Recently, my therapist started leading a group that I’m in. Most people who’ve done any kind of intense treatment (inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, etc), have probably had this experience (myself included) but it’s pretty rare that my therapist now either facilitates or…

I’ve been reading a lot of articles this week on pharmacogenomics and personalized medicine.  As someone who has unsuccessfully tried way too many medications, this is really interesting to me.  It’s no secret that individuals often have to try several psychotropic medications to find one that works for them.  It’s part of the psych experience fun.
The “Is this going to work for me?  Which of the hundred side effects am I going to experience?” mystery reminds me of this food seasoning that my uncle has, called “magic dust.”  The “magic” is …

Many months ago, there was an awesome cartoon on Therapy Tales that I have been dying to expand upon. It starts like this:
I’ve often thought about what my therapist would say were I to tell her about my blog. I bet she’d be thinking something like the following (note: I am NOT the artist that Therapy Tales is!):

Yeah, I don’t think we’ll be having this conversation any time soon…

I’m a sucker for lists… especially top-10 lists. So, when I saw a post on the Top 10 Cracks That Addicts Fall Through on Their Way to Recovery, it had my name all over it.
I think that a lot of the same principles that Mark Goulston points out can apply to mental illness in general. A few of them really stood out to me:
Failure to develop new and healthy relationships
I see this two ways:

Old relationships – maintaining unhealthy relationships (people who drag you down in any way, …

I think it’s safe to say that the eating disorder is a coping mechanism. Maladaptive, sure, but it does serve a purpose in your life. There’s a reason that people hold onto it and end up in treatment multiple times. However, the eating disorder is not a solution. It doesn’t make you in control…

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 …

Over the weekend, I had my first experience with Panera’s new calorie-labelled menus.  Honestly, I order the same couple of things every time, so the menus may have been there for a couple of weeks and I just haven’t noticed.  Regardless, I was a little shocked to see them.
I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that bothers me about having them there.  I’ve looked up the nutrition facts a hundred times, so it’s not like I’m seeing the calorie count for the first time.  Plus, I still ordered …

Several weeks ago I wrote a post — that I never published — titled, “I need an iPad for recovery.” There has been a lot of negative press about eating disorders and technology, so in contrast I’m going to explain how I’ve used my iPhone / iPad to aid my recovery…

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…