:

Engaging in appropriate, non-eating disorder related conversations
Using eye contact
Completing chores the first time asked
Ending sarcasm, arguing and back-talk
Having courage to talk on the phone
Engaging in leisure activities with peers
Meal time interactions (Making meal times more enjoyable and less anxiety-provoking)

Daily living skills:

Trying new foods
Cooking meals
Meal planning for the day/week
Creating a budget
Self-care skills

Independence skills:

Helping young adults “launch”, attend college, hold a job and support themselves.
Cooking meals independently (not relying on others to do so)
Meal planning
Grocery shopping independently
Tolerating being alone without using drugs
Living independently
Going to appointments independently
Getting a part-time job

If you have been at the end of your rope with your child or teen’s behavior, don’t give up. Our coaches can come to your home and teach you how to stop the conflict and dangerous behaviors rapidly, and also help you and your child feel closer. It’s completely private and confidential. If you would like a free 15 minute phone consult to discuss your child’s specific situation and how we can help, just call us at 904-737-3232 or fill out a confidential appointment request form below. We will be in touch with you TODAY.

Don't diet, get ANGRY!

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:47:59 GMT

Throwback Thursday

Luckily the modeling industry has gone through many positive changes to protect models from developing eating disorders since I first wrote this piece three years ago.

First published September 20, 2013

Today I'm pretty mad. I saw a story on Good Morning America yesterday on a married couple whose job is to scout for potential supermodels. Do I care what these folks do for a living? Not really, it IS a free country after all. It's what happens after they find their supermodel progeny that makes my blood boil.

The story featured three teenage girls (ALL already painfully thin, I may add) who were "discovered" by this pair. The agents were proud to disclose their regimen for transforming the teens into supermodel material. First, they are put on a "bare bones diet" of "lettuce, carrots and egg whites". Then they are expected to "train like professional athletes", using the treadmill up to 10 miles per day. One of the teens was actually filmed pleading "Feed me!"

When asked whether or not the scouts were pushing the girls to an unhealthy weight, the wife (who is at a comfortably healthy weight, herself) responded in all seriousness: No, because we stress "You have to be healthy in this pursuit".

What, the pursuit to develop anorexia? When was the last time you saw a professional athlete eating only lettuce, carrots and egg whites? Michael Phelps eats a 12,000 calorie/day diet when training for the Olympics. When I think about all the teenage girls I see here in therapy wishing they looked like these supermodels, I get sick. We need to scream our outrage at practices like these. Please let me know what YOU think, but I'm pretty sure this is child abuse!

(Check out the full story here .)

Is an eating disorder the real problem, or just a symptom?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:45:36 GMT

The Truth About Eating Disorder Symptoms

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. If you have spent any time reading books on eating disorder recovery (or spent time in therapy with me!) you know that an eating disorder is really an all-powerful coping mechanism that soothes enormous amounts of underlying stress.

Cause and Effect

If you think back on when you first developed your eating disorder (it’s often earlier than you first guess), it is almost certain that there was an accompanying stressful event(s) that occurred during that time period.

It’s not hard to see why purging several times a day, starving to the point of passing out, uncontrollably binge eating, obsessive counting of calories and other E/D symptoms can become the primary focus of concern. But if you compare those problems to those of being sexually abused, witnessing repeated violence, suffering severe abandonment and loss, for example, they pale in comparison.

What do you think are YOUR underlying stressors and/or traumas that first triggered your eating disordered behaviors (bingeing, purging, emotional eating, compulsive exercise, laxative abuse, orthorexia, body dysmorphic disorder)?

_____________

It is only when you identify these, and receive proper support to grieve, grow and heal, that you will be able to let go of your eating disorder for good.

Should your inner circle be your outer circle?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:44:26 GMT

Having a Support System is So Important

In my work with helping individuals with eating disorders I have learned that negative thoughts and poor boundary setting are two of the most dangerous enemies of full recovery.

Conversely, one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal to help you turn negative thoughts around is a rock-solid support group, or what I call your inner circle.

