Some interesting thoughts on truth vs. lies from two of my favorite philosophers — Mark Twain and Gregory House.
“If you tell the truth, you don’t need to remember anything.”
– Mark Twain
“I don’t ask why patients lie, I just assume they all do.”
“It’s a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what.”
“I’ve found that when you want to know the truth about someone that someone is probably the last person you should ask.”
– Gregory House

So, while everyone lies sometimes, people struggling with an eating …

In case you missed it (like I did), the new season of Celebrity Rehab began a couple of weeks ago. I’m just now catching up, and in the process of trying to watch everything on VH1.com, ran across a blog post about Drew Pinsky and his interview in GQ magazine.
When Vargas-Cooper asks Pinsky if putting troubled, narcissistic people in front of a camera as they endure the recovery process, he justifies that, saying “Here’s the thing: These are unmotivated people who want to be on TV and make money. …

This afternoon, my husband and I went and saw the movie “Everything Must Go.”  In general, I’m not much of a movie watcher.  It’s funny how I can watch a House marathon all day, but run out of patience about 2/3rds of the way through a film.  Anyway, when I heard the movie had Will Ferrell and was about alcoholism, I obviously had to go.
First, as a kind of sidenote, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a serious Will Ferrell movie.  I didn’t really even know it was possible, actually, …

Carrie beat me to posting about this Grey’s Anatomy quote:
After a trauma, your body is at its most vulnerable. Response time is critical. So you’re suddenly surrounded by people—doctors, nurses, specialists, technicians—surgery is a team sport. Everyone pushing for the finish line. Putting you back together again. But surgery is a trauma in and of itself, and once it’s over, the real healing begins. It’s called recovery. Recovery is not a team sport. It’s a solitary distance run. It’s long. It’s exhausting. And it’s lonely as hell.
The length of your …

It seems that this year, Glee is all about morals. On the whole, I’m not sure I love this aspect of the show, but tonight’s episode was on self-love, and I sure have a lot of thoughts on that.
I think I’m going to have to break my thoughts up into several posts, so let’s start with Emma and her OCD. Will’s attempt to help Emma with her OCD is not too far from experiences I’ve had with friends trying to help me with my eating disorder (both good …

I watch a lot of medical television (if you haven’t noticed), so when I saw the What Your TV Habits May Say About Your Fear Of Crime article this morning, I was pretty interested to read about the connection between TV viewing and personal beliefs. I started thinking “hmm… what if they applied this to medical television?” I have a few hypotheses about the medical TV viewers and…

House: You’re either perfect or you’re sick. In my experience, “sick” is much more common.

There’s definitely a higher-incidence of perfectionism among individuals with eating disorders, but had never thought about it the other way — that people who appear “perfect” are more likely to have mental illness. Okay, so this is not research and not exactly what House is…

In anticipation of the third season of “In Treatment” starting this fall, I’ve been “re-watching” season one. I say “re-watching” because I never finished watching it in the first place.  When I first started watching the show, I would watch one patient at a time — week one through week nine. Then I would choose another patient, and watch him/her for all nine weeks. I could do this since I had the DVDs.
This time, I’ve been watching the series as intended — week by week, with all …

The other day, a friend and I were playing the “which professional on Celebrity Rehab would you be?” game.  You know… kind of like “which Sex & the City character are you most like?” or “who would you want as your partner on Dancing with the Stars?” — but a little less mainstream.  In fact, I’m lucky to have friends that will tolerate this “game,” since my husband is not a fan of the show (to say the least) and always answers “none of them.”  Grr.
Anyway, while discussing Bob Forest, …

Dr. Drew made a comment a couple of episodes back (Ep. 306 “Triggers”) that I was pretty surprised to hear:
“Addiction is the only disease that you have to convince people that they have.”
I highly disagree with this statement, and think that denial is a large part of many mental illnesses… and even some physical illnesses. Just to name a few:

eating disorders
personality disorders
depression
ptsd
dementia

Sometimes people just don’t want to admit that they’re struggling with a mental illness (maybe they think it means they’re a weak or defective person). Sometimes people …