I maintained this pattern of moving even when I became an emancipated minor in my late teens. It became a fairly predictable cycle. Move. Start fresh. Get stale. Move again. At seventeen, I picked up and moved from Maine to Washington State. Today, I would probably be terrified of making such a drastic change on a whim, but I was officially an adult, at least according to the courts, and I was more than ready to start over –again! When I moved to Washington, it took less than two months before my fresh start became stale.
You see, I had already established myself as a revolving door patient, in and out of one eating disorder program to the next. I always had a team of therapists, doctors, dieticians, etc… My friendships started out where I presented myself as a young and intelligent go-getter, and I was. However, I also tried to pretend I did not have any issues. Eventually, I would “purge” out all of my deepest, darkest secrets, usually overwhelming the one or two people who I would allow to know the real me. Once I burned out the friends, treatment providers, and programs in the area, I would start looking for the next place to start fresh. I honestly thought I would eventually move out of the eating disorder and into recovery.

The problem with my theory was this; you cannot run from yourself! “Wherever you go, there you are!” It took a good ten years (and at least ten more moves) before I realized my theory of moving away from my problems was not an effective remedy. For all of those years, I had hoped I would find the magical therapist or treatment center that would cure me. It never occurred to me that I was the one who had to save me. I was never actually taught that I held the key to change. Perhaps I was and I just could not swallow that in my fairy tale version of recovery, where someone was supposed to sweep in to rescue me from myself.
I have had ample opportunity to gather tools, resources, and skills. Treatment centers, such as Mirasol, provide a chance to break free from unhealthy and ineffective patterns while in a safe, supportive environment. Hopefully, you develop a positive relationship with the treatment providers who arm you with recovery tools and skills that you can utilize when you leave treatment. You gain insight, confidence, and an opportunity to exercise your recovery muscles as you experiment with applying your new skills before you graduate and venture back to your life outside of treatment. This is what a great treatment program does best! You are taught how to accept, cope, and thrive in the ebb and flow of life. You learn that when push comes to shove, you are your greatest ally as much as you were your greatest enemy.

Here is where I had a major disconnect. My tool belt looked a little too picture perfect. I had all of the tools in the right places, but I never used them on the job. Basically, I had a really hard time helping myself. I just kept gathering tools and not using them! I thought I would be a whole new person when I found the right treatment program. They were going to take all of my issues, crumble them up, and do away with them completely—you know, like magic! Ta-dah! They were going to transform me! After an effective treatment experience, I realized the magic of recovery is being willing to take what you are given and work it. You have to grab the tools out of your tool belt and continue to build your new identity and lifestyle one brick at a time. If you want to recover, there is no way around this.

There is a lot more to building a home than laying a foundation and framing the structure! There is also a lot more to the process to building your recovery than going into treatment. Starting treatment is a courageous first step, but the journey requires putting one foot in front of the other, over and over and over, especially when you leave treatment.

Chances are that you (or your family member) will not leave treatment cured, completely free of all urges, forever. Recovery presents challenges, especially during periods of transitions. Even if outdated and no longer useful, there is often an urge to retreat to old ways of coping during times of change. Graduating from treatment is one of the first major transitions that will call upon your recovery tenacity and patience. You will have to apply and re-apply your skills, even when no one is watching. You do not have to make the commitment forever. Today is enough. When things are especially difficult, I always seek comfort in the fact that today is the only day I really have. Stubborn and tough as nails, I can get through anything, at least for today.

Shaping new behavior and thought patterns are not easy tasks. We are creatures of habit, so it is only natural to require a lot of practice and repetition to unlearn one habit and replace it with a new behavior. For example, I have been using “paper or plastic” at the grocery store for over a decade. I have had reusable tote bags in my car for well over a year now. I want to use less plastic, but only over the last few weeks have I ever remembered to bring the canvas totes into the store with me, so I could actually use less plastic. I would usually only remember my totes while checking out or while loading groceries into my car. I am finally learning to enter the store with tote bags in hand.

As you pack your bags, whether figuratively or metaphorically, remember this…Wherever you go, there you are. Break open your tool box, put on your tool belt, grab the tools you need for the job, and build your life one day at a time.

For my next guest blog contribution, I am going to introduce to you a coping tool that is also always with you wherever you go, so stay tuned!

Heather Purdin, M.Ed., RYT

Operation Beautiful™: Mission Accomplished!
Heather Purdin, M.Ed., CTRS, RYT

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead

Sometimes it is the smallest gestures that have the most profound impact. Who would have thought a post-it note with a short and sweet message such as “You are Beautiful!” would lead to a national trend?

Caitlin Boyle certainly did not, but that did not stop her from sewing the seed that has now become the masterpiece known as, Operation Beautiful™.

Her goal was to combat the societal epidemic of negative self-talk by countering it with a positive message. She first left the messages on mirrors in public restrooms at her work, gym, and local grocery store. She hoped, “Maybe some people read them and just smile, but I bet some people are truly touched by the effort of a random stranger.”

Caitlin eventually created a website and began putting the web address on the notes so people could join the mission as a community. In the battle against toxic self-talk, the Operation Beautiful™ website is a sort of headquarters always recruiting more soldiers to walk the talk!

Glamour Magazine, Women’s Day, Oprah Winfrey Network, and The Today Show have all taken notice. Today, Caitlin’s website receives thousands of hits from across the Globe from others who contribute to the cause. This time featuring inspirational messages geared toward girls 8-14, Caitlin just wrote her second book: Operation Beautiful™ for Best Friends. (Remember, this all started with a simple post-it note and a positive mind.)

I joined the cause two years ago when I discovered an Operation Beautiful™ note. Since, I have helped organize three “Operation Beautiful™” benefits with my band, reaching hundreds of attendees. Hopefully, some of these folks have gone on to spread the positivity. Regardless, the funds raised have been passed onto Project HEAL: Help to Eat, Accept, & Live, a nonprofit organization started by three brilliant teenagers that helps individuals battling eating disorders access the treatment they need.

Prevention + Intervention = REAL HOPE!

YOU can become part of the equation, part of the solution, and here is how:

What supplies do I need? This is the best part! This activity is incredibly accessible because it requires inexpensive items common to most households. Traditional supplies include: post-it notes as well as pens, pencils, gel pens, and/or markers. There are all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors of post-it notes you can look for if you want to invest a few dollars into the project. You can always incorporate stickers too.

What do I write and where do I post the notes? Get creative and even animated. You can spread around your favorite quotes or make up your own encouraging messages. If you struggle with self-image yourself, just imagine what it is you might really need to hear today and then spread the love! You can embellish your messages by adding doodles, using different color combinations, and even drawing quick sketches to help your message capture one’s attention. It really comes down to how many notes you want to make and how much time you have to devote to the project.

People are now expanding the mission by using chalk on sidewalks and using non-permanent markets to draw directly on mirrors. Just be careful to respect public and private property by using methods that can easily be removed. By the way, if you walk by later and find your message is missing, it may have been picked up and taken home by someone who really needed it!

