Thanks iTunes!

I’m not exactly someone you’d label as techno-savvy, but I do know what iTunes is despite the fact that I don’t own an actual iPod (I thought I’d buck the trend and opt for another mp3 player). I’ve never actually purchased anything from the popular digital media library, but I cruise its halls occasionally, always on the lookout for a good (free) podcast to subscribe to besides my standby “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.”

Looks like I finally found one.

This weekend I just happened to be browsing  iTunes’ darker corners (you’d be surprised at some of the wackier things lurking on there) and stumbled upon a true treasure. The podcast: “Beating Ana with Shannon Cutts.” The podcast itself isn’t exactly award-winning material– consisting mainly of radio interviews with hosts who tend to talk a bit too much — but Shannon’s message is. I listened to the first episode this morning and really connected to what Shannon was saying. It’s incredibly comforting to hear someone voice my own thoughts and experiences so fluently when much of the world still just doesn’t seem to get it.

So I was especially excited to hear that, among other things, this young woman also has a website, a book and two music albums! Needless to say, I did my fair share of web browsing today to check all these things out. The verdict: A+. My only question is, Why haven’t I heard of any of this before?! Whether you’re currently struggling or in recovery, these resources are phenomenal.

As someone with 10 years of solid recovery under her belt after a 15 + year struggle with anorexia and bulimia, Shannon has a great deal of wisdom. And the great thing is: She’s actively sharing it. She speaks publicly around the country about her experience, she blogs about it, writes songs about it and has even set up an online mentoring community to help both mentors and mentees strengthen their individual recovery journeys. I plan on picking up a copy of her book this week.

I won’t go on and on here about how AWESOME this woman is, partly because I don’t even know her and just learned about her less than 24 hours ago, but mainly because her message is best heard untarnished by someone communicating it secondhand. What I will do is strongly encourage you to check her out for yourself. And while you’re at it, check out her MySpace page as well. Her music is just as inspiring as her much-needed message.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed back to iTunes to figure out how to download some of her tracks…

Are Eating disorders contagious?

model behavior?

I’ve heard a lot of people expressing concern lately about the growing number of books, TV shows, magazines and other media outlets that prominently feature people with eating disorders. Several online forums have added their two cents to the issue with a number of insightful discussions: “Momlogic,” a website whose tagline is “Real stories. Real advice. Real moms”,  recently ran a piece debating the wisdom in having an openly anorexic contestant on “Britain’s Next Top Model,” while the New York Times addressed the topic in a discussion about the merits behind the new young adult novel “Wintergirls.”

From what I can discern, certain people out there are afraid that showcasing characters with eating disorders or featuring pictures of them will cause huge hordes of hapless victims to come down with anorexia or bulimia as though they were the flu (H1N1 anybody?).– Whip out the face masks people! Who knows what would happen if you inhaled the same air as these waifs! Wash your hands frequently lest you brush up against a skeletal figure on the sidewalk!

Forgive me. I exaggerate.

But while I can certainly understand a parent’s natural instinct to protect his/her child from the ravages of something as devastating as an eating disorder, I find such concerns to be missing the point entirely. To be honest, I think they greatly minimize the seriousness of an eating disorder and grossly overlook how complicated they truly are.  A person cannot “catch” anorexia from reading about it or watching a TV show about it anymore than they can instantly become gay upon listening to a duet by George Michael and Elton John.

Admittedly, I have never watched “Britain’s Next Top Model” (or America’s or Timbuktu’s for that matter) or had the chance to pick up my signed copy of “Wintergirls,” but I seriously doubt either of them will significantly change the eating disorder landscape. Rather, I think putting eating disorders in a more prominent light where they can be discussed openly and addressed head on might actually help. Featuring them in high-profile places puts them out in the open and gives these parents an opportunity to discuss how dangerous unhealthy eating is and the chance to  promote a positive attitude around food and body image instead.

Because the truth is, while books and television shows might spark an idea or set off a short-lived fad, they can’t set off a full-blown eating disorder. (Oh, how I wish it were so simple!) Eating disorders are much more complicated than that. They are full of underlying issues and a whole set of bio-chemical malfunctions that we don’t even fully understand yet. True, negative information can be harmful to someone who is already predisposed to eating disorders, just like a gun can be dangerous if put in the hands of someone who has a history of violence. But for the rest of the population, watching an episode of “Next Top Model,” picking up an issue of Glamour or reading a few chapters from “Wintergreen” isn’t going to make much difference.

