Talking with a client we’ll call Essie about maintaining self-care, I chuckled when she said she usually stopped taking care of herself when things were going poorly in life—at work, as a single parent, and caring for her elderly mother. I realized that this is true of many clients: paradoxically, they give up self-care just when they need it most.  I asked if she didn’t walk or feed her dog when things weren’t going well in life, and she looked at me like I was nuts. “Of course not,” she insisted. “If I don’t take care of him, who will?” When I was silent and looked right at her with a “Duh?” expression, she got my point. But, the truth is, she really did think that a person only did self-care when they were up to it and when things were going well. To her, it was normal to stop certain...

More often than I’d like, I’m saddened at clients getting themselves into nasty situations because they’ve ignored obvious red flags in people. Understandable, as many are trauma survivors who have difficulty interpreting danger. The way to grow more astute is to develop the habit of tuning up your emotional antennae around everyone. The skills of observing and assessing should not be confused with making judgments, though that is part of the process I’m encouraging. The goal is not to judge people as “bad,” but as not appropriate for you. This means watching people like a hawk, noticing everything they say and do, learning their histories, recognizing their patterns and, most importantly, paying attention to how you feel when you’re around them. I suppose I’ve always been an observer, or why become a therapist, the ultimate observer and processor? I do know that my noticing skills have improved immensely as my clinical...

You may suffer from toxic stress and not know it. Eating disorders and substance abuse problems, chronic depression or anxiety, difficulty in relationships, and sleep issues all may be symptoms of toxic stress. Because I know the childhoods of all my clients, I’d wager that many of them suffer from it, but don’t know it because they think what they feel is normal though it’s anything but. Here’s an excellent description of toxic stress and its causes from “What Does “I Feel Fat!” Really Mean? by Carolyn Coker Ross, MD, MPH, CEDS (2/224/222, Gürze-Salucore Eating Disorders Resource Catalogue). “Abuse or neglect or any other negative experiences in childhood can lead to what is called toxic stress. Toxic stress causes an overproduction of stress hormones: cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. This leads to physical changes in the brain. The brain of a traumatized child resets itself to be in fight-or-flight—regardless of whether there...

I began as a therapist when affirmations were all the rage, but I never bought into them, used them myself or encouraged clients to do so. Why? Because I thought it was weird that people were trying so hard to convince themselves of their positive attributes. I had a friend back then who said affirmations a lot—not only said but wrote them down and reread them daily. She hadn’t had a great childhood and certainly needed to do something to raise her self-esteem. When you walked into her bathroom, straight ahead of you was a towel cabinet whose front was covered with her affirmations. You could even see them reflected in the mirror above the sink when you washed your hands. I don’t recall exactly what hers said, something like, “You are a worthy person, You are lovable, People love you just the way you are, You are deserving of good...

I had a wonderful session with a client we’ll call Ava in which she described how she’d missed a work deadline, refused to berate herself over it, but continued to feel okay about herself, and didn’t end up turning to food after the incident. She’d been practicing self-compassion and it’s taken a while, but she’s definitely gotten the hang of it. Here’s what we figured out about the process she experienced. When she was a child and made mistakes, her father was cruel to her, so Ava grew up thinking he knew better than she did and became as hard on herself as he was on her. She mentally beat herself up every time she made an error or failed to live up to her perfectionist standards. She said the unkind things to herself that her father said to her which made her feel miserable. And feeling bad drove her to...

I recall first hearing the term universality while taking a group therapy class in social work school. The APA defines it as “the tendency to assume that one’s personal qualities and characteristics, including attitudes and values, are common in the general social group or culture” and adds that it is “in self-help and psychotherapy groups, a curative factor fostered by members’ recognition that their problems and difficulties are not unique to them but instead are experienced by many of the group members.” In my three-plus decades running therapy and support groups, I had one client who absolutely insisted that what he felt no one had ever felt before, though I tried explaining that there are no new feelings under the sun. He was an anomaly. All my other clients felt enormous relief and even joy that others shared their thoughts and feelings because it meant that were not alone or abnormal....