If you leave the www.operationbeautiful.com website on the post-it, people can learn more about this mission. You can also leave the website of an eating disorder non-profit organization. Regardless of your choice, just keep this to positive propaganda please!

Below is a list of 15 possible locations, as well as examples of what you might write.

1. Bathroom mirrors (Look in the mirror and repeat after me, “You are beautiful!”)
2. Dressing room mirrors (Objects in the mirror are more beautiful than they appear!)
3. Bathroom stalls (Size does not matter. Love yourself always and forever!)
4. Lockers in the gym or at school (Go out into the world knowing you are loved)
5. Scales at the gym (A mind is a terrible thing to waste and a waist is a terrible thing to mind.)
6. Diet and beauty product aisles at the store (You are magnificent just the way you are.)
7. Diet ads or Photoshopped images on magazine covers (REAL beauty is who you are!)
8. Self-help books at the library or bookstore (Rock Steady!)
9. Ice-cream shops (Life is short; eat dessert first!)
10. Children’s toy packages that encourage unrealistic body image (You are the twinkle in the stars.)
11. Public bulletin boards (You can do anything you set your mind too!)
12. Gas pumps (“Don’t worry about a thing. Every little thing is gonna be alright” –Bob Marley)
13. Random car windows in the parking lot (Smile! It’s beautiful and contagious.)
14. Inside your cabinet doors (You deserve to enjoy your life.)
15. On your refrigerator (Nourish your mind, body, and soul. Breathe deeply & repeat!)

Whether you run a treatment program, suffer from an eating disorder, have a loved one battling an eating disorder, or have recovered from one, you have wisdom to share, so go out and share it! My partner surprised me with a note a few days before we held our first Operation Beautiful™ benefit and I still cherish it!

One you get started, the ideas will start running and you might even have a difficult time keeping up with yourself. Remember, this will benefit you and someone else! It’s like feeding two birds with one seed. Beautiful indeed!

Which of the Harris Center’s recent achievements are you most proud of?

One of the questions that frequently came up [among patients] early on, was, “What is going to happen to my daughter or me in one year or five years or 10 years, whether I get treatment or I don’t. Will I ever recover from this?” In 1987 we were funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the NIMH, to do a prospective follow-up study of 246 women with anorexia and bulimia. We are now in the 25th year of mapping the course of their disorders, what happens over time. So that’s what’s going on currently.
What findings has the study yielded up to this point?

So far we’ve been able to determine, unfortunately, the severity of this illness. In the first 11 years of the study, 10 of the 136 women with anorexia nervosa died. These were young women. And we wouldn’t have known that they had died if we weren’t following them. They weren’t necessarily in treatment — they might have gone for 3 months or been in psychotherapy or stopped and then started — but we were going to record all of it so at least we would know what [care] they had. It gave us a chance to look at who gets better. What are the factors that predict better outcomes or worse outcomes? I’m not sure we know that there’s a specific treatment for the illness — you take this and you do this, and you so-called “get better.” That is an area that we keep working on.”

This year and in previous years, you’ve invited members of the fashion industry, including Anna Wintour, Diane von Furstenberg and several models, to speak at the Harris Center’s annual Public Forum. What’s your thinking there?

There’s obviously an interest in the fashion world because there is concern that [it] is a factor in the rise of eating disorders. So I was able to make contact with Anna Wintour, and she organized the panel [in 2010] with Michael Kors and [supermodel] Natalie Vodianova to come here and talk about that. To [take on] the issues, [ask], “What’s going on here?” [The discussion] partly had to do with the safety of models and partly had to do with impact of all this on the greater public. Though I’m always concerned about individuals and I don’t want models to suffer more than anyone else, my bigger concern truthfully is the [effect] on the whole society idealizing these figures, these models, these images, which fosters this “too thin” ideal.

For me working with the fashion industry is an opportunity to learn. There’s always this fear that you’re going to be seen as a colluder, but to make change in the fashion world is very much [about] chipping away. You can’t go in with a sledgehammer. The fact that Anna was here was a big step. Sometimes working with the industry is more effective than just purely attacking it.

Do we have a way of measuring the impact of media on rates of eating disorders?

I don’t think if we change the media, that suddenly there aren’t going to be eating disorders. But we’re continually gathering data about the rates of eating disorders whether that’s increasing or stabilizing. Individuals who develop eating disorders are not necessarily glued to fashion magazines. So how do you understand the impact of media?

There’s another piece of this that the new Israeli law [banning underweight models from local advertising and requiring disclosure of photoshopping] kind of got into, the digitalizing of images. Are we going to police every image out there? I’m not pushing for federal legislation. I’m pushing for more information.

Mother Speaks Out After Losing Daughter To Bulimia

April 2, 2012
Like many parents, Judy Avrin didn’t fully understand the gravity of bulimia, until she lost her daughter Melissa. To help shed light on the disorder, Avrin helped make a documentary inspired by her daughter’s journal entries. Avrin speaks with guest host Jacki Lyden about the film Someday Melissa.

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:
This is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. I’m Jacki Lyden. Michel Martin is away. Coming up, he’s walked the runway in both menswear and women’s wear. He’s even modeled as an haute couture bride. We’ll learn the secret to Andrej Pejic’s unconventional beauty and gender-bending in just a moment.
First, we go behind closed doors, as the program often does on Mondays. That’s where we talk about issues people usually keep private, and eating disorders are that kind of issue.
Up to 24 million Americans of all ages and genders suffer from these illnesses, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and associated disorders.

Today, we want to focus specifically on bulimia. It’s when people go through frequent cycles of binge eating, followed by purging. Judy Avrin lost her daughter, Melissa, to this illness in 2009, and she helped make a documentary about her teen daughter’s battle with bulimia to help other families and educators and health care workers understand this disease.

In the movie, Judy Avrin admits that she spent some time in denial about her daughter’s condition.

JUDY AVRIN: And then I found, in her drawer – in her dresser drawers – glasses with chewed up and spit out food in it. Melissa was absolutely and totally resistant to even talking about it.

LYDEN: That was Judy Avrin in her film, “Someday Melissa: The Story of an Eating Disorder, Loss and Hope.” And she recently showed the film about her daughter at the National Institute of Mental Health here in Washington, D.C. It’s also being screened at colleges and community groups.
Judy Avrin joins us in the studio now. Thank you so much for coming in, and we’re very sorry about the loss of Melissa.

AVRIN: Thank you. And I’m proud and happy to be here and share her story.

LYDEN: This film was inspired by many things, by this devastating illness within your family, by the writings you found in your daughter’s journal about the arc of her life. There’s one entry that so gets to the heart of the matter. It’s a poem that she wrote. Judy, would you please read it for us?

AVRIN: Someday, I’ll eat breakfast. I’ll keep a job for more than three weeks. I’ll have a boyfriend for more than 10 days. I’ll love someone. I’ll travel wherever I want. I’ll make my family proud. I’ll make a movie that will change lives.