The best thing parents can do is not to censor every potentially eating-disordered form of media that comes into the house (though there are certainly better choices than Top Model and those trashy glamour magazines…), but to engage in open conversations with their children about what is healthy and what is not, and to model that healthy behavior themselves. Because children who are brought up with that knowledge in their arsenal are going to be that much better off when they’re inevitably confronted with any absurd information to the contrary.

Positive Reinforcement: a blessing and a curse

It’s amazing what a bit of positive reinforcement can do.

Today, it’s the reason I’m adding a new post.

A few years ago, it was the reason I couldn’t pull myself out of the throes of an eating disorder.

Go figure.

I guess it all depends on what’s being reinforced. With the perpetuation of an eating disorder, reinforcement can take many forms. It could be those few compliments you get when you first start losing weight (before you go WAY too far), or it could be that fleeting high you sometimes got from the extremes of “self control.” (I put quotations around “self-control” because we all know that after a while engaging in self-destructive eating disorder behaviors is actually the opposite of self-control). Both situations encourage you to continue your behaviors in hopes of recapturing the positive feeling.

Another form of what I’m going to confusingly call “negative positive reinforcement” is when you’re fully aware of an eating disordered thought and yet act on it anyway. For example, say you’re experiencing one of your distorted thoughts that you’ve eaten “too much.” If you acknowledge that thought — accepting it as truth and acting on it rather than fighting it — this, too is a form of positive reinforcement.

I often liken an eating disorder to a spoiled child. It keeps screaming and screaming for what it wants, using ridiculously absurd arguments for why you should listen to it. Yet listening to it — giving in — simply encourages its naughty behavior. If you give in, you’re “negatively positively reinforcing”  (crazy, right?) its behavior, making it all the more likely that it will continue harassing you in the future.

On the other hand, there is true positive reinforcement. This is the accomplished feeling you get when you defy what I call the eating disordered voice. It is the “HA! I showed YOU who’s really in control!” feeling that comes at such a moment.  Haven’t felt it yet? Try it– I highly recommend it.

It’s also affiliated with the awesome way your body starts to feel as you actually start to treat it right — when it’s properly nourished, rested and appreciated. Other forms of real positive reinforcement may come from a co-worker’s compliment on the nice color in your cheeks or your friend’s observation that “gosh, you’re a heckuva lot more fun to be around…”

Today, it came for me in the form of someone commenting on the helpfulness of my posts. Way to motivate me, people! Keep the good vibes coming!

Oh, and tell your friends…

Distortions, distortions, everywhere

And no time left to think…

Mental health professionals talk a lot about “cognitive distortions” — inaccurate thoughts or beliefs that tend to negatively influence our mood and behavior. While most people occasionally use cognitive distortions in one way or another, these irrational thoughts tend to be most prevalent in people with mental illness. In some cases, the distortions can become so habitual that we don’t even recognize them as distortions after a while — they become our truth.

I’ve listed the ten most commonly recognized distortions below, as outlined in the Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns, M.D. Whatever your situation, you’re probably already quite familiar with some of them and can perhaps even identify a few you use regularly.

1. All or nothing thinking: You look a negative things in absolute, black-and-white categories.
2. Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.
3. Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.
4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities “don’t count.”
5. Jumping to conclusions: (A) Mind reading – you assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there’s no definite evidence for this, (B) Fortune-telling – You arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly.
6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way up out of proportion or you shrink their importance inappropriately.
7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: “I feel like an idiot, so I really must be one.” Or “I don’t feel like doing this, so I’ll put it off.”
8. “Should statements“: You criticize yourself or other people with “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts.” “Musts,” “oughts,” and “have tos” are similar offenders.
9. Labeling: You identify with your short comings. Instead of saying “I made a mistake,” you tell yourself, “I’m a jerk,” or “a fool,” or “a looser.”
10. Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for something you weren’t entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behaviour might contribute to a problem.