A client sent me this quote: “Self-care is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation” by Audre Lorde, feminist and civil rights leader. It got me thinking about how self-care is a right and about how many people don’t know that. It’s not about being selfish or thinking only of yourself. It’s knowing that your primary job in this world is to care for yourself. But, what about taking care of others, you might ask. Isn’t that a must? Aren’t we our brothers’ (and sisters’) keepers? Well, yes, it’s important to help and support others, but not at the expense of not taking care of ourselves. How you think about self-care is rooted in your upbringing. I’ve had many clients who were treated poorly and others who were made to take care of others and punished when they tried to tend to their own needs. In either case, they were never taught that...

A client asked me a while ago what activities I enjoy and why and I explained that, whenever I can, I choose those that put me in a state of flow. If you don’t have enough of these minutes in a day or hours in a week, your well-being will suffer, so here’s an explanation of what flow is and how you can find more of it.  In Why Does Experiencing ‘Flow’ Feel So Good? A Communication Scientist Explains, flow is called “the secret to happiness” and an “optimal experience” . . . “characterized by immense joy that makes a life worth living.” I’m in a state of flow when I’m writing (like now) or dancing or reading an engrossing book. I used to feel it while skiing. I think of it as being so lost in the pleasure of an experience that all else in life falls away. The article...

It’s impossible to go through life without running into bullies. They’re in our families, at school, at work, in our neighborhoods and in governmental bureaucracy. Whether we’re talking about a bully in your personal or professional life or one in the political arena, there are best ways and worst ways to manage them—and manage them you must.  In case you’re not sure what constitutes a bully, here’s a general description: self-centered, angry, controlling, demanding, lacking empathy, shaming, disrespectful to others, and acting outside of civility to get their way. They have no sense of fairness and are pretty much all take and no give, though some might appear charming, which might mean they lean toward sociopathy. They may not try to push you or others around all the time, but this behavior is characteristic of them, especially when they want their way. People who’ve grown up in dysfunctional families, with maybe...

The most common complaint I hear from dysregulated eaters is that they’re not becoming “normal” eaters fast enough. Their frustration and disappointment are due to misunderstanding what the learning process is all about. It is explained beautifully in How to Keep Learning All Your Life, which also offers a prescription for finding happiness and satisfaction at every stage of life. Authors Robin Abrahams and Boris Groysberg describe a key component to learning: “Experiences of mastery teach people that they can learn, that the initial state of helplessness or confusion in the face of a new challenge will dissipate and be replaced by competence. A healthy learning environment, therefore, provides plentiful and diverse opportunities for people to experience mastery.” They add that such an environment includes, “safety to fail. No one achieves mastery—at crawling, coding or anything else—without some initial awkwardness. Learning inevitably involves getting it wrong, taking too long, forgetting key...

A client was talking about learning to self-validate, then brought up seeking advice from her higher power. I asked, “What about your wiser power? What does it have to say?” I suggested it might be helpful to consult with it, since it was easily accessible.  I’m a big fan of wisdom and have blogged about it before. Wisdom is knowing what’s best for you based upon the information you have. It’s mostly comprised of knowledge and experience with a little bit of intuition thrown in. It’s what you’re seeking when you ask everyone else what to do and what you want when you keep playing out scenarios in your head, not knowing which one to pick. Here's the thing with higher versus wiser power. Seeking guidance from a higher power is a way of still looking outside yourself for answers. There’s nothing wrong with that. We can’t know how to do...

I‘ve always found ultimata useful even though many people find them unacceptable. The word means to make a demand that has consequences either way. Frankly, doing that has always sounded very much like simply taking care of business: giving someone choices that have repercussions. But saying that someone must do this or that “or else” sounds to some as if they’re going beyond wielding power appropriately. I beg to differ. Here are some examples. My client Joshua would get calls in the middle of the night to pick up his alcoholic brother, Larry, and drive him home. Joshua complained repeatedly about Larry’s selfishness yet continued to do Larry’s bidding. Joshua tried explaining to him how it ruined his sleep and caused him to make costly mistakes at work after a midnight run. He also tried reasoning with and begging Larry to call someone else.  When nothing worked, I suggested giving Larry...