LYDEN: Which is exactly what you’ve done here. How did it feel to find that poem, and was that the inspiration for the film that you’ve made?

AVRIN: The poem, I actually didn’t see the first time I read through the journal. I had finally gotten up the courage to read it about two months after she died. And after I did, I honestly thought about putting the journal in a drawer and forgetting about what she’d written. And it was sometime later when I was speaking to the director, he mentioned someday, and I went back and read the poem, and I got chills.

LYDEN: It isn’t only this poem, which is so remarkable, but her writings in her journals throughout the arc of her illness really got quite profound, and there’s a lot of recognition there, which sort of goes to show the grip of something that she was in. She died in May of 2009, but you start the film, really, with her childhood.

AVRIN: Melissa was a happy, healthy, creative, funny, very normal child. And it was around the age of 13 that she began struggling with the body image issues that ultimately led to the depression and the eating disorder that took her life. It was even certainly harder for my husband to understand it, but I do talk in the film about my own history with bulimia. I battled with it for many, many years. But my eating disorder was not as severe as Melissa’s, so I think it allowed me to minimize the early warning signs.

LYDEN: In this arc of her life, things start to change, and she’s withdrawing in school and she’s about 14. So what were some of the things you were seeing?

AVRIN: She would start wearing baggy clothes, and that’s a really classic sign of somebody who’s just not comfortable with their body. Large amounts of food would start to disappear, but we were the house that a lot of the kids would come to. So both of my kids had, you know, friends in and out of the house and then the really, really classic sign that I didn’t know until much later was she developed really severe constipation. And if the food is – and if it’s going in and coming out, or if it’s not going in at all, you’re not going to have a normal digestive system. And we had many, many visits to doctors and gastroenterologists before anyone ever uttered the word eating disorder.

LYDEN: And what was your husband’s reaction when that diagnosis was made?

AVRIN: He did not understand, as many people do, that it’s something really serious.

LYDEN: And people also think it’s a choice?

AVRIN: Which is one of the biggest misconceptions there is. It’s not a choice, and as hard as this is to understand, it’s not about the food. It may start as wanting to lose a couple of pounds, but it can transform very quickly into disordered eating and turn into a full-fledged eating disorder. And at that point, it is a mental illness.

LYDEN: I want to talk about that aspect of its being a mental illness, because I don’t know much about bulimia, but I will say here that I grew up very much with – in the presence and with – and love – a mentally ill mother. And there’s a clip in this film that I think really links it to the profundity of mental illness itself and how someone becomes someone else.
And this is where your son, Melissa’s brother, is talking about seeing your daughter out on the sidewalk in front of the house at night.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: In the bitter, freezing cold, she’s going through the garbage out on the curb looking for something to eat. And I went outside, and I yelled her name. Just the way she looked back at me was so empty, vacant. It was a deer in headlights, but that doesn’t explain it.

LYDEN: At this point, even you say she’s in the grip of something that feels like a demon.

AVRIN: She really wanted to get healthy and get well, but it would so control her and she wouldn’t be able to eat moderate amounts of food.

LYDEN: You had to lock up food. You couldn’t leave anything in the house. The cupboard had to be either bare or, you know, have a lot of shots in the film of a lock over a trunk of food. And that made the house – the fact of you locking the food, Judy Avrin, was like it made the house less of a home.

AVRIN: It did. And what I want you to understand, that came years into her illness, and it would be at times when she was, as I said, so in the grip of this eating disorder that she would consume anything. And if she did, it meant she would have to purge it.

LYDEN: If you’re just joining us, this is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. I’m Jacki Lyden. We’re talking with Judy Avrin about her documentary about her daughter, “Someday Melissa: The Story of an Eating Disorder, Loss and Hope.”

One of the things that you did for Melissa was send her to a kind of self-confidence camp in Idaho, and that becomes kind of a celebration, in the end, for your family. Let’s listen to how that goes for her in Idaho.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: (as Melissa Avrin) Dear Mom and Dad, I finally made it through my first week here, and so far what I’ve worked on is realizing what I do and why I do it. I’m not going to justify my past actions. They were wrong and dangerous and careless, and I’m so sorry I hurt you.

AVRIN: It’s a wilderness program that works with kids with all kinds of problems, drinking and drugs and eating disorders. And by the end of – I believe it was six weeks – she was so incredibly proud of what she had accomplished. She rediscovered the joy of being healthy.

LYDEN: Which is one of the things you show in this film, and I think that’s so great, Judy Avrin, that we don’t only see her as a collection of symptoms. Did you feel, after the wilderness camp, that you’d turned a corner?

AVRIN: Absolutely did. And she was about to turn 18. And, generally, kids who come from programs like this need a transition, and it’s better not to come right back home. And we had selected a therapeutic boarding school for her to go to. And while she was there, she truly rediscovered the joy of her brain. She was incredibly bright, an amazing writer. She tutored other kids. So in that sense, that next stage was positive, but the eating disorder came back in full force.

LYDEN: But she would eventually get into even the college she wanted.

AVRIN: Yeah. She wanted to be a filmmaker, and Emerson College was her dream school. And a week before she died, she got a phone call. And then a week after she died, the big envelope came.

LYDEN: Why did you want to make this film? You must think that there are many misconceptions about bulimia.

AVRIN: There are so many misconceptions. The general public, I think – to them, the face of an eating disorder is somebody with anorexia, extremely underweight, malnourished, the bones protruding. A typical bulimic generally will be within normal weight ranges, and that makes the eating disorder invisible.

LYDEN: Melissa was within normal ranges?

AVRIN: Absolutely. You know, her weight varied from time to time, but people would tell her she looked so great, you know, not knowing that she was purging and…

LYDEN: And I think perhaps another thing that’s not known is the devastating toll that it takes on the internal organs. The lack of potassium weakens the muscles. This is really not precisely starvation as we may think of it, but you are doing devastating things to your organs.

AVRIN: Right. And that’s ultimately what took Melissa’s life. She had a heart attack because her body chemistry was so out of whack. And you also don’t have to be sick for a long time. All it takes is one time that you purge and your electrolytes or your potassium are out of whack, and you can have a heart attack.

LYDEN: Had you worried – I want to ask you frankly, Judy Avrin – that she might succumb? That she might die?

AVRIN: Never. Never. I always believed she would recover. Even as difficult as it is to go through this cycle, I always believed she would recover.

LYDEN: So what has been the most helpful thing? She passed away May the 6th, 2009. What do you think – as you’ve had some time now, several years, nearly, to live with this?

AVRIN: Making the film, first of all, was an incredibly therapeutic way for me to channel my grief. And what has come from the film – and I say I would trade it all in a heartbeat to have her back.

LYDEN: Obviously.