How to Look at Your Own Inner Circle

Here is an exercise I often complete with my clients to determine if their inner circle is truly supportive:

Step 1: Think for a moment about who you consider to be in that circle; friends, family, business contacts, teachers… these are the people you spend the most time with in your life. Now make a list of the FIVE people you spend the most time with within that circle.

Print out this post and list them here:

Step 2: Now, look at each person on the list and ask yourself: Is this person someone who truly encourages me, does not judge me or try to tear me down? Is this someone who makes time for me if I need them? Is this someone who can celebrate my successes without becoming jealous? Is it someone who can hear my pain without changing the subject or talking about themselves?

The Power of Negative Thoughts

Let me tell you a secret… if you have a lot of negative thoughts about yourself and your life, it's likely that you've also filled your inner circle with people who have negative thoughts, and have trouble encouraging you. As a result, they confirm your negative thoughts, which keeps them going around and around in your head. You may have put them in your inner circle for a number of reasons, including:

Deep down you don't think you deserve encouragement or support, or feel selfish asking for it.

You were "trained" in your early years to accept criticism and blame.

You have trouble telling people "no", so you allow people into your circle, even though your intuition tells you not to.

What's Next

When completed thoughtfully, this simple exercise can be an eye-opener. You may realize that people you have been allowing into your "inner circle" are actually impeding your recovery and keeping your self-esteem low. It can be difficult to make these realizations about the people with whom you've been surrounding yourself, and it can feel scary to make changes to remove them.

If you need coaching to learn how to set and keep boundaries with difficult people in your life, we can help and support you. Just click here to schedule a counseling appointment and we'll be in touch the very same day.

Bonus: Love Your Body Challenge

Also, summer is here and so are body image issues - fear of wearing bathing suits, shorts and other summer clothes. What a great time to take the 7-day Love Your Body Challenge. It's free, confidential, and will give you lots of support and tips to start loving your body during the summer months and EVERY month! Sign up here

Did you know this deadly myth about eating disorders?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:40:44 GMT

Question: That person doesn’t LOOK like he (or she) has an eating disorder.

How could they have one if their weight is normal?

I receive this question all the time from parents and loved ones of people with eating disorders. Please know that it is a DEADLY MYTH that someone can’t have an eating disorder if they seem to be of normal weight. Remember, eating disorders are complicated illnesses, and present themselves differently depending on the person.

Did you know that studies show most people with bulimia nervosa are of NORMAL weight?

Did you also know that you can have symptoms of different types of eating disorders all at the same time?

For example,

a person can be anorexic and also make themselves throw up, or
a person can be bulimic and also restrict their food intake, or
a person can be a compulsive overeater and also use laxatives or compulsive exercise to purge.

Eating Disorders are Not So Straightforward

In my twenty years of experience counseling people with eating disorders, it is very rare that I see a person who is purely anorexic, bulimic or a compulsive overeater. It is far more common for people to have symptoms from more than one diagnosis OR, to have switched off and on between diagnoses during their lifetime.

For example, Gina (I have changed client names to protect confidentiality) was anorexic as a teenager, but became bulimic and a substance abuser as a young adult, but got back to a “normal” weight during these years. Jimmy was a compulsive overeater as a child, but because he was bullied relentlessly about his weight, he started exercise purging and became anorexic as a young adult.

Learning to Recognize the Signs

What does this mean if you think someone you love has an eating disorder? Remember that the eating disorder is like a chameleon; it can change its appearance and symptoms, but the underlying causes and danger is THE SAME. Just because someone seems to be normal weight doesn’t mean that they are not compulsively exercising, purging or using laxatives on a regular basis. It’s important to know the many symptoms and signs of eating disorders, which include changes in personality, secrecy, calluses on the hands from purging, and hair loss, just to name a few.

If you’re worried someone you love has an eating disorder, you can learn to recognize the chameleon-like symptoms and also learn exactly what to do in my Parent Quick Start Recovery Guide, available here.

And please know that I offer emergency parent coaching within 24-hours, even on the weekends, if you need professional help and guidance on how to help your loved one get better.