Personally, I’ve been trying to tackle several of these for a while now (more on that in a future post). A few of them seem to crop up pretty regularly and I’m finding that when I actually recognize them for what they are — irrational distortions– I’m able to change my mood and sometimes even turn my whole day around.

***

Take today, for instance. I realized I’d been putting off adding a new post to the blog for a while and I started to wonder why. What was stopping me? It’s not like there’s any shortage of things to write about when it comes to my thoughts and experiences around eating disorders. Then I realized it wasn’t that I couldn’t think of anything to write about, but that my constant companions the distortions were getting in the way. Let us count the ways:

1. Jumping to conclusions: in this case, I was both mind reading–assuming that people wouldn’t be interested in what I had to say anyway, and fortune-telling– predicting that whatever I wrote about would turn out poorly
2. Emotional reasoning: I didn’t especially feel like writing, so I wouldn’t
3. “Should” statements: I tend to use these A LOT. Here, I was telling myself I really should add a new post. If I want my blog to be helpful and catch on, I really ought to add a stellar post every single day.

Those should statements really get me, and I’m not certain, but I imagine that’s pretty common in people with eating disorders. I’m actually trying to eliminate the word from my vocabulary, along with need, have to, and must. Horrible words, don’t you think?

***

I find that whenever I use such words, a cloud comes over me. They simply sap any motivation I might have actually had to actually do the thing in the first place. It’s like telling a little kid they must do their homework or someone on a diet that they should exercise. It simply makes them want to do the opposite.

***

Yet when I take out the trigger word (need, should, etc), and replace it with something more neutral (and less demanding), my whole outlook on the task changes. Funny how one little word like that can totally shift your perspective.

***

You should try it. Err, I mean, you might like to give it a shot.It’s amazing how often you might see some of the distortions creep in to your thoughts now that you know what they are. But by simply being aware of them, you’re well on your way to changing them. Change them, and you can change your life.

***

Or at least finally write that blog post you’ve been putting off…

Eating Disorders: 1, Website Ads: 0

The last post looked at the rise in eating disorders across a wide spectrum, but it neglected to delve into the fact that eating disorders are not uniquely American. Although it’s true that they tend to be most prevalent in the highly body-conscious, high-pressure environment of the United States, other countries are far from immune. In a bit of depressing news coming out of the UK, we find that the number of individuals needing to be hospitalized for disordered eating is rapidly increasing in that part of the world as well. Even more disturbing is the fact that the largest jump in hospitalizations is for young women under the age of 18. According to research by the Liberal Democrats:

• Hospitalizations for women under the age of 18 has skyrocketed 47 percent in the last five years, from 562 seeking treatment in 2004 to 825 last year.
• Hospitalizations for girls under age 9 (UNDER AGE 9?!!!) rose 25 percent during the same time period.
• Male hospitalizations leapt up nearly as much, from 183 seeking treatment in 2004 to 226 last year.

While a total of more than 90,000 men and women were treated for anorexia or bulimia in the UK last year, experts estimate the number is probably much higher: they predict upwards of 1.3 million people in the region suffer from eating disorders but simply don’t seek treatment, preferring to suffer in silence.

Some health officials attribute the rise in eating disorder cases to the prevalence of skinny role models in the media. According to a survey of 3,000 teens, for instance, 75 percent of them said they felt like they needed to lose weight after viewing pictures of people like Nichole Richie and Kate Moss.

While I don’t think pictures of super-thin models and celebrities can actually cause eating disorders all by themselves, they certainly don’t help. And they’re practically impossible to avoid: In a bit of ironic news coverage, both sources I found featuring this latest data on their websites juxtaposed the story with ads for weight loss drugs and links to “find out how to lose 25 pounds in 2 weeks.” And yet we wonder how it’s possible that one in five 11 year olds is on a diet…

And for a bit of a challenge along the likes of “Where’s Waldo”, or perhaps more appropriately, “What’s wrong with this picture?”, check it out for yourselves:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2446853.ece

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/05/24/girls-hit-by-eating-disorders-up-47-per-cent-115875-21384306/

Oh well, at least one of the sites managed to squeeze in a bit of ad space for treatment referrals.