AVRIN: But she is so inspiring others around the world, and I get emails, truly, on a daily basis. I got one the other day from a young woman in Texas. I’m 26 and I realized months ago, after hearing Melissa’s story, that I have so many somedays I still want to live, and I’m fighting for my recovery. Or I’ll hear from people – from families who say watching this film made me understand my child’s eating disorder unlike anything else has.
And therapists are using it for treatment and intervention. And she’s giving other people hope.

LYDEN: You’ve really made her live again.

AVRIN: Thank you.

LYDEN: Judy Avrin is the co-executive producer of the documentary about her daughter, “Someday Melissa: The Story of an Eating Disorder, Loss and Hope.”
Thank you so much for making this documentary about your late daughter and for coming in and sharing your story with us.

AVRIN: Thank you. It’s been an honor.

Copyright © 2012 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

Yoga, meditation, massage, acupuncture, and herbal remedies; these are just some of Eastern medicine’s contributions to our decades-long search for ways to live well with fewer pills and less-invasive health care. Toward that end, I’m excited to report that there are promising new findings in the field of energy psychology, specifically about a practice called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or tapping, that is taking our search for holistic solutions to an exciting new level.

What’s unique about EFT is how it combines Eastern wisdom about acupressure, or “meridian points,” in our bodies, with traditional Western psychotherapy. The practice consists of tapping with your fingertips on specific meridian points while talking through traumatic memories and a wide range of emotions. “Acupoint tapping sends signals directly to the stress centers of the mid-brain, not mediated by the frontal lobes (the thinking part, active in talk therapy),” explains Dr. Church, Ph.D., who has been researching and using EFT since 2002. Because EFT simultaneously accesses stress on physical and emotional levels, he adds, “EFT gives you the best of both worlds, body and mind, like getting a massage during a psychotherapy session.”

In fact, it’s EFT’s ability to access the amygdala, an almond-shaped part of your brain that initiates your body’s negative reaction to fear, a process we often refer to as the “fight or flight” response, that makes it so powerful. “By reducing stress,” adds Church, “EFT helps with many problems. There’s a stress component to sports performance, business and financial pressure, and most disease. When you reduce stress in one area of your life, there’s often a beneficial effect in other areas.”

Church estimates that 10 million people worldwide have used tapping, and what’s so exciting is how incredibly quickly it’s alleviating issues like depression, anxiety and insomnia, as well severe PTSD, physical pain, even illness.

At this point you’re probably thinking what most intelligent and sane people are — how is that possible? How can tapping on “meridian points” resolve serious health issues? As an EFT practitioner and the producer of the movie The Tapping Solution, it’s a question I’ve been asked repeatedly over many years. In fact, you’ll often hear me refer to EFT as “this strange tapping thing.” Fortunately, there’s very real science (and results!) behind it.

In partnership with Dr. David Feinstein, Dr. Church has been able to confirm that tapping on specific meridian points has a positive effect on cortisol levels. Cortisol, known as the “stress hormone,” is integral to our body’s “fight or flight” response. Originally designed to help us survive life in the wild, the “fight or flight” response was essential when our ancient ancestors were faced with sudden, brief danger like, let’s say, a tiger. However useful in short bursts, releasing cortisol too frequently, as we seem to be doing in response to the ongoing or “chronic” stress of modern life, may have serious, even scary, impacts on our physical, mental and emotional health. In fact, living in this kind of biological “survival mode” may be making us more vulnerable to everything from cancer to heart disease, and more.

In Dr. Church’s study, 83 participants were separated into three groups. One group was guided through an hour-long EFT session, the second group received an hour of talk therapy, while the third, the control group, received no treatment. The group that did an hour of EFT demonstrated a 24 percent decrease in cortisol levels, while the other two groups showed no real change. The EFT group also exhibited lower levels of psychological symptoms, including anxiety, depression, and others, as measured by the Symptom Assessment-45 (SA-45), a standard psychological assessment tool.

Research suggests that EFT may be so effective because of its perceived ability to balance out the nervous system, leveling off the activity of the parasympathetic and sympathetic regions. Responsible for promoting cell regeneration and relaxation, the parasympathetic region helps to slow your heartbeat, support digestion, and more. The sympathetic system, on the other hand, prepares you for vigorous physical activity by speeding up your heart, constricting your pupils, and so on. As noted in Church’s study, imbalance between these two regions is associated with a long list of health issues, from high blood pressure and heart problems (most often seen in those with an overactive sympathetic region), to depression, fatigue, and weakened immune response (in those with excessive parasympathetic activity).

In his study findings, Church asserts that EFT, which he refers to as “acupoint treatments” produces “a neutral emotional state,” which, biologically speaking, is the gold standard of health and wellness. It’s also the state of well-being people have sought to achieve for millennia through meditation, prayer, yoga, and other mindfulness practices.

Dr. Feinstein, a clinical psychologist who uses EFT in his own practice, adds that EFT is an “unusually precise, rapid, and direct for shifting the neurological underpinnings of a range of psychological problems.” In fact, he adds, “the number of therapists using EFT has been rapidly increasing over the past decade, and now peer-reviewed research is showing that their instincts have been right. Surprisingly rapid outcomes with a variety of disorders are being documented.”

The results of that documentation can (and will!) impact millions of lives in incredibly powerful ways, which is why I’m excited to share a host of new studies with you here, in future posts. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing your feedback. Are you familiar with tapping? Do you use it yourself, or know others who do? Are there specific topics you’d like me to focus on in future posts?

Nick Ornter is the creator and executive producer of the hit documentary film, “The Tapping Solution.”

An Epidemic of Depression

Our society is in the throes of a virtual epidemic of depression. The numbers are quite staggering. More than twenty percent of the American population will experience at least one episode of what we refer to as clinical depression. We need to look deeper into this phenomenon to understand it and overcome it. My contention is, firstly, that our cultural values and memes induce us to live in ways that are, indeed, depressing. Secondly, much of what we refer to as clinical depression is inaccurate. Most depression is situational. The symptoms of depression are often due to depressing circumstances, not disease. In other words, under certain circumstances, it makes sense to be depressed.

Have We Lost Our Way?

Many of us live dulled lives, somewhat robotic in nature and devoid of deeper meaning and purpose. Our lives, often become visionless and passionless. We live in an intensely competitive culture that rewards achievement and success. Our identity and esteem become reflections of these external markers of achievement. Our pursuit of happiness and well-being become terribly misdirected. The demands of our intensely and neurotically driven culture strain our emotional and psychological balance well beyond its comfortable balance. The cultural paradigm in which we live leaves us disconnected, disenchanted and isolated. When this occurs, we tend to honor and seek material acquisitions at the cost of devoting ourselves to intimate and loving relationships – with others and ourselves.

People that thrive in loving relationships don’t typically feel depressed. Depression is symptomatic of feeling isolated and cut off. In our drive to live the good life, we typically isolate ourselves from relationships that might nourish us. Intimate and loving relations have become somewhat marginalized and have lost value in our very hurried lives. Our frenetic pace of life sees one day blur into another, until life begins to lose its meaning. We don’t have time to nurture our loved ones or ourselves, and we lose our vision of a well-spent life. In fact, the problem is that we don’t know how to live well.

