The Blog
How To Improve Body Image
How do I treat body image issues? It’s often the last thing to improve in eating disorder recovery, and one of the most difficult things to treat. In this article I will explore what body image is and how you can take simple steps towards improving yours. I also discuss my own history with body image and the way my journey informs my work with clients.
How ADHD Traits Helped Human Evolution
People often think of ADHD as a modern problem, but some researchers believe ADHD traits may have helped humans survive for most of our evolutionary history. Learn how traits like novelty-seeking and exploration may once have been advantages.
Can You Fully Recover From an Eating Disorder?
YES. Yes, you can fully recover from an eating disorder. I feel a lot of dismay when someone says to me; “You know how you can never really recover from an eating disorder?” as if it’s a known fact. The person is generally pretty taken aback when I explain that I don’t agree. Learn more about full eating disorder recovery in San Francisco, California with therapist Megan Y. Bruce, LCSW.
Why Emotions Are the Key To Eating Disorder Recovery
Eating disorders are not about vanity— they’re strategies to deal with overwhelming emotions. When you can allow all of your emotions, the eating disorder loses it’s function and fades away. Sustainable recovery is about developing the capacity to feel, not just eat.
The Art of Resilience: Martha Stewart Edition
If I could pass one skill along to all of my clients, it would be resilience. One way to further promote your own resilience is to identify your values and commit to taking actions based on the things that matter to you, a key principle in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). I also like to have an actual person to emulate when I’m trying to develop a new skill, so today I propose Martha Stewart as our resilience role model.
Treating Eating Disorders: 5 Best Practice Strategies
I wanted to share my list of things to do to build and rapport and trust when helping someone recover from an eating disorder. This is also helpful to read if you are a parent or loved one of someone with an eating disorder and you want to learn more about how to be helpful. So much of this advice is not intuitive for supporters, but can make all the difference in connecting with the person struggling.
Who Needs Sleep? On The Refrain: ‘I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead’
People have so many other demands, sleep can feel like the easiest task to let up on. The problem is that lack of, or irregular/fragmented, sleep is one of the best predictors for developing mood or anxiety symptoms. You are way more vulnerable to conditions like depression, anxiety and chronic burnout when you’re sleep deprived. Every organ in your body operates on a circadian rhythm, every hormone is regulated by our sleep/wake cycles. So while we think we can push through the lack of sleep, the price we pay is often steeper than people realize.
How to Navigate Your Emotions: Orville Peck Edition
If feeling and expressing your feelings in a healthy way helps you avoid the development of mental illness, why do the cultural norms around emotions require the exact opposite? For example, have you ever felt ashamed for crying when you were sad? Embarrassed for being too excited or giddy? Foolish for earnestly trying something new and, like any beginner, sucking? Have you ever told someone you were doing really well, but in reality you felt terrible? Of course you have! Most of us have.
What Causes Eating Disorders?
If you’re trying to understand what causes eating disorders, you’re not alone. While we think of eating disorders as a modern phenomenon– and at the explosive rates we see them at today they certainly are– they are also brain based diseases that existed long before anyone considered being thin aspirational.