When I listen to clients with poor self-care describe their childhoods, it’s pretty obvious why it’s poor today. How in the world could an infant grow into adult who values themselves when they’ve never been well taken care of? What is most painful to hear is how self-critical clients are for drinking too much, smoking, binge-eating, or other self-harming behaviors.  Take Florene, the child of parents with alcoholism who sought help from me for food and alcohol problems. When her father stopped drinking long enough to get a job, he was happy and loving to Florene and her younger sister and when he was on a bender, he disappeared for days at a time. Her mother’s drinking, more constant and even, led to her lack of attention to her daughters. Typically, she’d come home from her waitress job exhausted, tell the girls to do their homework, then head into her bedroom...

When I speak of improving the pacing of your life, I’m not saying that you can tinker with it once and that it will regulate itself. Life simply doesn’t work that way. But I do believe that we can engineer our lives to give us a balance of what we need in terms of up and down and self and other time to bring us maximum satisfaction. My hunch is that when your life is paced to better suit your needs—and adjusted as necessary—that this shift will lead to a decrease in mindless eating.  Step back from your life and, without judgment, consider the amount of time you’re busy and energized versus relaxed and wanting to chill out. To repeat, don’t make any judgments about not being productive enough or feel angry that you don’t have enough time to relax. Just note, in the average day or week, how the times...

Clients come to see me wanting to change their eating habits and I often have a hunch about which ones will fail and which will succeed. There’s a hesitancy in those who tend to fail (rather than a full steam ahead attitude) causing them to formally drop out of therapy or stop coming to sessions. I feel badly that I can’t help them enough, but also recognize that people often change a bit at a time, not in one fell swoop. At any rate, I was thinking about what makes for success or failure in altering habits when a column on transforming eating habits caught my eye. Its author, Bryant Stamford, PhD, is a professor of kinesiology and integrative physiology at Hanover College. His theory is that most people fail at reaching their health goals because they’re still in the stage of “wanting” something but haven’t “decided” to go for it....

One of my clients was aghast when I suggested she might want to stop relying on hope as much as she did. Her initial reaction was, “If I give up hope, how will I move forward? There’s nothing left without it. I could never give it up.” This is an unfortunate mindset, because, as she now realizes, “Hope can be deceiving.” Hope is defined as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen” (Oxford Languages Dictionary), and therein lies the problem. We think of hope as making something happen, causing it, when all it does is act as a space holder until other things we do, think and feel deliver a specific outcome. Hope makes us feel good and is fine if we understand that, in itself, it does not deliver results. Hope also has a substantial downside. Think of all the times you’ve hoped that someone...

I’m occasionally taken by surprise that in one breath clients complain about being stigmatized for their higher weight and in another show prejudice against a variety of human differences. They don’t see their biases based on skin color, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation, but complain about others being biased against their size.  Here's an example. One of my clients, whom I would describe as sweet and kind, went on an unexpected rant about “letting illegal aliens into this country.” Rather than get into a political debate on the subject of immigration, I was curious about her making negative judgments and lumping together all “illegal aliens” (the correct term is immigrants, not aliens, as they do not come from another planet, only another country!) and asked her if she knew any. She admitted she didn’t, but that she “didn’t like the looks of them,” at which point I asked if her...

I think I know why some of you don’t succeed, including in overcoming your eating problems: your intentions and where you put your attention are not a matched set. Not even close. That is, your stated intentions are heading you in one direction while what you focus on is pulling you in another direction completely. For example, I have a client who wants to eat better, be healthy, and lose weight. Although he makes sporadic attempts to do all the above, where he puts his energy is in getting ahead at work. I suggest he do a weekend workshop on mindful eating, and he says he can’t take time away from some big work project. Then he tells me the following session that he spent most of the weekend eating in front of the TV and barely got his work project done late Sunday night. See what I mean? His intentions...

We all recognize the link between feeling stressed and eating, but are we actually “stressed” or merely busy and end up calling that state stress? Might the problem be not how much you do, but rather your perception that it’s “too much” or that you wish you were doing less? Consider that altering your perception of busyness might go a long way toward improving your relationship with food.  As a dysregulated eater, you may have a love-hate relationship with being busy. On the one hand, you may be uneasy with unstructured time, catapulting you straight to the refrigerator for something to do. On the other hand, when there’s a lot on your metaphoric plate, you may tell yourself how stressed you are. For those of you who bounce from one extreme to the other and find it hard to settle at a place (or pace) in between, consider that you could...