How Applied Behavior Analysis Can Help You Rapidly Recover from an Eating Disorder

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:38:11 GMT

As a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA)...my main focus is to increase socially appropriate, healthy behaviors, and decrease unhealthy, dangerous behaviors.

Goals for Working with ABA

With regard to eating disorders, I will help you to increase healthy behaviors in your life such as: following your meal plan, exercising an appropriate amount, eating an appropriate amount of calories, and regularly using healthy coping skills instead of your eating disorder symptoms. At the same time, I will also help you decrease unhealthy behaviors such as: yo-yo dieting, purging, over exercising, and emotional eating.

https://mysites.therapysites.com/0050768/storage/app/media/Blog_images/RapidlyRecover_web.jpg Each time you or your loved one uses an eating disorder behavior such as bulimia, it appears to “work.” Maybe it helps you feel calm or less stressed. Maybe it even helps you feel more in control. Each time you or your loved one purges and it seems to “work,” the behavior is rewarded, making you more likely to do it again. The problem, of course, is that behaviors such as purging only “work” temporarily. I will help you determine the true reason you are using these unhealthy and often dangerous behaviors. Then I will compassionately guide you to make necessary changes in order to substitute healthy, life affirming behaviors that WORK.

How to Increase Healthy Behavior and Decrease Unhealthy Behavior

So how do I help someone do that?

Step 1: Helping you understand that you developed an eating disorder for a reason. Everyone has their breaking point in life. When a person is under a great deal of stress, they will find a way to cope. If you don’t have a solid repertoire of coping skills (that truly help!), you can resort to dangerous behaviors such as dieting, purging or compulsive exercise. It’s the body’s way of dealing with immense stress. Most important, please understand it is not your fault that you developed an eating disorder and you have nothing to be ashamed about.

Step 2: Helping you analyze your behavior(s) and recognize patterns. Does your eating disorder get worse after you are involved in a difficult/stressful social encounter such as an argument? Do you binge, purge, diet or feel worse about your body when you receive bad news? In many cases, you may use your eating disorder behavior(s) to escape stress or anxiety. In the Applied Behavior Analysis world, this means the eating disorder behaviors are being rewarded over and over again. In other words, it makes you immediately feel better, relaxed, relieved.

Step 3: Helping you utilize other ways to make yourself feel better so you don’t have to binge, purge, starve or over exercise. I will also help you examine your life and make any necessary changes that will decrease your stress and your need to use your eating disorder in the first place. For example, if you are a “people pleaser”- constantly overworked and taking on too many responsibilities - I will, in a firm but caring way, encourage you to reduce your responsibilities and learn that it’s ok to say “no.” Reducing your stress in ways like this will help your eating disorder disappear for good.

Eating disorders are very complex and everyone has stressful times in life. We must have a good set of coping skills that help us get through stressful times without hurting our bodies. In order to have the greatest chance at recovery, it’s important to work with a solid team of professionals. That’s why I’m thrilled to have joined The Body Image Counseling Center’s caring team of recovery professionals. Working with a Behavior Analyst can be a key component in recovery. Teaching healthy, appropriate replacement behaviors is one of the most important parts of my job as a Behavior Analyst! If you’d like to schedule an appointment to discuss how I can help you personally, please fill out a confidential appointment request form through this link, and I’ll be in touch right away.

By Caitlin Young, BCBA

Does the man in your life have an eating disorder?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:36:21 GMT

Eating Disorders Among Men

Over the years I have been treating more and more boys and men for eating disorders. Do you know that for a long time it was believed that men do not get eating disorders? For that reason, all treatment was focused on women, basically excluding the needs of men.

Luckily, times have changed and slowly but surely, men with eating disorders are finally getting more specialized attention and treatment options.