Are People Dysfunctional?

Our therapeutic community attaches labels such as dysfunctional to people and families. People are not dysfunctional; social systems are. People suffer and experience pain. We are human beings, not machines that dysfunction. Such terminology expresses contempt for the human spirit. A society that produces such staggering rates of depression is dysfunctional. Our culture has created this epidemic.

Part of the problem is that we become corralled into a consensus of belief that does not serve our higher purpose. The desire to fit in and conform induces us to lose our inner voice. We are products of a cultural belief system that ignores or devalues matters of the heart and then turns and points its accusatory finger at those who suffer. When we do so, we victimize the victim. If we began to look at the depression as symptomatic of living depressing lives, we’d begin to understand that the cure lies in addressing what our souls are longing for. When we suppress the voice of our soul, depression arises. Depression surfaces for a reason. The symptoms of depression are crying out for our attention. The epidemic of depression is simply indicative of lives lived errantly, without joy or purpose.

People who feel passion for their work and friends and love their families and partners don’t become depressed as often as the population at large. People who are in touch with their spirit and enjoy a sense of community don’t incline toward depression. People who maintain a sense of wonder and awe don’t become depressed. Depression isn’t the enemy. It’s simply a warning sign that we’re not on the right path. Our disconnection and folly pursuits of happiness may have much to do with this.

Before the advent of modern psychotherapy, and well before the pathologizing of the word “depression,” we would refer to such symptoms as melancholia. Life would bring certain periods and events in which one might feel some melancholy. Sadness is appropriate at times. When people experienced such sadness, friends and family may have supported them through the difficult times. But they weren’t told that there was something wrong with them. Loving support is the most powerful agent in the treatment of depression. When we lose our compassion and relegate depressed people to their diagnosis, we tend to dehumanize them.

Is Our Society Manufacturing Depressed People?

A dominant theme in our society is that you should be happy, and if you’re not, there’s something wrong with you. Life can be difficult at times. It is in the labeling of people as depressed that the greatest injustice is done. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t people who are indeed clinically depressed, but simply that the indiscriminate manner in which diagnoses are meted out to people without proper discrimination is grossly absurd. When clinical diagnosis of depression is made in the astronomical numbers we witness in American culture, it speaks to something much larger: A society that has lost its way.

If we see depression as a signal that something is off, we might use the depression to catalyze positive change. Very often depression makes perfect sense. In my practice, I often treat individuals who are being abused, living in loveless relationships or suffering from loss. Depression in such instances seems quite appropriate. Rather than treat the depression, I prefer to assist these people in coming to terms with their life challenges. It is essential to treat the person, not the depression. We must come to understand how the depressed person struggles contextually in their lives and to appreciate their particular struggles and challenges. We must, at all costs, refrain from reducing them to a clinical compilation of symptoms.

Situational Depression

In some instances, depression is situational. Loss of a loved one, illness or job loss creates circumstances that are painful. Working through the loss is more healing than medicating the pain. It is essential to address the underlying causes and not simply suppress the symptoms. The difficulty is that in our quick fix mentality, we believe that if we can suppress the symptoms then all is well. When we come to see depression not as the enemy but as an expression of struggle, the epidemic will likely subside as we come to honor the integrity of our human spirit. We do not ordinarily grow without engaging struggle. So the irony is that by medicating our symptoms with psychotropic medication, we ensure continued stagnation, for the struggle is never resolved toward a breakthrough; it is merely placated.

Gary Greenberg, in Manufacturing Depression, suggests that depression as a clinical disease may indeed be manufactured. He references best selling psychiatrist Peter Kramer’s assertion in Against Depression that “depression magically skyrocketed after the drug industry introduced SSRIs and that diagnostic criteria can’t distinguish between depression and grief.”

Mel Schwartz, March 16, 2012

My thesis is, therefore, twofold: Much of what we call depression is a typical life struggle around loss, fear and grave situational issues that have become clinicalized for profit. Yet, there also lies a deeper despair that accompanies living an incoherent life, as a stranger in a strange land. What I am strongly asserting is that depression, and anxiety for that matter, are the most likely outcomes of living in and with the unmerciful and misguided constraints of a tired and destructive worldview. Our constructed reality is for many people depressive and anxiety inducing. Feeling as such ironically suggests that many depressed people are merely mirroring the affects of a somewhat incongruous, if not insane way of living, fostered by the society itself. In effect, the way that we are living is producing tragic results.

Do you snack every night in front of the television? Do you drink a little too much when you are out with your friends? Do you ever find that you’ve smoked a whole pack of cigarettes, bitten off half your nails, or eaten an entire bag of Doritos without realizing you were doing it?

That’s the real problem when it comes to ridding yourself of bad habits – back in the beginning, when the behavior was new; it was something you did intentionally and probably consciously. But do anything enough times, and it becomes relatively automatic. In other words, you don’t even need to know that you are doing it.

In fact, as new research shows, you don’t even need to want to do it. If you develop the habit of snacking in front of your TV at night, how hungry you are or how tasty the snack is will no longer determine whether or how much you eat.

Many bad habits operate mindlessly, on autopilot. They are triggered by the context (e.g., watching TV, socializing, feeling stressed), rather than by any particular desire to engage in the behavior. So, the key to stopping a bad habit isn’t making a resolution – it’s figuring out how to turn off the autopilot. It’s learning to disrupt the behavior, preferably before it starts.

Take for example a recent study of Movie Theater popcorn-eating. Researchers invited a group of people to watch fifteen minutes of movie previews while seated in a real movie theater. They gave the participants free bags of popcorn, and varied whether the popcorn was fresh or stale. (The stale popcorn was actually a week old, yuck!) Then they measured how much popcorn each person ate.

Not surprisingly, everyone who got the stale popcorn reported liking it less than those who got fresh. And people with a weak popcorn habit (i.e., those who didn’t usually eat popcorn at the movies) ate significantly more fresh popcorn than stale. But here’s the kicker – for people with a strong popcorn habit (i.e., those who always ordered popcorn at the movies) it didn’t matter how stale the popcorn was! They ate the same amount, whether it was an hour old, or seven days old.

That’s worth thinking about for a moment – people with a strong habit were eating terrible popcorn, not because they didn’t notice it was terrible, but because it didn’t matter. The behavior was automatic, not intentional. So if tasting like Styrofoam won’t keep you from eating something, what will?

The researchers found that there were, in fact, two effective ways to disrupt the automatic popcorn-eating.

First, you can disrupt the habit by changing the context. When they conducted the same study in the context of a conference room, rather than a movie theater, people with strong popcorn habits at the movie theater stopped eating the stale popcorn. The automatic popcorn-eating behavior wasn’t activated, because the situational cues were changed.