If you’re like some of my clients, you race from one goal to another without stopping and use checking off accomplishments as a way to fuel pride and boost self-esteem. The problem is that when throwing yourself headlong into the next task to reach your goals is the most important endeavor in life, experiencing down time becomes something deemed bad and wrong and to be avoided at all cost. Does this scenario sound sadly familiar? If so, you may be a Goal-a-holic, someone who gets their biggest buzz from keeping busy setting up goals and meeting them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to have and meet goals. Goal setting is an important life skill, but it’s only one half of the equation, the other half being knowing how to enjoy life and feel good about yourself when you’re not creating and pursuing goals. This other half of the equation is...

Maybe because I’m an only child and didn’t have siblings to influence me, I’ve found myself generally averse to the herd mentality. You know, when you feel a need to do or not do something because of what others are doing. I’m quite happy with this facet of my personality, as it led me to stopping dieting in my late twenties when it was all the rage with friends while putting me on the path to “normal” eating. For example, I’ve always been slow to take up the latest fashions and, when at last I do, they’re often long gone by. By the time I finally decided I did like bell bottom pants after all, they were out of style and tapered legs were in. By the time I got around to having my hair cut a la Sassoon, my friends were all growing their hair long again. I’m struck with...

It’s ironic how so many dysregulated eaters rush around and complain about how much they have to do, but always make time for a binge. I hadn’t realized how ironic this phenomenon is until I was talking to a client who was wildly excited that giving up binge-eating had freed up her time to do activities she enjoyed. She said, “I can’t believe all the free time I have now that I don’t spend all those hours scouring my kitchen cabinets for something to eat—and then eating and beating myself up afterward.” I understand: I’m a recovered binge-eater. It’s true how our lives and minds get filled up with what we’ll eat, shopping for it, cooking it, spending hours gorging until we’re sick—not to mention the clean up and precious minutes post-binge raking ourselves over the coals for “being bad.” Did you ever try adding up the precious time you’ve wasted...

My mother had a saying, “hurry up and wait,” which I’m reminded of working with my dysregulated eating clients. I confess I looked the phrase up recently and chuckled at how true it is. Humans spend an inordinate amount of time pushing ourselves to move quickly to get something done, only to find that when it is, we’re still stuck waiting. The best example is rushing to get to the doctor’s office, only to find yourself sitting in the aptly named waiting room for a good long time before being escorted into their office. This phenomenon happens on the road to any kind of recovery: alcohol, drugs, food, etc. In the case of eating disorders, people place an undue amount of pressure on themselves to get where they want to go, which is, more often than not, to a number on the scale. Occasionally, it’s a clothing size, but generally clients...

Intuition can be a blessing or a curse. We usually use the word casually to mean a gut feeling or a deep, emphatic sense of something. How much we rely on it may dictate how life works out for us. But what do we really know about intuition?  According to Psychology Today, “Intuition is a form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation.” It “tends to arise holistically and quickly, without awareness of the underlying mental processing of information,” the result of a subtle, unconscious gathering and registering of impressions of the world around us. At times, following intuition works. When I was practicing in Boston, my client Andie spent most sessions trying to figure out where to move to: either a small city or big town that was laid back with warm weather. She was constantly researching possibilities, traveled to some of them, and talked with people who...

My clients with dysregulated eating get a big kick out of my describing a way I avoided unwanted noshing way back when: by hooking my finger into the collar of whatever I was wearing and dragging myself away from the refrigerator while repeating, “If you’re not hungry, you don’t want food.” The action comes from vaudeville shows where a performer who was doing poorly would literally “get the hook.” Picture an oversized cane hooked around a performer’s neck yanking them offstage into the wings. Silly as the behavior sounds, it reinforced my intention not to eat when I wasn’t hungry. I’ve suggested a combination of self-talk and physical action to prevent clients from emotional or mindless eating. Here are some word-action combos you can practice. Better yet, come up with some unique pairing of your own. Many clients feel defective because this was how they were raised to feel about themselves....