Interesting Facts

Here are some facts about men and eating disorders:

In the 1960’s, statistics showed only 1 in 10,000 men suffered from eating disorders, but today the number is around 1 in 4. For binge eating disorder, men make up about 40% of those who suffer ( eatingdisorderhope.com ).
Rather than the desire to be thin, men more often present with issues related to the desire to be muscular, super-fit, and lean.
The ideal of sexiness and masculinity for men has become increasingly more unrealistic and unattainable in the media and advertisements.
Men are more likely to abuse steroids, performance-enhancing supplements, and engage in excessive weight lifting and compulsive exercise in order to meet these ideals.
Harmatz discovered in his research that underweight males viewed themselves as “less handsome, less good natured, and having less sex-appeal” than control groups. They also wished to be less shy and physically stronger than they were. Underweight men dated less, believed they’d be turned down more, and were lonelier than controls.
Did you know that our male soldiers have a very high incidence of eating disorders? In her study of eating disorders among military men (and women), Navy Captain Peggy McNulty found rates among active duty military men of 2.5% for anorexia, 6.8% for bulimia, and an enormous 40.8% for other types of eating and body image disorders. Most important and striking, 49% of the men studied who were not “officially diagnosable” did display disordered eating behaviors including dieting, intentionally vomiting, and using laxatives or diet pills. Much of this behavior has been attributed to the high stress environment of the military, focus on meeting physical readiness tests, and encouraging ritual and perfectionism.

How to Approach the Subject with Someone You Love

Here are some questions you can ask to see if a man you love may be suffering from an eating disorder:

Is he refusing to maintain a minimally normal body weight, and is he terrified to gain weight and “get fat”?
Is he unable to see his body the way it really looks, distorting his perception?
Are there signs that he is using laxatives, diuretics, excessive exercise or fasting in order to purge calories?
Is he involved in a sport that necessitates weight restriction, such as gymnastics, track, swimming, wrestling, or rowing? Or does he need to participate in PRT’s (Physical Readiness Tests) that require him to not go over a certain weight?
Has he had a drastic change in personality, becoming increasingly more withdrawn, irritable and/or depressed?
Is he obsessed with going to the gym or extreme workout programs? Does he become anxious and upset if he misses a day working out?

If you are worried that a boy or man that you care about has developed an eating disorder, tune in to The Morning Show this Thursday, 5/28/15, at 8:40. I’ll be discussing this topic along with ways you can help and support them in their journey to recovery.

When It Comes to Friends, Lovers, and Eating Disorders, Are You Listening to Your Alarm?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:34:44 GMT

If you have an eating disorder and you’re having trouble approaching people, you may have turned off your “alarm”.

Our body is like a house. When we’re born, we all have a natural “alarm system” built into our house that tells us when we’re in danger, and when it’s safe. When we’re in danger that alarm goes off in the form of our intuition or instinct, and tells us it is not safe.

Some people end up turning off their alarm.

Why Do People Turn Off Our Natural Alarm?

They may have a history of abuse —verbal physical, and/or sexual. When the abuse was occurring, these people learned that even though their alarm was going off, there was nothing they could do to escape. They were helpless. They came to believe that it didn’t matter whether their alarm was off or on, because there was no escape. So they just learned to ignore the alarm.
Low self-esteem can also cause you to question your alarm system. If your instinct and your intuition are telling you that someone is not healthy for you, your low self-esteem might kick in and whisper, “You shouldn’t stand up to that unhealthy person or say no to them, because they may not like you or reject you.” As a result, you “open the door” and let them in anyway.
I often work with adults who were “parentified “children , which means is you were parent to your parents emotionally and/or physically instead of them properly parenting you. You are expected to be very responsible, overly responsible. Too responsible for a child. For example, if you had an alcoholic parent, you were probably a parentified child. If, as a child, you learned to take care of others all the time at the expense of your own needs, you are vulnerable to turning off your alarm and not listening to what your instincts are telling you.

How Do You Turn Your Alarm Back On?

If you believe you have turned off your alarm and you’re letting people be involved in your life who are unhealthy for you, how do you turn it back on? Well, that takes a lot of work. First of all in realizing your alarm is off in the first place, but then doing the work of learning how to set very firm boundaries with people if your alarm is telling you someone’s not trustworthy. You have to learn to shut the door and keep it locked until the right people show up.

