Embracing novelty is a valuable opening, always available, that can give you more fulfillment and joy than you might imagine. Boredom, listlessness, feeling that you are alone while everyone else is at the party are triggers for depression, anxiety, eating disorder behaviors. You want to stop these feelings through numbness or distraction. There’s a better way.

When your normal routines seem lackluster and nothing excites your interest it’s time to embrace novelty, even when you can’t think of anything that’s new and interesting.

Embracing novelty involves being open and receptive to new experiences, ideas, and

         Eating Disorder Behavior Triggered by Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can have significant consequences on both physical and mental health and trigger eating disorder behaviors. If you suffer with an eating disorder, knowing the consequences of sleep deprivation can help you recognize and avoid triggers that cause you to act out.

Here are some common effects of sleep deprivation. Look for effects that trigger your eating disorder.

Impaired Cognitive Function: Lack of sleep can lead to difficulties with concentration, memory, and overall

 

 

 

Double helix, is an 'electric slide' for proteins.  It doesn't strive for perfection. It is what it is, DNA in the process of becoming.

Striving for perfection is a desperate and consuming aspect of living with an eating disorder. If you are in the thick of an eating disorder you know that finding fault with yourself is a constant issue.

 You may not even know that you are striving for perfection because your perceived faults, especially in the mirror, are overwhelming. 

*pix Rise and soar in freedom
 
Self-worth 

Self-worth can get bogged down by your self criticisms, binge eating, negative body image and destructive behaviors. Unhappiness about your weight and shape adds to your low self-esteem. You may be confusing your authentic identity with your compulsive behaviors and merciless attacks on yourself. The result is you don't believe you have much self-worth.

Instead of sinking into depression because your self-worth and self-esteem are low, explore these 15 questions. Find out if what you are telling yourself is true.

Personal Detective Work

Do you believe the genuine you fuels your problematic behaviors?
Or do you have an inner knowing that what fuels these behaviors is not the real you?

The gold standard we use to evaluate our lives is changing. Anxiety is a call for us to change.

Well Educated Professional Woman's Anxiety and Worry 

An intelligent, educated professional woman is anxious.  Her meals last as long as the movie she is watching. Her sleep is disrupted. She's not interested in sex with her husband. She can't see how to make a safe and secure future for her children.

She built her career, her marriage and her life with a thoughtful appraisal of hopes, risks and requirements. She planned to maintain the life she values. She has, or had, at least a general picture of what obstacles she would need to face to move into a satisfying future. The future she anticipated is crashing. Deeper personal growth is needed now.

Eating disorder recovery advances more quickly if you combine journal writing with your psychotherapy.  You can gain even more value from your journal by using an "unpacking" technique.

Recovery Value of Your Journal

Writing about your feelings and thoughts, as well as your daily activities, can give you more stability in emotionally turbulent times. 

It also helps you discover some hidden underlying causes and themes to your bulimia, anorexia, binge eating or compulsive eating.

You gain value, insight, and sometimes vital revelations when you read your journal entries two months after you've written them. The time-lapse gives you enough time and distance to understand and see through your words to a deeper personal meaning than you could when you originally wrote.  You can make connections that you couldn't see before.

                                                                                      * Dig deep

Eating disorders block our intuition and sense of deep self. Our passionate actions can mirror back to us the unconscious processes of our psyches. That mirroring allows us to catch the callings of our deep self and recognize where we are on our path to eating disorder recovery, wholeness and fulfillment.

When we seem removed from our inner life planning and enthusiastically enter into an unexpected task we are often being guided by our deep Self, giving us answers to questions we haven’t allowed ourselves to ask.  Paying attention to these actions can bring us to a deeper understanding of our state of mind, our choices, decisions and especially what lies ahead for us in life.

*pix a healthy garden expands and contracts with the seasons while simultaneously containing continuous decay and birth.

Our goal in healing moves beyond recovery and into the realm of continuous renewal.