Even when you think you might be ready to start or return to therapy, you may wonder about finding a therapist who’s a good match. In these days of tele-therapy, it can be both easier and harder to find someone. The field is wider, providing greater selection, but that also may make it more difficult to narrow down your choice. It may surprise you to learn that I started therapy (by choice) when I was 14 years old. I’ve had some half dozen therapists over the decades—fair and great ones—and learned something from them all. If you’re in the market for one or are evaluating your current therapist, here's some excellent advice about how to make this important choice from “Not making progress in therapy? Make sure you and your therapist are a good fit.”  The author encourages you to do the following: Don’t expect your therapist to fix you. Make...

Because resilience is a proven ingredient for success, happiness and satisfaction and the lack of it has been shown to lead to a poor quality of life, it’s important to recognize that you can grow resilience, the ability to recover from hardship, trauma and other stressors. You can build emotional muscle to avoid being taken down by adversity and bounce back from it more quickly and effectively.  “The Kids Are Alright” (Newsweek, 9/3/21, pp 16-26) provides an explanation of resilience, including its manifestations at the neuro-cellular level. According to its author, Adam Piore, susceptibility to depression is unsurprisingly linked with avoidance of risk and a more negative life outlook, while “resilience is associated with a more positive” outlook and “boldness” and taking chances. For example, if you’ve been burned enough times in the romance department, you might stop dating for fear of being hurt again. This behavior will help you avoid...

I recently came across an author who suggests that happiness comes from satisfaction, not from achievement and I thought about all my unsatisfied clients over the decades who had achieved so much but rarely felt that what they’d done was enough or was up to par. And so off they went seeking satisfaction with food. Satisfaction is a quirky thing, but hardly elusive. You can feel satisfied watching a spell-binding movie or TV series, reading a book about the Civil War, weeding the garden or making a four-course meal. These are just a few of the activities that can bring satisfaction, as can getting a solid night’s sleep or cleaning out the garage. Satisfaction doesn’t come from the party you’re attending, but from what you bring to it. That is, it comes from a deeply felt sense of pleasure in what you’re doing. It’s not about what you’ll tell people after...

There’s an AA saying that says “our secrets keep us sick.” It’s true. Personally and professionally, I’ve seen how they harm us. You know it too, how they burrow deep and slowly eat away at emotional well-being. Why do we keep secrets and how can we break free and start sharing them? There are several reasons we keep secrets: We’re ashamed of what we did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say. Because we’re ashamed we believe that other people will see our actions as shameful, and we can’t bear heaping other people’s shame onto our own.We’re afraid of retaliation. Sometimes our secret actions (or inactions) put other people in harm’s way, and they may be angry or retaliate if they find out. We don’t want the punishment they may mete out. We were brought up that what we do is private and no one else’s business. Perhaps we don’t even know...

I’d wager that most of your problems, eating and otherwise, are due to having erroneous beliefs you don’t even realize are underpinning your emotions and actions. Here’s a checklist of beliefs you want to have in order to live your best life. Moreover, you must believe them unequivocally, with no waffling, to get you where you want to go. I am lovable and worth caring about.I deserve the best that life has to offer.My job is to take excellent care of myself.Everyone doesn’t need to love or like me for me to love myself and be okay.Everyone struggles with emotions from time to time.I can take care of myself and others too.There are many people who will love and cherish me, but I need to seek them out. What happened in my childhood does not define me because I define myself now.Everyone has regrets and wishes things about the past were different.With...

Many of us feel stressed so often that we don’t realize what it’s doing to us. The fact is that stress is a mind-body response that not only triggers food-seeking to de-stress but may also cause all sorts of major physical and mental damage. According to Dana Sparks in Chronic stress can wreak havoc on your mind and body, stress is a way of protecting us from bodily harm and other threats. Ironically, in this day and age, we are more likely to be harmed by the stress itself. Our bodies evolved the stress response when we lived in a time of near constant peril and we still use it, though most of our lives are not fraught with danger lurking around every corner. Says Sparks, when you encounter a perceived threat, “your hypothalamus, a tiny region at your brain’s base, sets off an alarm system in your body. Through a...