Another skill that is required for turning your alarm back on is learning to say “yes” when you mean “yes,” and “no” when you mean “no.” If someone asks you to do something and you don’t want to do it, but you say yes anyway, try instead to say “I’m not sure yet.” Or “I’ll let you know later,” instead of answering right away. Give yourself time to tune into your alarm.

Don’t squash your instincts!

What Happens If We Don't Listen to That Alarm?

It’s also essential to learn to talk back to fear of ridicule and rejection. Sometimes people say yes to unhealthy people or yes to invitations because they fear they won’t be asked again. Or they believe the person won’t like them anymore or will judge them harshly. If you don’t practice talking back to all of those distorted fears, you will end up spending too much time with people that are not healthy for you. It is very important to get to the bottom of what these fears are so you can turn your alarm back on.

If you give, give, give all the time and you can’t receive, you won’t be able to ask for help when you need it. A more harmful result is that you’re also likely to draw people to you who will take advantage of you and your kindness. Once this happens it’s very difficult to extricate yourself and find healthier friendships and love relationships.

One of the most dangerous consequences of not turning your alarm back on is the resurgence or development of eating disordered behaviors. Eating disorders are triggered by stress, and if dangerous people keep walking in your “house” because you haven’t turned your alarm on, it’s going to cause enormous amounts of stress. It is going to lead to stressful and conflicted relationships. Many people cope by binging, purging, starving or compulsively exercising to soothe all of that stress.

What if Your Alarm is Always On?

Sometimes I work with people that have been hurt so much in their life, that they slam shut the door, put 10 locks on it, barricade it and shout, “No one coming into this house ever again!” They have learned to believe, through their traumatic experiences, that no one is to be trusted. When you lock your door, you are definitely safer, but what also happens is you lock out all the good people, too. There are 7 billion people on the planet, and I’m telling you not all of them are bad. They’re not all going to hurt you.

ListetoAlarmB_web.jpgSo whether you lock everyone out or let everyone in, neither option is healthy for you.

It’s vital to learn how to tell which people are trustworthy, but it’s not so easy to figure this out. You can always seek the help of a good therapist to work through these complex issues and you don’t have to do it alone. The good news is you still have that alarm system installed in your house; you just have to learn how to turn it back on and how to open your door again.

We’re all born with healthy intuition and instinct, and you can reconnect with it - even if you need a little help!

If you need help managing your alarm, remember that I offer in-person, Skype and phone coaching all over the country, just send me an appointment request and I’ll be in touch right away. You deserve love that is safe, intimate and nurturing.

To your recovery,

Lori

Don’t Be The One-Legged Woman In a Wheelchair

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:31:44 GMT

Today’s tip on eating disorder recovery is to think about your deathbed and how you want to look back on your life.

What Can Your Future Look Like with Positive Thinking and Determination?

This is serious but we have to bring out the big guns to battle negative body image and eating disorders, right? I want you to sit and

project yourself one year, then five years ahead in your life and think about how you want to feel. And then I want you to think about the end of your life and ask yourself: “Do I want to look back and say that I hated my body? That I was obsessed with

calories and weight for all of my years? That I always struggled with food and body image? Do I really want to look back and say that’s what much of my life was all about?”

Promise yourself that you're going to do whatever it takes to turn your negative body image around

This is a very powerful technique but it works. Promise yourself that you’re going to do whatever it takes to turn your negative body image around, including finding the right help to recover from your eating disorder, so you can look back and say that you were free from eating problems and body hatred.

The Story of the One-Legged Woman in the Wheelchair

Yes, you read that correctly. This is a true story, and I’m hoping it will be eye-opening for you. I was in the locker room of my gym a few years ago and a very nice lady came in wheeling an older lady, her mom, in a wheelchair. Her mom had only one leg. She probably had an accident or an illness and had to have it removed. She was probably in her 80s. The daughter wheeled her into the locker room and I heard them talking.

