Source: Pixaby As an eating disorder therapist, one common thing that I hear all of the time, is a person’s belief that they aren’t “sick enough” to have an eating disorder or to need eating disorder treatment. Eating disorders can often be “competitive illnesses.” For instance, your eating disorder may cause you to compare yourself to others who are struggling and will then tell you that you “aren’t sick enough.” Your eating disorder will say this in an effort to keep you trapped and under it’s control. Often for your eating disorder there is no “sick enough.” I’ve heard from people who were near death and still didn’t believe that they were ill. Additionally, some people with restrictive eating disorders struggle with something called “anosognosia” which is a brain-based lack of awareness, where essentially the individual is unable to see that they are ill. This is … [Read more...] about Are You “Sick Enough” to Need Eating Disorder Treatment?
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Leveling the Mental Health Counseling Racial Playing Field
By Natalie Cort, Ph.D., guest contributor Black History Month is an important and necessary time to showcase the many accomplishments of African-Americans/Black individuals, but as we recognize Black History Month, we must acknowledge that the limited numbers of mental health professionals from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds prevents ubiquitous implicit negative biases about people of color, resulting from America’s historical and contemporary racialized inequities, from being challenged and dismantled. Research shows more than 6.8 million self-identified African-Americans/Black individuals had a diagnosable mental illness in the past year, which is more people than the populations of Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia combined1. As a consequence of historical institutional discrimination and marginalization, African-Americans experience socioeconomic disparities, such as homelessness, poverty, incarceration or substance abuse, that can increase their risk for mental illness. … [Read more...] about Leveling the Mental Health Counseling Racial Playing Field
Time Management and Procrastination: What works
Source: Ryan Hyde, Flickr, CC 2.0 This article distills what has worked best for my clients who have a problem with time management and procrastination. Sometimes foundational to the problem is that the person doesn't care enough to manage time well. They know that a productive life is better led than a slothful one, but are impeded by depression or having been beaten up in life’s first rounds, so it’s hard to come out for the next round. Or their life is in such disarray that managing time better feels insignificant, like polishing the brass on the Titanic. Of course, those are tough situations, but if that's where you are, your best shot is to defer thinking about time management and instead first take baby steps to improve your life, whether it's to clean a corner of one room, take walks, decide to cut back even a bit on your substance abuse, get a job you can easily get, even if it’s barista, see the dentist, or help someone worse off. That can boost your … [Read more...] about Time Management and Procrastination: What works
What to do when your Child is Scatterbrained
When I first heard of the proposed new childhood diagnosis of "Sluggish cognitive Tempo Disorder," I thought it was an April Fools Day joke and I wrote a Psychology Today blog asking this question. New York Times reporter Alan Schwarz soon disillusioned me. The proponents of the new disorder were some very serious people, he assured me, and this purported new disorder is no joke. Is Sluggish Cgognitve Tempo Disorder a Joke? In today's Daily Beast a pediatrician who writes under the name Russell Saunders wonders the same thing. Is this a joke? Taking a similar tongue-in-cheek approach as I did to this purported new "disorder", Suanders admits that he himself has the disorder, though up until now, he simply considered himself "scatter-brained," not mentally ill. As a kid he often turned in his assignments late, and even today he tends to forget about doing his paperwork on time. Suanders concludes that not every deviation from normal childhood is a mental disorder, though many doctors … [Read more...] about What to do when your Child is Scatterbrained
