*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.
Your eating disorder challenge: From recovery to renewal
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*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.
Trump Campaign May Trigger Your PTSD Symptoms and Your Eating Disorder
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The Trump Campaign may be may be awakening your PTSD symptoms. It may be triggering your eating disorder.
A large, bullying, arrogant man in a position of wealth and power who feels entitled to experience or own anything he wants is parading through the media blatantly derogating, belittling, humiliating, insulting and sexually molesting women through his words and actions.
If you have a history of being dishonored in any of these ways, Donald Trump's words and non-verbal actions we see through media and hear him describe, might well be the cause of your reliving your personal traumas now. You may know this and feel it.
Moving Away from Negativity Can Bring Surprising Joy: personal story
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My morning began with delight and chaos which threw off my regular journal writing schedule. I was cuddling with laughing, singing children instead of writing in my garden. I'm clear about the value of my choice.
Later in the day I attended a social/professional luncheon. While there I felt strong social pressure on me from a group of people to play a role that is not who I am. I didn't like it. I fought against a stiffening I felt building in me. I was building and fighting not to build an inner wall around who I am. I relaxed as I moved away from them but couldn’t when I was with them. With them I was polite, pleasant and guarded behind a mask. If the façade slipped a little, and I felt the real me emerging, I felt stress in my body.
A powerful recovery guideline is, withdraw from what shuts me down and approach what opens me up. I followed this guideline and left the gathering early.
Fall in love for Thanksgiving
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"We protect what we fall in love with," says Louie Schwartzberg* in his inspiring gratitude TED talk.What do you love? Who do you love? Who or what might you love if you opened your eyes and your heart? Are you ready to embrace and let your soul reap new joy this Thanksgiving?
Eating Disorders and Body Appreciation
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Mindfulness Unifying Exercise for Eating Disorder Recovery
To mend the split eating disorders create between your mind, heart, spirit and body, try this mindfulness practice.
First, for a moment, step away from appreciating your body only in terms of aesthetics relating to weight, size and shape. Give yourself an opportunity to consider your body from a new and different perspective. This exercise can open valuable communication between all aspects of yourself. The value to you is in what might be a surprising lead to your recovery.
Stabilize Anxiety Through Self-Care
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Your health, strength, courage and will can spread healing love in this world. Stay committed to your recovery. The world needs you.
Anxiety: How Does Self-Care Help?
Anxiety, financial crises, economic uncertainty, incurable illness, quarantine and death penetrate the bubble of safety and security now. Coronavirus, stock market plummeting, travel limited, no clear leadership, conflicting perspectives in duration and consequences.
This disruptive state is enough to trigger binge eating and anxiety attacks.
In the face of such powerful disrupters, what can we do for ourselves and others?
Sex, Beauty and Eating Disorders: Let Love and Reality Win
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*pix Marilyn Monroe
Sex, Understanding, Confusion, False Messages and Eating Disorders
If you have an eating disorder, you most likely know that human sexuality is flagrantly advertised and photographed, exploited and both demonized and idealized in our culture. Yet your actual experience is rarely reflected back to you in ways that help you feel understood or understand yourself. Worse, the bomardment of sexual behavior and sexual etiquette definitions may overwhelm you before you can develop your own appreciation for what's important to you.
Here's an example of the pressure on you to fit into a predetermined and callous sexually desireable straightjacket.
Diving Deep to Your Wisdom after Thanksgiving
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The Days after Thanksgiving – Time for Your Real Thankfulness
In my years as a psychotherapist, I’ve been honored to work with many people who reveal and discover their true feelings during holidays. As we share and explore together, we find the core gratitude within that enhances daily life and enriches their holiday experience. Perhaps some of what we’ve found will deepen and enrich your experience too.
The Thanksgiving holiday is over. You may reflect on:
- Stay in Eating Disorder Recovery on the 4th of July
- Dreams: Your Doorway to Emotional Healing
- Dreams Are Powerful Tools in Eating Disorder Recovery
- Dream On It: Meaning and Help in Eating Disorder Recovery
- Keeping a Dream Journal Can Speed Eating Disorder Recovery
- Dream Helps in Eating Disorder Recovery and Relationship
- Eating Disorder Recovery: Using the Language of Myth and Dream in Psychotherapy
- Nightmares Can Help Your Eating Disorder Recovery
- Nightmare Wave in Eating Disorder Recovery
- How Do I Stop Restricting When I Am Underweight?
- Physical Effects of Anorexia Recovery: Personal Story
- Why “To Do Lists” Work and Don’t Work in Eating Disorder Recovery
- "Ain't I a Woman?" Inspiration for Eating Disorder Recovery
- In Eating Disorder Recovery Treatment What Comes First: Bingeing or Feelings?
- Layoff: Emotional Challenges of Being the Messenger