If you have a habit you’d like to break, spend some time thinking about the situations in which it most often occurs. If you snack in front of the TV at night, consider doing something else in the evenings for a while – reading a good book, spending time with friends or family, even surfing the web. Any alternative activity that is less likely to trigger mindless eating. If you just can’t give up your favorite TV shows, you might try rearranging the room or sitting in a different chair – anything that alters the context can help.

Second, you can disrupt a habit by changing the method of performance. In another study, the researchers found that asking habitual popcorn eaters who were in a movie theater to eat with their non-dominant hand, stopped them from eating the stale popcorn, too.

So if you can’t change the situation, you can change the way the habit gets executed. If you mindlessly eat or smoke with your right hand, try using your left. If you mindlessly drink from the glass that the bartender keeps refilling, try sitting at a table instead of the bar, so you’ll have to consciously get up and ask for a refill. Making the behavior a little more difficult or awkward to perform can be a great way to throw a wrench in the works.

Too often, we blame our failures on the wrong things. When it comes to ridding ourselves of bad habits, we usually chalk our difficulties up to a lack of commitment or willpower. But as I’ve argued in my new book, “Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals”, conquering your behavioral demons needs to start with understanding how they really work and applying the most effective strategy. In this case, success comes from not making it quite so easy for your autopilot to run the show.

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you can be helped. You can regain control of your eating.

Here is “The Re-gaining Control” process in two steps.

Step 1: Learning to breathe is the first lesson to learn. You may say, “Hey, I’m breathing.”

Breathing needs you to take (I mean really breathing) deep breathes all the way down into your belly and then release the air slowly. You will need to practice breathing for at least a week until deep breathing becomes a habit.

Step 2: You don’t need to be hungry all the time. You need to eat three meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You also need to eat three snacks that include protein every day. Protein helps keep you full so you don’t feel starved and binge just because you’re over-hungry.

A former client of mine, Susie, keeps an energy bar in the glove compartment of her car so if she misses a meal or snack, she has food at hand.

Another friend, Carol, always carries her emergency stash, a bag of nuts, raisins, and granola in her purse. She is never caught without the food she needs to keep her blood sugar stable and keep from being over-hungry.

Here are a couple of sample meals that will help you:

Sample Breakfast:

1/2 cup cereal, 1 piece of toast, 1 piece of fruit, 1 egg or ½ cup of cottage cheese and 1 ½ tsp of Earth Balance (an approved butter substitute, or 1 tsp of flax oil.

Sample Snack:

The easiest snack is a piece of string cheese and a piece of fruit. You can substitute ½ c. yogurt or ½ c. cottage cheese, or 10 nuts for the cheese.

The first two steps will help keep you from being hungry, keep your blood sugar stable, and help you stay free from anxiety. You’ll begin to feel so good after 3-4 days, that you won’t be able to imagine being starved and eating large quantities of food again.

However, most of you are creatures of habit. The day will come when you’ll forget your snack bag. You’ll forget to eat lunch, have a small snack, and eat a huge dinner with cake and ice cream for dessert. And lots of it!

Do you think “Here’s another diet that didn’t work.”?

Do you say to yourself, “I’m a failure.”?

Wait a minute. Sit down and do some deep breathing. Get yourself back in balance again.

Managing your food is almost like learning how to ride a bicycle. When you rode a two-wheel bike for the first time, did you fall down? How many times did you fall down? Then how many times did you catch yourself before you fell down?

Your simple eating plan works exactly the same way. Rather than going right to the negative thoughts, see if you can say to yourself, “I’m going to eat right again because then I feel good.” “I am not a failure.” “I can get back on the bike!” “I can even learn to catch myself before I fall down.” I can stop myself before I begin to binge.

So what if you “fall off the bike” many times. Each time that you get up, brush yourself off, and get back on that bike, you’ll be building your self esteem. You’ll feel better about your ability to eat in a way that enhances your wellness. You’ll be on the way to learning that you can do anything you set your mind to!

If you feel anxious, sit down and do some deep breathing. This works!

These exercises sound simple and guess what? They are.

Did you answer yes to any of these questions?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to know that bullying leads to children’s eating disorders or other dysfunctional behaviors. More and more children are finding they need treatment for an eating disorder who are younger than 12.

Bullying is dangerous and can even lead to suicide. The internet has exposed the terrible truth about the effects of bullying. Remember, Phoebe Green, who hung herself at age 15 because of cyber bullying.

Only recently have we as health care professionals begun to look at the seriousness of bullying particularly after reported teenage suicides. Does your child use the internet? If so, be alert. Know that the internet has exposed the terrible truth about the effects of bullying, severe enough to drive some kids to self-harm or suicide.

Bullying effects millions of students but parents and teachers don’t understand the serious outcomes. When professionals or parents tell kids to ignore teasing, or to just get on with it, this not the kind of advice or understanding they need.

What does bullying looks like?

1. Emotional or verbal abuse looks like “Fatty fatty two by four, can’t get thru the kitchen door” or Piggy, piggy!
2. “Hey Jew boy.”
3. Cyber abuse is on Facebook where everyone from your school can see it.
4. Cruel emails can be sent from anywhere.

A person can be picked on by an individual or group with more power. Someone with more power may be peers, older kids, even teachers or parents. Bullies choose their victims because they look different, have a different religion, or are disabled. Bullies pick on a person simply because the person is shy or is gay or is a lesbian.

We must never forget that bullying is a severe form of abuse, i.e. emotional abuse, verbal and sexual abuse. Being excluded socially is a form of abuses. Verbal bullying, cruel email, or cyber-bullying (posting insults online) are forms of abuse.

Bullying like most forms of abuse is ongoing, like water dripping on a stone. The person being bullied lives in a constant state of fear. Everything in his or her life is affected. School work and health are both affected. A person being bullied can get stomach-aches, diarrhea, and headaches from the stress.
Kids abused by peers or family members can suffer from depression, low-self-esteem, and anxiety occasionally or a great deal of the time. They might even consider suicide!

Here are 8 tips to help you protect yourself from bullies. What advise will help if you feel bullied or know someone who is being bullied?

1. Tell someone about it, a teacher, a friend, a parent — tell anyone but tell right away.
2. Stick together with your friend who is being bullied — never leave him or her alone.
3. Learn to ignore the bully. Don’t add wood to the fire.
4. Don’t get physical (or angry) with the bully.
5. Practice feeling and looking confident. Posture is a give-away.
6. take small steps to be in charge of your life. This is where a good coach can help.
7. Talk about the bully and bullying to anyone and everyone. The more public you are, the bully will hide out.
8. Find true friends, friends that can offer you unconditional friendship.

If you’re a kid, find an adult who can guide you step by step through the process of taking charge of your life.

As you grow in confidence, you’ll stand taller knowing that no one will bully you again.

I have always tried not to use another person’s material when writing my blog, but this article is so exceptional, I need to share it with everyone!! It comes from a website, www.eatingforlife.org.

