When I saw an ED study with “All Better?” in the title, I of course had to read it.  Often when a friend or my husband asks me how an appointment was, I say “I’m cured!”  Maybe I’ll switch it up with “All better” in the future.  Anyway, this was a great article — one that I could write many posts on (and maybe will?). It’s really interesting to hear how patients define recovery and make treatment decisions. It’s also kind of amazing how similar thoughts/behaviors can be …

In Agile development, the focus factor (or productivity factor) is used for planning to help determine how many “real hours” you have to work on something. It’s the difference between “real hours” and “ideal hours.” I was thinking about how the eating disorder would affect my focus factor, and tried to break down the components into a pie chart…

As someone who’s struggled with an eating disorder for longer than I would like to admit, I’ve definitely had periods of falling into the “I suck at recovery” trap. It connects directly to the “I am wasting everyone’s time and don’t deserve help” trap as well as the “I’m actually fine and asking for too much because I’m attention-seeking like that” trap. And let’s not forget…

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, …

It has occurred to me lately how often I say “I don’t know” in my appointments (possibly even more often than I say “I know” !). My therapist has come to totally disregard the phrase, which for me, has become very versatile:

Type 1: the how-did-you-feel-in-that-situation “I don’t know”

I’m finally catching up on some of my “must read” articles. Tonight I got a chance to read an article on a new possible diagnostic system for eating disorders in the DSM-V. “Broad Categories for the Diagnosis of Eating Disorders (BCD-ED): An Alternative System for Classification.”  You could go ahead and download it – the full text is available online for free – but I can sum the whole thing up in a couple of words:
Take the DSM-IV and add water.
Basically the new system expands each eating disorder …

I’m going to avoid diving into labeling theory… but I think that diagnoses are ultimately meant to guide treatment. You’re really saying “here are a cluster of common symptoms” so that you can research and treat individuals with those characteristics. It’s not adequate to just describe someone as being sad, because the other presenting symptoms make a huge difference.

I’ve heard that “the eating disorder is like a bad boyfriend.” I guess that in this context, referring to the eating disorder as “Ed” makes a lot of sense. The boyfriend analogy aside, the eating disorder does fall under the category of “toxic relationship.” Just look at how relevant the 10 steps are…

Recently, my friend and I were discussing the pros/cons of her stepping up the level of care in her treatment. Interestingly, “eating in program” was on both the pro and con list. She thinks it’s easier to eat while in program (as opposed to on your own), but that some of the food sucks and you have to eat things you don’t like (or are not comfortable with).
I can definitely relate to this. When you first start a higher level of care (like IOP, PHP, IP – anything involving a …

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 …