Many clients value hearing what their therapist has to say to help them get over rough spots. “Just the sound of your voice” is what some have said when I’ve made recordings for them. Before cell phones, clients and I would develop a short script and I’d record it on a cassette which they’d play as needed. This is an old therapy tool, and certainly nothing original to my practice. There are other ways to use recordings, especially now that we have cell phones which are easy to use. One is to make one yourself. You’d be surprised how supportive it feels listening to the wise person within you offering advice, providing self-soothing, or reminding you of what’s important in your life. You can make a recording in the first or second person depending on which you think will work best.  Here's an excerpt of a recording my client Charlotte made...

These days we hear a good deal about micro-aggressions against others but may never think about how we use them against ourselves. The term is defined as “a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (such as a racial minority).” I’m using the term loosely here and not attempting to take anything away from interpersonal affronts that do great damage to marginalized groups and the people in them. I’m thinking about micro-aggressions as the unkind to downright nasty things we say to ourselves about ourselves that make us feel marginalized or disconnected from our better intentions. Like micro-aggressions said to others, these words are so subtly embedded in our culture and minds that we barely or rarely realize the harm they do. Here's an example. Lena, a client who’s a real go-getter, was relating all the things...

I’ve mentioned before how themes sometimes arise in weekly therapy sessions. Well, one recent theme is productivity. So many dysregulated eaters have this intense drive to be productive. I’m not sure if they tell me what they’ve accomplished because I’m their therapist or they’re in the habit of telling everyone. I thought of this need to be productive when I came home from a busy day doing errands and was struck between the difference I felt—simply glad to have the tasks behind me—and the way some of my clients seem to feel—as if they deserved a gold star on their forehead. I suspect they were trained to report in to others, likely their parents, about their productivity early on and continued the pattern without realizing they no longer need to do so (except perhaps with a boss). This desire to be productive for its own sake stems from parents modeling this...

I blog a great deal about changing habits because, at base, that’s what going from dysregulated to “normal” eating is all about—exchanging one set of behaviors for another. How to Build Lasting Habits for a Better Life has some excellent practical ideas on how to get this done.  Katy Milkman, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and co-founder and co-director of Wharton’s Behavior Change for Good Initiative, studies habits and explains why habits are hard to break: “We know from lots of research that people are very resistant in general to making a change. We’re comfortable in our ways. Any deviation from what we’re used to doing feels like a loss, and losses tend to loom larger than gains.”  She recommends that you surround yourself with people who have the habits you wish to have and observe what they do. Talk to them about how they acquired...

The fact that I live in Sarasota, Florida, a lovely city with panoramic ocean views, has nothing to do with the title of this blog. Rather, it comes from a session with a client in which we were talking about her desire to tighten boundaries with her family by confronting them on various issues. She described being afraid of “making waves” and I suggested that she not only make them but “swim in them.” I suggested she do so by reframing her fears. I know that her major fear was that by making waves she’d metaphorically drown. She has allowed herself to become dependent on family members who also get something out of her dependence. Her fear is that by confronting them about mistreating her, they’ll withdraw their support.  I’d wager that nearly everyone who fears making waves was raised in a family that didn’t support their authenticity or encourage them...

Clients often balk at the idea of accepting their bodies or behaviors because they think that acceptance means being okay with things as they are. I’ve blogged about how we can embrace both acceptance and accountability. A movement called Radical Acceptance takes the concept a step further and is worth learning about. “Radical acceptance means recognizing your emotional or physical distress . . . and wholeheartedly practicing acceptance.” (“5 ways to become more accepting,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, 5/18/21, 6E) Why throw yourself all in? Because radical acceptance actually makes you feel better. It helps you recognize that humans are complicated, fragile creatures who have complex feelings and thoughts. When you’re 100% with and for yourself, you’re being your most human no matter what’s going on with you. When you radically accept your thoughts and feelings, you don’t deny or minimize them. They may make you uncomfortable and you may not like...