What to do if you think someone may have an eating disorder
Eating disorders are not about the food. There is always a deeper problem that is causing the person to focus so intently on food. The eating disorder is the outward manifestation signaling that there is an inner problem (e.g. self-esteem, family issues, depression, anxiety). An eating disorder is a person’s attempted solution to that problem. The eating disorder will begin to go away when the inner problem is addressed, and usually counseling is helpful in this process.

Make sure you approach the person one-on-one. If a group of you is concerned, it is very important that one person be chosen to talk with the friend. Group confrontation can make a person feel “ganged up on” and can cause a friend to feel betrayed, as if everyone has been talking about them. The goal is to support your friend, and often a group confrontation can leave a person feeling like they have been betrayed by their support system.

Make a plan to approach your friend in a private place. Try to choose a non-stressful environment where you will have time to talk at length, if necessary.

Present what you have observed and what your concerns are in a non-confrontational, caring way. Tell him or her that you are worried because of what you have noticed and that you would like to offer some help. Stay away from saying “we’ve been talking and are worried” – focus on what you yourself have seen, it is less threatening. (Friends who are too angry or hurt to talk supportively should not be the ones to confront.)

Offer human company and empathy. You don’t need to agree with the person’s feelings or stance. There is a place for challenge, advice, information, pep talks, jokes, and confrontation. Generally, that place is after she or he feels her or his experience is understood and accepted for what it is.

Listen carefully and non-judgmentally. Give the person time to hear what you have to say and to verbalize their feelings. Ask clarifying questions and then accept whatever they have to say without judgment. Encourage him or her to talk about their feelings.

Do not argue about whether or not there is a problem. Power struggles are not helpful. You could say, “I hear what you are saying and I hope that you are right and that this is not a problem. But I am still concerned about what I have seen and heard because I care about you.” (It is best not to say what other people feel or what they have noticed. Speak with “I” statements.)

Do not lay guilt trips, like “Look what you are doing to your family or roommates”. We are each responsible for our own feelings. Bear in mind that people with eating disorders yearn to know that someone could both know the worst about them and love them and care about them anyway.

If the person denies the problem, becomes angry, or refuses treatment, understand that this is often a part of the illness. They have a right to refuse (UNLESS their life is in danger). You may feel helpless and angry. You might say, “I know you can refuse to go for help, but that won’t stop me from being concerned. I may bring this up again later – maybe we can talk about it then.” Follow through on this, and other promises you might make. Your friend may need time to process what you have said to them. Don’t expect an immediate positive response, the important thing is to follow through and be consistent.

Provide information and resources for treatment. Make sure that you brush up on your knowledge of eating disorders before you talk to your friend, and be sure to offer resources to your friend. Encourage her or him to see a counselor, nutritionist, or physician and offer to go with them to the first appointment. Remember that recovery is a long process. It may take a while before your friend is feeling better and it is important for you to remain supportive throughout the entire recovery process.

Do not try to be the hero or rescuer – you may be resented. If you do the best you can to help on several occasions and the person does not accept it, stop. This does not mean stop being aware of their behavior, but you have done all it is reasonable to do. Eating disorders are stubborn problems, and treatment is most effective when the person is truly ready for it. You may have planted a seed that helps them get ready.

Make sure you get support for yourself. It can be difficult to live with someone who is dealing with an eating disorder. Get the information and support that you need.

For continuing support of your friend:
Remember that she or he is more than the eating disorder. Don’t let it become an identity – focus on his or her other characteristics that make them great. The more you help him or her identify his or her positive attributes, the easier it will be to let go of the “eating disorder” identity.

Don’t be afraid of conflicts or problems. These areas need to be brought out into the open, not hidden. Be sure to keep lines of communication open.

Do not focus on weight gained or lost. Focus more on their mental state. If you say, “you look thin” you are focusing on appearance and feeding into their behavior. If you say, “you look healthy” she or he may think you are saying, “you look fat.”

Don’t focus on achievements – grades, promotions, etc. Instead, talk about his or her inner qualities and strengths. Set an example – be good to yourself and she or he will see that it is possible.

Stay positive! People do recover from eating disorders. Many people who recover acknowledge the importance of friends who believed in them and kept trying to reach out to them.

Women’s Resource Center
Boston College

Dear Jeanne,

I am a former Mirasol client from back in 2007. After a lifetime of sickness with an extreme case of anorexia, I finally found a treatment center that not only worked for me, but gave me my life back and allowed me to flourish since I left four years ago. In those four years I have earned my master’s degree in advanced practice nursing and am now a family nurse practitioner.

Words cannot adequately express how much my time and experience at Mirasol meant to me, and there has not been a day that has gone by since I left where I haven’t thought about it. Not only was it the beginning of my recovery and healing journey, but it introduced me to the world of holistic and alternative medicine, reignited my interest in health care, and was the inspiration for my application to nurse practitioner programs.

I felt accepted, understood, nurtured, and most of all LOVED by the people I encountered at Mirasol, and that is why I was able to heal there. I firmly believe that everything I’ve been through with my eating disorder has been for a reason, and has led me to a path of wanting to give back what was so generously given to me. No matter where I end up working I know that I will carry my Mirasol experience with me forever, and it will always be there guiding my approach to patient care.

All my love to you,

J. S.

Mirasol has just received three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). The survey report commended Mirasol for its “dedication and commitment to improving the quality of the lives of the persons served” and its “established pattern of practice excellence”.

The CARF survey report described Mirasol’s residential eating disorder treatment program as follows:

• Mirasol has a seasoned staff that is capable of helping women deal effectively with eating disorders and return to a lifestyle free from these disorders.
• Mirasol CEO Jeanne Rust, PhD, is “a leader in the field in developing innovative interventions that will help individuals with eating disorders overcome their disorders”.
• The outcomes data have shown over the last three years a dramatic reduction in depressive characteristics, an increase in self-esteem, and a reduction in personal destructive traits ….
• Mirasol has been fully licensed by the Arizona Board of Behavioral Health Examiners since 1999. The organization prides itself on its cutting-edge therapies such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, dialectical-behavioral therapy, Gestalt psychology, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and … experiential therapies. Adjunctive therapies are provided by professionals certified in their various fields, such as neurofeedback, art therapy, meditation, therapeutic recreation, and yoga. Additional therapies include exercise therapy, dance/movement therapy, art therapy, polarity therapy, acupuncture, and nutritional education. Each client participates for a minimum of six hours a week in these specialty modalities.
• The organization’s alternative approach to eating disorder recovery has a success rate that is twice the industry average. Services are holistic in nature and deeply spiritual, with emphasis on the mind, body, spirit and soul.
• Clients interviewed are very pleased with services and staff members. Several talked about how much they have learned and how their lives have changed through the unique therapies offered at Mirasol. One said she felt Mirasol was “magic,” and all agreed on how caring the staff members are.
• The enthusiasm and empathy of the management and staff members promote a healthy and caring setting for all persons served who report staff members are always available and work as a team.
• The commitment, dedication, compassion, enthusiasm, and skills of very professional staff members are impressive and infectious. Leadership strives to hire and retain individuals who clearly meet and exceed state-required qualifications.