They were laughing and joking around with each other, and it was very sweet. But when they passed by the big scale, (of course all gyms have a huge scale), the mom said to the daughter “Honey, can you help lift me up out of the wheelchair and get me on the scale? I’m really worried that I gained 5 pounds this week and I want to check.” Hearing that comment was very, very shocking. It really drove home the point that you can live your whole life and still hate your body. This lady had gotten to be into her 80s. She’d made it, for goodness sake! She most likely had many wonderful accomplishments and terrible tragedies in her life, like losing her leg. Yet, she still was worried about gaining weight!

Do everything you can to go through your life and be happy and not worry about weight.

What is the moral of this story?

Don’t be the one-legged woman in the wheelchair! Do everything you can to go through your life and be happy and not worry about weight. Please let me know how doing this exercise affected you. And remember, this New Year can be your year to fully recover from an eating disorder! I give lots of help and tools to start your journey to recovery, and if you’d like to schedule an emergency Skype or in-person coaching session, just click here and I’ll be in touch within a day.

To your recovery,

Lori

Do You Have to Live With an Eating Disorder for the Rest of Your Life?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:29:06 GMT

Change is Possible!

A common and harmful misconception about eating disorders is that you have to live with them in some form for the rest of your life, and just hope you can successfully manage the symptoms. Having an eating disorder is not a natural state. It’s a faulty coping mechanism.

Although people can be genetically predisposed to eating disorders, environment is much more influential - about 75% over our genetics. There has been a lot covered in the news lately on the topic stemming from a renewed interest in research about how humans can overcome our genetics. Research has shown that our genetics are, in many cases, a very small part of what influences us.

Much more influential are our life choices, who we surround ourselves with, and our environment. For this reason, I know it is of utmost importance not to collude with an eating disorder patient’s hopelessness and fatalism about having to live with this condition forever.

On the Road to Full Recovery

I’ve been successfully treating eating disorders for over twenty years, and I can tell you firsthand that most people can and do permanently recover.

This is true even of people who have had an eating disorder for most of their lives. I have experienced many people arriving for their first counseling session with me and saying, for example, “I’ve been bulimic for 20 years. There’s no way I can get better. I’m just going to have to live with this and hope it doesn’t get worse for the rest of my life.”

Of course you can understand. If you’ve been living with a terrible problem and just managing it the best you can without the right help and support; you would most likely come to believe that you have no choice but to submit, “give in”, and just do the best you can to manage it.

What I have found, however, is that most of the time these people have never received the right kind of help, or any help at all. They’ve certainly never worked with any eating disorder treatment specialists. In this situation it’s very, very important to keep the hope alive for a person with a chronic eating disorder, even though they feel hopeless.

I often tell my clients,

“Let me hold the hope for you until you can take it back from me - because I know you can get better.”

What About the Cases of People Who Don't Recover?

Having said that, 20% of people with eating disorders don’t get better and some of them die. It is my belief that these 20% don’t recover for several reasons:

They did not seek any treatment at all
They did not stay in treatment
They never got the right help from qualified medical and mental health professionals, and/or
There was another physical or mental health condition that accelerated the effects of the eating disorder.

It’s very rare, thank goodness, to have someone die or never recover once they find the right help. If this was not the case, I wouldn’t be doing this meaningful work. It would be too sad. And the good news is I’ve seen most people get better, so I’m very hopeful about that.

If you are a therapist, doctor, dietician or other professional working with a patient with an eating disorder, you must “hold the hope” for your client. If someone you love has an eating disorder, get support for yourself so you don’t give in to your loved one’s despair.

They need your help to see the light at the end of the tunnel while they work hard in treatment to get better.

Most important, if you have an eating disorder, even if you have had it for years and years, please know that you can fully recover.

Never give up.

Listen to your instincts about treatment providers – if you feel they are not helping – look elsewhere, and fast. If you have never sought professional help, be brave and make the call. I’ve had clients who held on to my business card for over a year before they picked up the phone and contacted me. Why? Because they were afraid, they thought they could do it on their own, or because they were in too much despair.