As a child, when my parents wanted me to speak quietly, they’d tell me to talk with my “inside voice,” the kind you’d use in a library or a movie theatre. But there’s a voice that’s even more hushed and personal than that one and it’s called your “inner” voice. According to The Inner Voice by Philip Jaekl, “That voice isn’t the sound of anything.” He explains that this voice replaces that of our parents and other adults as we gradually engage in a dialogue with it, that is, a conversation with authentic selves. According to research, between the ages of two and eight we begin what’s called “private speech.” In fact, “Studies showed that during imaginative play, children’s self-talk helps them guide their own thoughts and behaviour and exert true self-control.” The research of Russell Hurlburt, professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, concludes that ” inner speech consumes...

Many people say, “I’ll eat better to live longer,” “I’ll exercise to lose weight,” or “I’ll meditate to feel less angry.” Although it’s true that healthier eating may contribute to longevity, that exercise may help shed pounds, and meditation may reduce reactivity, those goals miss a more essential point about such practices: that while you’re doing them, you feel better and that by doing enough practices in a day that increase feelings of well-being you make yourselves happier, more hopeful and more proud. Many dysregulated eaters—many people, period—don’t string together enough behaviors in a day or a week to combat stress or keep their mood relatively elevated. Instead they think about and plan down-the-road activities which will boost their spirits: outings and vacations, purchases and external self-care activities such as massages and facials. They contemplate what they’ll drink and eat and where they’ll go to do it. There’s nothing wrong with...

Speaking with me about the wonderful changes she’s making in her life, a client mentioned that she took a job and realized after the first day that it was a poor match for her. She reasoned that she had a right to feel good about her work and immediately gave notice and apologized to her boss. After relating this story, she added, “I felt bad because I didn’t want them to think I was a quitter.” Her statement stuck in my craw. This isn’t the first time a client has taken care of themselves and felt a need to assure me (and likely themselves) they weren’t a quitter. As if being a quitter is a bad thing. Once again, this is confusing a situational trait, in this case, the ability to know when to give up on something or someone, with one’s entire personality or identity.  When people have an “I’m...

I love the kind of days when the same themes keep re-appearing from one client to the other. Sometimes the theme is realizing that the most important approval comes from ourselves. Or that detachment is far superior than wanting to change someone. Or the theme that echoed through practically every session one particular Monday in late May. Most of my clients learn about self-compassion from me and we have long discussions about it how they never learned it from their parents who didn’t possess it or why they never received much of it growing up. They understand that self-compassion—meeting suffering with kindness—is missing in them and generally do quite well in healing their eating and other problems by generated greater care and concern toward themselves. They find it quite amazing how a little self-compassion can go such a long way toward helping them have a better attitude and a better life. On this...

Many decades ago when I’d just started social work school in Boston, a friend became very sad after his wife left him for another man. I knew them both and their situation and assumed my friend was suffering from betrayal and grieving the loss of his marriage. When he continued to feel down and exhibited other distress symptoms, I finally realized that he was suffering from depression with which he still struggles to this day. With my clinical experience now, I would have seen that he was depressed more quickly. But, even with clinical experience, it’s not always easy to tell the difference between someone simply suffering through a difficult time and someone who has mental health issues that need to be treated. And if I’m not sure of the truth as a seasoned therapist, it’s even harder to discern for people without my experience. This dilemma is the focus of...

While reading a mystery book, I came across a child psychologist character describing his use of Incompatible Response Training, briefly explaining to his companion that it works by substituting one emotion for another. I thought the concept interesting and useful and Googled it to learn more about it. Habit Reversal Training, as it’s also called, involves substituting one habit for another. Why not use it with emotions? So I tried out this strategy with a client that afternoon. She’s very anxious, struggling to overcome perfectionism and people-pleasing, and looking for ways to dissolve her anxiety as she eagerly takes on more challenges in life. Raised by a shame-based mother and an insecure father who demanded she overperform to receive his approval, she grew up as the consummate overachiever and with sky-high anxiety. Both due to genetics and socialization, she couldn’t have turned out any other way. We talked about two large...