The CARF survey contained surprisingly few recommendations, but included an admonition to do a better job of communicating Mirasol’s achievements to present and future clients, referring therapists and other stakeholders!

Mirasol is thrilled and humbled to be so recognized by CARF. We thank the members of the survey team for their thorough assessment, and we pledge to follow CARF’s guidelines and to do our best to continually exceed the expectations of CARF, our clients, their families and members of the community.

“We’ve been doing the challenge course for several years now, and it has become a really important part of our program,” says Mirasol Clinical Director Diane Ryan.

“It’s a great metaphor for what the clients are going through in treatment. Recovery from an eating disorder is a huge challenge, but clients learn that they’re stronger than they think they are, that they can access different resources, learn to ask for support, and find out that they’re not in this all by themselves.”

Since the challenge course was so powerful in the normal course of treatment, Ryan decided to incorporate it into Mirasol’s three-day family program.

“The exercises help women and their families see how they relate to one another,” says Ryan. “We talk a lot about things like enmeshment and enabling. But it’s one thing to talk about it, and it’s another to climb 40 feet in the air, lean on each for support, and find out that one of you is holding back and unwilling to trust. Or discover how you can push through it by encouraging each other and being clear about communicating what you need.”

In the “High V”, two people clasp hands and traverse a set of cables in a “V” shape, each walking on one of the cables. The farther they traverse, the more they must lean on one another. The only way for them to succeed is to put their total trust in each other.

“Adding the challenge course has created a whole different dimension. Families often tell us that it was the highlight of the program. It helps them feel connected and learn to communicate in a different way. So it really does what we want family program to do, which is put them in a place where they will have a whole different relationship going forward.”

By Dr. Sharon Meglathery

I am a traditionally trained, East Coast physician with board certification in both internal medicine and psychiatry. However, when I arrived at Mirasol, I knew little about complementary, alternative or naturopathic medicine, and essentially nothing about holistic treatment of eating disorders. I had been taught that eating disorders were very dangerous and difficult to treat, and that other than fluoxetine (Prozac) for bingeing and purging, off-label use of atypical antipsychotics for irrational thinking and appetite stimulation, and topiramate for appetite suppression, no medications have proven very effective for treating these dangerous conditions.

Arriving with an open mind, I was greeted during my first psychiatric evaluation by a very guarded, hostile young woman who quickly informed me that she had chosen Mirasol because she never again wanted to be controlled or tortured by psychiatrists in a “so called treatment center,” and that there was no way she would take any medication. My floundering attempt to extract any useful information — I had given up on any chance of prescribing anything — was dramatically interrupted by the screeching of another patient who had accidentally sprayed liquid soap into her eye. My attempt to help by providing a bowl of water for irrigation of the eye was immediately rejected as a reckless attempt to cause further harm by infecting the eye. Caring attention from both staff and other patients had little effect on the inconsolable crying which was punctuated by demands to be taken to the emergency room. As I cycled through feelings of helplessness, anger, and frustration, I remembered what had been repeated over and over during my psychotherapy residence: the emotions provoked in the provider by the patient often reflect what the patient is experiencing. My initial impulse to retreat was replaced by intrigue and a sense of challenge. It was going to be very enlightening to see how the other providers worked with these women. It was going to take more than behavioral modification and 15-minute med checks to effect lasting change.

My first two patients had demonstrated several fundamental truths about people with eating disorders:

• They are in tremendous — and not easily consoled — psychic pain which is expressed in a variety of primal and harmful ways.
• The behaviors of the patients themselves, and the relationships they form with the doctor, staff and other patients, are fraught with transference (which can be a powerful tool).
• The medical establishment’s use of coercive and punitive measures with these patients (ultimatums, feeding tubes, medication to affect appetite, etc.) does little to promote healing while eroding whatever trust the patient may have initially had.

For me, establishing rapport is the essential first step. I often think of the life-saving advice that one should not swim toward shore perpendicular to a riptide, but rather parallel to the shore until the riptide has passed. Butting heads with the patient is like swimming against the riptide; finding some commonality allows you and the patient to eventually swim together toward the shore.

As the provider who assesses patients when they arrive and then when they depart, I have been amazed at the changes I have observed firsthand. Why do so many patients who have “failed treatment” at the “best” of treatment facilities finally succeed at Mirasol? I believe it’s because we establish ourselves as trustworthy, caring and competent providers with a wide range of skills. We look for the deep-rooted cause/meaning of the eating disorder and help the patient process this as part of her life narrative. We enhance personal, positive development and empower patients to surrender their eating disorders and enjoy the natural and normal bodily sensations associated with food. The clients leave Mirasol as more developed, competent women who are able to experience their emotions fully and safely, and who are better equipped to handle life’s challenges. And, from now on, because they will choose to eat in a healthy manner, they will attain long-term medical and psychiatric balance.

]]> http://edrecovery.com/swimming-in-the-rip-tide-an-eating-disorder-psychiatrists-journey/feed/ 1 http://edrecovery.com/transformational-living-center-open-house/ http://edrecovery.com/transformational-living-center-open-house/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:10:21 +0000 jrust http://edrecovery.com/?p=86 Mirasol opened its new Transformational Living Center (TLC) on June 15, and just a few weeks later, we celebrated with an Open House in honor of Mirasol’s 10th Anniversary. Guests were invited to tour the new 10-bed facility, and to share a fabulous buffet prepared by Mirasol’s world-famous chefs.

TLC is a new program based on 10 years of research into the most effective options for eating disorder treatment and relapse prevention. Like Mirasol’s primary residential program, it combines traditional therapy with alternative therapies proven effective in the treatment of chronic stress-related conditions. However, TLC recognizes that not everyone can take time out for long-term residential care, so its flexible program emphasizes real world skills and therapies that can achieve rapid improvements in the client’s ability to cope with stress.

“We offer process groups, individual therapy, nutrition education, cooking classes, medical support and other elements of traditional eating disorder treatment,” says TLC Program Manager Diane Ryan. “But we also do a lot of experiential work, including challenge courses, dance movement therapy and body image work. And we help the clients achieve balance in their lives by taking advantage of festivals, art exhibits, concerts and other events going on in the community.”

One of TLC’s specialities is “Brain Paint” a new development in neurofeedback that allows the client to continue EEG entrainment at home after completing residential treatment at Mirasol.

“We incorporate many more therapy hours than most transitional living programs,” says Ryan, “so that as the clients progress beyond the initial two weeks, they can choose what works best for them from a menu of treatment options.”

The Transformational Living Center offers individually-designed eating disorder treatment programs from two weeks to three months or more. For more information, please visit our web site or call 888-520.1700.

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