If you would like more information on how I help people recover from eating disorders quickly, even if they have had symptoms for years, you can check out my Quick Start Recovery system here. If you’d like to set an in-person, Skype or phone appointment, click here. I will contact you personally, and will help you start your full recovery right away.

Let’s rid the world of eating disorders once and for all!

To your recovery,

Lori :)

Are You Terrified To Be Alone?

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:26:40 GMT

Did you know that learning how to be alone is one of the most important steps in eating disorder recovery?

Why?

It’s essential to learn the difference between aloneness and loneliness. Loneliness is a very normal emotion; sometimes we pine for other people, and we do need community in order to be emotionally (and physically!) healthy. However, a critical task in life is learning how to be alone, how to enjoy your own company, how to not need other people to entertain yourself or feel good about yourself.

"It’s a very important part of living a full and happy life: learning how to be alone and not lonely."

Things that Make Alone Time Challenging

Unfortunately many people with eating disorders don’t want to face being alone, so they spend much of their lives fearing aloneness and keeping themselves artificially busy. This can lead to being a workaholic, just to avoid alone time. The stress of avoiding aloneness can also trigger eating disorder symptoms. Being alone with oneself can be daunting.

Fear: If you’re afraid to be alone, one of the causes can be deep, subconscious fears. For example, perhaps you are afraid to face feelings about a painful experience; perhaps you are afraid to think about people that have hurt you in the past, or experiences that are hurting you now. You can feel uncomfortable with those emotions, so you stay super busy in order to avoid them.

Low Self-Esteem: When you’re alone, do you tend to think badly about yourself? You may also avoid being alone because a lot of negative body image messages can arise during that time. You may fear you will binge and purge with all of the available privacy.

Mortality: And of course Sigmund Freud would like this one: Most fears of being alone stem from not wanting to think about death. If you don’t sit still, then you don’t need to think about the fact that life is not permanent. You may want to avoid thinking about what is your purpose in life or if you are truly satisfied with how your life is turning out so far.

These are difficult feelings to manage, and a lot of people I see with eating disorders in counseling are terrified to be alone for these reasons.

I’ll now tell you what I tell them: even though these issues are difficult, it is extremely important to learn to face them.

Being Confident In Yourself Makes All the Difference

You need to discover that you’re worth knowing and that sometimes it’s better to prefer your own company to hanging around people who haven’t earned your friendship. The goal is for you to be able to confidently say, “If I didn’t have any friends or love relationships, I would still find lots of cool stuff to do and things to think about on my own because I like myself.”

"You need to truly believe to your core that you’re an awesome person if you want others to think so, too!"

Getting Past My Own Fears

I want to tell a personal story about how you can start to practice being alone and facing your fears, whatever they are.

I have to make a confession⎯before I went to college, and I was a bit of a TV addict. I grew up watching a lot of television and the TV was always on in my house.

When I arrived at college my freshman year, I decided to live for an entire year without television and break my “addiction”. I’m really not sure why I made that decision, except that it’s my nature to challenge myself, and I knew deep down that television was filling a void and deep uneasiness I had about being alone.

But I avoided my impulse to do that. Instead, an interesting thing happened. As I sat with my feelings and the discomfort of being alone, I started to calm down. I began to do a lot of cooking, writing, and started new hobbies. I regularly had friends over for dinner. I would sit quietly for hours and think about issues that were meaningful to me. I read. I became calmer and less anxious. I discovered a lot of things about myself I liked.

I no longer dreaded being alone.

I cut out TV for an entire year and changed for the better as a person. It was a very healthy experience for me.

How can you bring that experiment into your life? You certainly don’t have to cut TV out for a whole year like I did, but you could do it for a week. One of the assignments I give my clients is to sit by themselves alone with no distractions for 15 minutes a day. Some people find it extremely uncomfortable even to do that.

Just keep trying!

Tolerate your discomfort, and eventually it will pass. You’ll learn what an awesome, magnificent person you are! _____________

What are your fears of being alone? And what would you like to do about it?

