Help Yourself

doorknob 948568 340 Doors can open for you if you knock or simply turn the handle.

Here you can find articles that may answer your questions and support you in your personal recovery work.

You'll also find a series of inspirations and affirmation that may help you stay on your healing path.

Please remember, helping yourself does not mean going it alone. Helping yourself means discovering what what you can do to support your own recovery. That includes how to recognize opportunity and reach out for what supports your health and personal development.

When you help yourself you are looking to people as well as books, websites and classes, who are in a position to offer you genuine recovery help on your journey to healing.

Open new doors to find your recovery path.

Details: Category: Help Yourself

Brain malnourishment causes bizarre thinking and is a fundamental obstacle to recovery. When your brain does not get adequate nourishment your perceptions are distorted. You can't make sound and reasonable judgments. You can't take on realistic responsibility for your own responsible self care.

In the video, created as part of Joseph Campo's work in infant research at UC Berkeley you'll see a baby negotiating something similar to your situation. He knows where he is safe. His perceptions tell him where danger exists. He won't go there. But with encouragement from a trusted and loving figure he will ignore his fears and move through what he considered dangerous to get to a worth while prize. For him, the prize is a toy. For you, the prize is your life.

Details: Category: Help Yourself

I'm in the middle of attending a great conference at UCLA this week end. It's "Adult Attachment in Clinical Context: Applications of the Adult Attachment Interview." Superb and gifted researchers and clinicians are gathered to discuss and share information on the latest neuroscience findings, the reasons why humans bond or do not bond well with each other, how human relationships can harm and heal, and the powerful healing force of human love, compassion, stability, flexibility and reliability.

As I participate in this conference, surrounded by clinicians dedicated to learning and fostering healing, I feel richly held. I am free to let my mind relate what I'm hearing and learning to people who, in some way, live with the experience of eating disorders. Here's what I've come up with after two days of the conference. Perhaps more will emerge after tomorrow, the last day.

Details: Category: Help Yourself

* "Obviously, my body doesn't believe a word my brain is saying."

Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes Collection

The osteoporosis aspect of eating disorders doesn't seem to be a concern to people in the throes of their eating disorder. Osteoporosis doesn't hurt and doesn't show. Tooth enamel loss, hair loss, weight gain or loss, skin eruptions all show. The visual is what gets a woman's attention. Unfortunately she tries to correct the visual without addressing the deep cause of her troubles, her eating disorder.

Details: Category: Help Yourself

Much material I read and hear about eating disorders concerns how a person feels and thinks about her body. But not much has come to my attention that relates to how the body thinks and feels. How the body thinks and feels may be a concept that requires a stretch for some or even many people until we open ourselves to understanding the language of the body.

Language of the Body The body has no words. Still, our bodies tell us when they need sleep or food or a change in external temperature.

Details: Category: Help Yourself

Feeling like a failure requires your becoming a revolutionary Failure feelings are symptoms of eating disorders. This is one of the most difficult statements for a person with an eating disorder to believe. Negative Self Talk Have you ever said aloud or to yourself any of these sentences?