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 …

“You get to define which experiences are traumatic for you, whether or not it would impact others in the same manner.  It’s not the objective facts that determine whether an event is traumatic,  but your own emotional experience of the event.”
– Dr. Kathleen Young

This is just a quick post, but I read this on a trauma blog tonight and thought it was so well-put.  This is something that i struggle with a lot — whether or not something “counts” as significant.  Maybe I am making it up.  Maybe it was …

Once in awhile, my therapist assigns me homework — usually for one of several reasons:

We only had time to touch on a subject in therapy and she wants me to keep thinking about it to flesh it out.
She wants to keep better track of my symptoms and I’m not very good at bringing up bad days (not because I’m manipulative and want to hide it from her, but because I never feel it’s “bad enough” to bring to her attention).
There’s something that I’m not able to say in person, and …

I have mixed feelings about putting adolescents and adults together in treatment. I have been on both sides of the equation (treatment as an adolescent and treatment as an adult), and definitely have a stronger opinion about it now that I’m older.
Pros:

Adolescents can learn a lot from adults who often have been in treatment before and have some more insight into the disorder.
Adults are (hopefully) more mature and less competitive. Eating disorders in general are competitive… and I’ve just found that when you have a large group of …

I’d never heard of a “Sober Coach” until watching VH1′s “Sober House.” In the last episode (I think), Will, who is Seth’s Sober Coach, accompanies him to his first concert and make sure that nothing happens to jeopardize his sobriety. While watching this I thought, “Well that’s convenient — I could use someone protecting me from anything eating disordered.”
Upon thinking about it a little more, though, I wasn’t sure what this Anti-ED Coach would protect me from. Would he make sure no one served me diet coke? …

It’s been a little while since I talked about Celebrity Rehab, but I have been meaning to write about Gary Busey’s “Buseyisms” (by the way, I highly recommend that you watch this — it’s less than two minutes long).  Buseyisms are really just made-up acronyms.  Backward acronyms, I guess, but you start with the acronym and come up with the meaning to match the letters.
I’m sure you’ve heard these before… like FINE – Frustrated, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.  Now, look at a few of Gary’s…
Doubt – Debating On Understanding Bewildering …

I’ll admit it — sometimes I color. I print out some coloring pages and whip out the colored pencils and plug away for a couple of hours. Often I feel ridiculous afterwards — I’ll sit there looking at my finished pictures and think, “What the heck do I do with this now?” Then I’ll think about how coloring is the least productive thing I could possibly do (aside from possibly watching television). Couldn’t I have done a Sudoku puzzle? There is at least some thinking …

anorexic handwriting: small, meticulous, and linear — font-like.
I’ve been told more than once that I have “anorexic handwriting.” Aside from the fact that this label is very non-PC, I never really put eating disorders and handwriting together. When I was inpatient, I remember this girl had really, REALLY tiny handwriting. We’re talking microscopic, get out your magnifying glass-tiny. I’ve had both a nutritionist and therapist refer to my handwriting as “anorexic.” How exactly are you supposed to respond to that, by the way? Um, …

I had a dietitian call me this once… and I’m sure she didn’t create the label just for me. By “dishonest” she meant that I wasn’t a vegetarian for moral reasons, but for ED reasons.
If you’ve ever been residential, you know that there is a much higher incidence of vegetarianism in eating disorder patients than in the general population (similar to how there are so many more runners (even marathoners!) with EDs… but I’ll save that thought for another day). Coincidence? Probably not.
Converting to vegetarianism is often …

This is not going to be an insightful or even remotely academically-based post — nope, just something that’s on my mind today: Positive Self Talk (PST).  I have to know… does this actually help anyone?  If you are having a lousy body image day and stand in the mirror and tell yourself that you are a beautiful person… do you feel better?  Because on these days when I am truly depressed over weight or self-image or the like, there is NO self-love coming out of my mouth.  These are days …