Lori

4 Ways to De-Stress During the Holidays

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:12:54 GMT

'Tis the Season

The holidays are here and along with cheer, parties and gift exchanges, they can bring a lot of stress. Many people suffer from stress during the holiday season and if you are one of them don’t feel bad about not enjoying every moment of the season.

Attempting to attend every get-together, see every family member, buy gifts for everyone and stay happy while you do it can cause unnecessary stress and you can avoid it! The stress of the holidays can cause relapses and can trigger eating disorder symptoms so it’s important to find ways to stay calm during this season.

Finding ways to de-stress during the holiday madness can help you keep your sanity and actually enjoy the holidays.

My Top 4 Tips on How to De-Stress This Holiday Season

Keep at least one period of time during the week completely free for yourself . Even if it’s just an hour in the morning to read a book or an evening free to watch a movie with your friend, you need to have some free time to rejuvenate your spirits. Pencil this in on your calendar so you’ll make time for it and it will help you say “no” to those holiday invitations since you already have time scheduled with yourself.
Keep up with a ritual or tradition or create one. The holidays can cause an upheaval into your rituals and schedules and it can be hard to feel grounded without those. I suggest having something that is yours that you can look forward to that can be a holiday ritual. For example, maybe you really enjoy decorating for the holidays or volunteering at a local soup kitchen. Find something special around this time of year that really speaks to you and make it a priority. It will help your stress level and it will be something you can continue with in the future.
Keep a gratitude list and write down something you are thankful for every day. This time of year can be very commercialized and it’s easy to just want more and more or to feel like you have nothing. But by keeping track of what you are grateful for, even if it is something small, you can keep your spirits high by focusing on what you do have and how lucky you are.
Create a comfort basket. Fill a basket or bag with whatever helps soothe you, like a good book, bubble bath, lotions, fuzzy slippers, etc and keep it close! When you need to get away or are feeling lonely, turn to your comfort basket!

It’s very important that you keep your stress levels as low as possible during the holidays to help you avoid binging, purging or starving. It will also help you enjoy the season!

If you’re looking for more ways to thrive this holiday season, you can purchase the recording of my webinar 10 Proven Tips and Tricks to Successfully Handle the Holidays Without Overeating, Purging or Starving! It’s only $10 and you get the transcript, recording and I've also included a bonus comfort list in your download as well! Get access here!

Mini-Tip #4 to help heal negative body image

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:10:43 GMT

4. Determine if you eat for reasons other than hunger or enjoyment.

InsTake some of the focus off what you eat, and try to pay some attention to why you eat.

Do you seek out food when you are lonely, upset, anxious or angry?

If you believe you eat for reasons other than hunger or enjoyment, you may want to seek professional help from a counselor.

A diet will pressure you to achieve a body that is unrealistic for the great majority of women, but a counselor can heeating-disorder-therapistslp you examine your feelings about food and love the body you have.

Mini-Tip #3 to help heal negative body image

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:09:13 GMT

3. Stop dieting.

If you are dieting again and again in an effort to lose weight, stop. Diets don’t work, period. They don’t work because diets are based on the concept of denial, and the enjoyment of food should not be denied. Instead, all kinds of food should be sampled in moderation.

Mini-Tip #2 to help heal negative body image

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:09:12 GMT

2. Buy clothes that fit your body comfortably and express your personality.

Instead of expending precious emotional energy worrying over how to fit into clothes that really are too small, accept your body as it is and give the clothes away. Then take a confidante with you to shop for clothes that flatter you just the way you are. It can be a truly liberating experience!

Mini-Tip #1 to help heal negative body image

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 03:06:42 GMT

1. Create an inspiration board.

To expand your idea of success and happiness beyond achieving an unrealistic standard of beauty, get a corkboard and place it in an area you spend time in every day.

Each time you see an article or picture of someone or something you find inspirational, cut it out and place it on the board. Be especially on the lookout for people who defy the mainstream standards of beauty.

For example, Oscar nominated actress Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe has been extremely vocal in the body size acceptance movement. She’d make a wonderful addition to an inspiration board. I also include people who have overcome adversity in order to do what they felt was morally right. Start your inspiration board today!

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