Brain retraining is a fundamental component of recovery from an eating disorder. Below you will find suggestions to review with your therapist when you are navigating recovery:
While this is part 4 of the series on eating disorders (and other chronic mental health conditions) getting worse during the pandemic and how to work through turning things around if that is your experience right now, this is a standalone piece of a linchpin of recovery efforts of any kind: failure.
Here are some ideas to contemplate if you feel conflicted about eating meat and yet are equally committed to a recovery effort from an eating disorder.
Intrusive thoughts of harming oneself are common to all of us. However, for anxious people (eating disorders being a type of anxiety disorder at its core), intrusive thoughts of self-harm create a cascade of distress and panic that can trigger a compulsive drive to follow-through on self-harm. Thankfully, several psychoeducational treatment approaches can help.
When the inner voice is hijacked by all things eating disorder, you face an unending spewing misery of cruel self-talk. Here are some options for navigating the endless chatter.
There are numerous safety and avoidant behaviors that plague those with active eating disorders and body checking is a common, invasive and life-limiting example. Body checking doesn't just disappear as you enter recovery and it often worsens. So what are you supposed to do?
Confused about intuitive eating? Not sure why people with eating disorders can't eat intuitively? Then this post may help clear up some misconceptions.
The importance of resting along with re-feeding and brain re-training (psychoeducational support) in recovery from an eating disorder is hard to reinforce when jobs and childcare are on your "to-do" lists.
Facing a relapse of an eating disorder and currently in university? Here are some things to consider if you're planning a recovery effort to get to remission.
Mirrors, misery and meltdowns: clothes shopping in recovery from eating disorders.
When purging looms there are a few techniques you can use to help to keep your progress towards remission on track.
Stepping on a scale for those with eating disorders is a fast track to relapse more often than not. But it's not a fear that needs attention when you are in recovery.
How does one develop boundaries that accept personal responsibility all while avoiding taking on other people's problems?
How thoughts, feelings, behaviors and Quantum Zeno Effect relate to brain re-training for getting to full remission from an eating disorder.
In this post I look at the act of trying to improve the health outcomes of a chronic condition with healthy foods and supplements.
Snarfing is to eat quickly. What about when you are snarfing your food so fast you risk choking and the emotional timbre is one of feeling monstrously out-of-control? Where’s the flight/fight/freeze reaction in those cases? Isn’t that just binge eating disorder?...
Hunger cues will return. But forcing down every bite is the way of early recovery. Why is that? It feels so monstrously wrong— as if you were trying to sleep when you are not tired...
Just as some people are born with heightened sensitivity to physical stimuli (loud noises, itchy labels on clothes…) others are born with heightened sensitivity to emotional stimuli...
How anxiety and hyper-intellectualism are often closely intertwined and that these attributes can stymie starting a recovery process or getting to remission from an eating disorder.
Everyone wants to be BMI 18.5 to BMI 20 and only about 4% of the population is naturally going to be in that range...
The brain must also be treated in a recovery process, and re-feeding and rest efforts alone are usually insufficient in helping a patient reach remission...
Visiting the confusion we have about intuitive eating, mindfulness and honoring hunger...
Many look for a better time to begin recovery from an eating disorder rather than “right now, today”. And the most common rationale for delaying a recovery effort is: stress...
It is the most infernal aspect of the fact that an eating disorder lives under the broader umbrella of many different kinds of anxiety disorders: anxiety does not understand logic.
Extreme hunger is a common experience for almost everyone undergoing recovery from any kind of eating disorder. Next to the presence of edema (water retention), extreme hunger is one of the most anxiety-provoking elements of recovery.
I thought I’d address social anxiety on this site, as it is often experienced by those on the eating disorder spectrum, especially when they work towards recovery and are attempting to normalize all facets of their lives.
Is there such a thing as personality traits that can predict the development of an eating disorder? I don’t think so.
Trauma, stress or abuse unleashes a variety of genetic superpowers that are lying in wait to come out to try to save your life...
Pro-ana and pro-mia sites, for those of you who are not aware, are websites that generally promote anorexia nervosa and/or bulimia nervosa “lifestyles”...
Navigating fattism and your world while in recovery:
In what ways could treatment for eating disorders expand to support those for whom Maudsley family-based treatment may not be not suitable? -- how "Through Thick and Thin" exposed this treatment gap.
The word "resolve" means both to find a solution and to take a firm course of action. We're inundated with the need to take a firm course of action each New Year to bolster our status in society. Perhaps we need to consider what problems need solutions instead.
When your partner, family member and/or friend is getting increasingly negative and unsupportive about your effort to get to remission from an active eating disorder, what are you supposed to do?
Part IV: Empathy. A four-part series looking into all the ways you might neutralize the impact of pervasive fattism and healthism talk at seasonal gatherings this year.
Part III: Bring It. A four-part series looking into all the ways you might neutralize the impact of pervasive fattism and healthism talk at seasonal gatherings this year.
Part II: We're On Each Other's Team. A four-part series looking into all the ways you might neutralize the impact of pervasive fattism and healthism talk at seasonal gatherings this year.
Part I: Don't Go. A four-part series looking into all the ways you might neutralize the impact of pervasive fattism and healthism talk at seasonal gatherings this year.
"Hey you've put on some weight, you look great!" And other terror-inducing comments you face in recovery. A lot.
A thought experiment to highlight how our current culture might be both increasing the prevalence and severity of eating disorders in our society.
Some suggestions for navigating misguided fattist concepts in medical care so as to protect your recovery effort from an eating disorder.
Update: this campaign was successful in lobbying Apple to allow users to turn off step counting on iOS/8. Broader topics of being monitored & the lack of science to support these health tracking devices in this post too.
- Hold your sense of self lightly. Put aside the cannot/will not/do not and if/then thoughts altogether...
With all these eating disorder wannabes (your family, your friends, your doctor, your therapist, your dietician, your treatment teams, your casual acquaintances, strangers in the street) clamoring to compliment you on your thinness; recommending you “stop gaining now”...
Everyone really is on a diet. Random stuff causes cancer, or prevents cancer, or does both at the same time. Fat is evil. And “Coming up after the break, learn about this dangerous thing you do every morning that could kill you!”
We cannot change our circumstance, or the outcome necessarily, but we can change how we might feel about that circumstance or outcome.
Why would I specifically state that ultra-processed foods are actually (gasp!) not merely beneficial in recovery, but often preferentially superior to homemade food or unprocessed foods...
A skeptical mind is not a dogmatic or closed mind. A skeptical mind is neither wedded to the status quo, nor blindly accepting of a brand-new way of doing things without first assessing all the available data. Skeptics take nothing a face value.
Illusory superiority may impact your expectations of what your recovery process will look like and how long it will take. Developing flexible realism instead might help you navigate your time in recovery and improve your chance of practicing remission long term.