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 …

It was really weird for me to look at anxiety as some positive indicator of change rather than some big red “stop! uncomfortableness ahead!” sign. If I were waiting for recovery to be comfortable, it was never going to happen. Challenging the eating disorder was never going to feel good (at least not while still in the thick of it).

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…

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 …

This evening I was reading Carrie’s post on overcoming core traits.  Personally, her post was very timely, having just finished reading the book, “When Perfect Isn’t Good Enough.”  That is NOT a book that I would normally pick up (I feel pretty well-versed in perfectionism), but my therapist handed it to me.  In hindsight, maybe I could have NOT read it and argued that I was challenging my perfectionism by not doing my therapy homework.  Oh well, next time…
Anyway, the book made a lot of good points, and I could …

“Currently, we are concerned about young people using the Internet, eating too much, spending irresponsibly, and being promiscuous, and these worries are being expressed in the language of addiction. The medical terminology helps us to believe we’re avoiding moralization or blame, and popular science has given us a sound bite of pseudo-neurology to support our prejudices. For these problems, addiction is little more than a fig leaf for a realistic understanding that would address why people return to unhelpful ways of coping with isolation, stress, and depression. Instead, we prefer …

There are lots of situations where I’m tempted to say “use your words!” (don’t worry, I usually resist the urge). Often this is with the ED, becuase often people use their eating disorders to communicate. I’m a huge offender.

I’ve been in all different levels of treatment with numerous professionals and various treatment centers, and overall I’d have to say that both group and individual therapy are important (and beneficial) in recovery.  With group, there are several people who you can bounce ideas off of, get advice from, relate to, and rely on for support.  I feel like most of the real therapy work happens in individual, though, where you can focus on your specific issues, goals, etc.  I really do think it helps to have both individual and …

Since I have a serious Dr. Drew Pinsky addiction (irony intended), I was really sad when his podcast was cancelled.  Thankfully, Celebrity Rehab 2 and Sober House came out shortly after the podcast ended, so I was able to watch those repeatedly for awhile. When VH1 stopped running CR2, I read his books.  Now, having exhausted all of those Dr. Drew resources, I am listening to Loveline.  This kills me a little bit, for several reasons:

It’s called Loveline
Half of it is sex talk
I have to pay $5 …