This blog is for all of you who struggle with getting things done—whether you’re wildly busy or simply have little motivation to do the few important tasks you wish to accomplish. Remember, having alot to do is not necessarily the issue. It’s your inability to execute your (many or few) desires, that is, to go from intention to accomplishment. Be a Schedule Builder, Not a To-Do List Maker by Nir Eyal will put you on the right track by shifting your mindset from checking off to-do lists to structuring your life to suit yourself. Insists Eyal, “It’s time to shed the constant stress and toxic guilt of not checking off enough little boxes and finally understanding why running your life with a to-do list is like running your life on Windows 95.” His point is that we make to do lists to get things we’re ambivalent about doing done. After all,...

If you’re rushing through life on automatic or holding off enjoying it until you’ve accomplished something, you might be focused on product rather than process. This could be the case if you’re highly goal-oriented or intent on success at any cost to yourself or others. One obvious example is thinking only of the number on the scale rather than putting attention on eating mindfully. You yearn for the finished product and don’t much care how you get it: by dieting, fasting or bariatric surgery. Here are examples of valuing product over process. You meet someone who’s your type and kind of nice and go out a few times. Although you notice things about them that aren’t what you’re looking for in a life partner, you ignore them because you’re already picturing yourself married with a house and two kids. Because you’re not valuing the getting-to-know-you part of the relationship, you miss many...

In session, not too long ago, a client sighed and said she just wished I had a magic wand and could wave it over her to heal her eating disorder. How often I’ve heard that same wistful plea over my 30-plus years in the business. But this time, rather than smile and say my usual, “I would but my wand’s in the shop,” I told my client that she had her own magic wand but didn’t use it. You all have one. The problem with magic wands is that one can’t simply acquire one and then shove it in the back of the closet and forget about it. Wands need to be used or what’s the point of having one? Do you buy a bicycle and not ride it, spend a fortune on a jumbo screen TV, then never turn it on? I hope not. You have to actually use the...

Many dysregulated eaters are ardently goal-oriented. They arise each morning with to-do lists at the ready and rush through the day ticking off items, set reminders of when things needs to get done, shift into overdrive to do them, obsess about how to make the future turn out differently than the present and past, and dream about future happiness. If you’re someone who’s goal oriented, everything in life is a project and you spend more time with your mind in the future than in the now. You do great things at work, make sure family members are well taken care of, and serve your community. Then instead of doing what you say you want to do to eat more healthfully or become more active, you put off these activities and end up eating mindlessly instead. You eat ice cream instead of cleaning the house, down a bag of chips instead of...

A colleague sent me this quote I hadn’t heard before which was allegedly said by Socrates. When I checked, it actually wasn’t his, but I love the idea behind it: The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new. If you want to know one small way to succeed in recovery, there it is. I spend too much time listening to people talk about their problems and how much they want to overcome them. Then, when I share solutions, they often give a perfunctory nod to them and go right back to talking about what’s wrong. This is a bad habit, nothing more. I know clients want me to understand how difficult their eating problems are. I know they’re frustrated and disappointed in their inability to change to date. But how can complaining about a problem do anything to...

An enlightening book I read, 7-½ Lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett, explains how our brains are sadly mismatched for current times. Remember, Homo sapien brains evolved to be as they are 35,000-100,000 years ago. Living in caves, we were hunters and gatherers suffering constant physical and mental stress from the elements, starvation, and other humans. I’m sure it had its moments, but for the most part, life was neither life nor pleasant and we had little control over it. In order to survive, we had to be exquisitely attuned and reactive to threats in our environment.  That’s why our brains developed as predictors. If we could predict what would happen, we could have power over our lives and a better shot at surviving. In fact, the premise of Dr. Barrett’s book is that the function of thinking is to predict and that we do this through learning. She...

A discussion with a client who was having difficulty finding enough pleasure during the COVID pandemic got me thinking about what makes for resilience under stress. Why are some people thriving and others going down hill fast? Why are some people enjoying having time to themselves and others feeling depressed or frantic? Part of the problem is due to co-dependence. My client even described the state by saying, “I always focused on other people and got pleasure from doing that. My parents never encouraged me to think about what I wanted and so I never did. Now that I’m alone and have all this time to myself, I have no idea what to do with it.” This led to talking about how co-dependence—over-focusing on the needs and wants of others to the exclusion of your own—left her lacking skills in her current situation. Fortunately, she was eager to discuss what might...