…according to Grey Thinking, at least.  I’ve seen so many coping skills lists full of bubble baths, deep breathing, positive affirmations, etc, and really am just bored with them.  Someone needs to come up with some creative and new alternative coping mechanisms!  I might as well start.  Here’s a list of some of my favorite / most-helpful coping skills, that I’ve never seen (or very rarely seen) on any “learning to cope” list.
Five of the most underrated coping skills:

card stores
bulletin boards
kudos charts
crafting
dvds

I have a lot to say about each one …

It feels a little cliche quoting Grey’s Anatomy on Grey Thinking, but there are so many good quotes…. and I’ve been re-watching the series from the beginning (hey, why not?), and it’s funny how some things stand out to you when watching for the second time.

You’re happy? You’re happy now? The Meredith I knew was a force of nature. Passionate, focused, a fighter. What happened to you? You’ve gone soft! Stammering about a boyfriend and saying you’re waiting to be inspired. You’re waiting for inspiration? Are you kidding me?! I …

While I do have several new posts on the way, I want to highlight a couple of older Grey Thinking posts (some are several years old!  I bet you were not reading GT two years ago) that talk specifically about treatment, your attitude toward treatment, recovery expectations, etc.  While there are a couple of people that I have in mind when it comes to the subject of these posts, I think that everyone can use the refresher.
You as your own case manager
Originally Posted: 01/01/2009
I wish that all these …

I started this day in a panic over insurance.  I hate insurance.  I know that is such a blind, ignorant statement, but at this moment (and a lot of other moments) I really do.
Unfortunately it is a holiday (well, that in itself is not unfortunate), which means that neither insurance nor my treatment provider is working.  There’s nothing I can do about it today.  I can’t resubmit my claim or beg for more days.  I don’t know if I will be going to my appointment tomorrow.
I don’t want to spend …

I am not  an auditory learner.  At all.  I’m definitely a visual learner — in college I took copious notes, but didn’t really grasp the class material until later going over and reading those notes.  There’s just something about reading/writing that I need to get it.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t serve me too well in therapy.  I can have a great session and later that night not even remember half of what we talked about.  And on the same level, when I’m in session I don’t remember half of what I planned …

There have been many blog posts written on facebook and pro-anorexia, however, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about facebook and recovery in general.
Facebook is really unique in that EVERYONE (okay, almost everyone) is on it.  If you’re an eating disorder patient, this means your professionals, the other girls/guys you’re in treatment with, past patients, your school / work friends who may not know about your eating disorder, your family members, etc.  In what other realm do all of these people connect?
For most people, “Facebook stalking” means checking out what …

Food rituals are pretty common among individuals with eating disorders… cutting things into tiny pieces, chewing a certain number of time, mixing weird things, eating everything separate, picking food apart, etc.  I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve never been terribly successful in eliminating my own food rituals.  As I was miserably failing my goal to “eat a bagel normally” this morning, I was thinking about what it was that seemed so necessary about the rituals.
I don’t think that cutting food up changes the calories.  I don’t pick things …

There have been many studies on family dynamics and the development of eating disorders, but I think that this is the first that I’ve seen that takes the next step and makes connections with specific symptomology: The dynamic relationship of parental personality traits with the personality and psychopathology traits of anorectic and bulimic daughters
Before I go further, I want to make two disclaimers.  First, from the article:
…we cannot infer a casual relationship between the parents’ personality traits and the daughter’s personality or psychopathology.  Moreover, correlational analysis does not define a …

I have been extra tired lately.  VERY extra-tired.  I go through spells of this and am always fairly convinced that there’s something wrong with me.  It’s not normal for someone to get eight hours of sleep and need one – two naps during the day.  I end up having conversations with my fiance like this:
grey: I think that I’m anemic.
fiance: oh?
grey: I have all the symptoms — fatigue, headache, difficulty concentrating, pale skin, leg cramps…
fiance: Funny, those sound like the same symptoms of anorexia.
Then, the next month…
grey: I think I …

The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare and AstraZeneca conducted a really interesting survey on the impact of bipolar depression on people’s lives.  There were a couple of points in the study that really caught my attention:

The greatest concerns among people living with bipolar disorder are that their symptoms will have an impact on daily life, such as family, relationships, or job (73%), and that they will have long periods of depressive episodes (63%).
Ninety percent of people living with bipolar disorder said that they have difficulty managing or completing day-to-day …