A Dancer's Struggle

  Theodore Roosevelt was not wrong when he said, “Comparison is the thief of joy." Consistently comparing your life with others can blind you to the joys that your own life has to offer. The world has created a culture of comparison that some people don't even know we live in. On social media, we view content from loved ones and/or influencers, and our brains automatically rank their lives compared to ours. For the longest time, I had no idea that my happiness was linked to basing my life on someone else’s. I would participate in the act of comparison without even knowing it. Humans have an innate desire to belong and to be accepted. Social media reinforces this narrative by pushing highlight reels of others that we compare to our behind-the-scenes reel. Likes, comments, and shares can also serve as a measure of validation. Our worth can be measured against these statistics. I am not saying that social media is the root of comparison because humans have done this since the beg...

Anna invaded my personal space. Uninvited, she entered my home. I remember when she first sat down with the family during dinner. Everyone was engaging with her, while I sat there silently observing. She was speaking about subjects I had heard of but had never considered in that manner. Once Anna had left my house for the first time, I thought that would be the end of her. Unbeknownst to me, she was in my class at school the next day. The words she had spoken the night before seemed to linger in the air, reaching my classmates and me. When it was time for lunch, Anna was wandering around, looking for a spot. However, she did not seem worried about not knowing anyone. She had a presence that drew everyone in. I was attracted to her appearance and invited her to join us for lunch. Anna and I talked about everything under the sun during that first lunch. Our lifestyle, hobbies, favorite foods, and sports that interest us. During our conversation at lunch, I knew we would become close frie...

  The spectrum of eating disorders is often veiled. Throughout human experiences, misconceptions about all things are developed daily. While anorexia and bulimia can be triggering words, there are lesser-known disorders that equally invade people's lives- like a parasite. These are often eluded and misunderstood. This leaves individuals who experience these disorders feeling invisible and dissimilar. Throughout this blog post, I will be discussing the overlooked sides of mental health and the types of eating disorders that go under the radar. Here's to everyone's journey, because no one is the same. Let's lift the veil through public awareness and understanding.    Before reading, please know that I am not an expert on any of these topics. For peer-reviewed resources, please see the reference list at the end. My goal is to raise awareness and be a voice for people.   Drunkorexia: Adults and some teens,  may restrict their food intake before drinking or going ou...

  Intuitive Movement:  Before I begin on intuitive movement, to whoever is reading, ask yourself these questions: How would you describe your relationship with intuitive movement? Do I use movement in an unhealthy way because I dislike my appearance? Am I exercising to allow myself to eat food later? Intuitive movement is not something that just applies to people who struggle with eating disorders. In society today, many people are fixated on exercise or exercise goals. The phrase “no pain, no gain” comes to mind when I am talking about this. However, this mindset can be destructive and lead to overexercising, body dysmorphia, disordered eating, and more. The mindset should be focused on trying to find pleasurable movement. Exercising to keep your mind and body healthy does not have to be vigorous or dreadful. If a person likes intense workouts, that's amazing because it works for them. On the other hand, someone should not be working out to punish their body. The entire conc...

  The temperature outside was dropping and so was my body’s core temperature.  This time of year brings up many emotions and memories. Some are good, but most are painful and uncomfortable. I will cut right to it. The winter season is brutal for people with eating disorders. It gets harder to hide. The winter months are not just hard because of all the holidays surrounding food, the weather hurts our bodies. My bones would hurt from being extremely cold.  No matter the level of severity that someone's eating disorder, it is always important to have extra care for people around the holidays (no matter, what everyone is valid and deserves to recover) In the hardest times of my eating disorder, holiday meals were always around. I was tip-toeing around eating and trying to hide my sickness as much as possible. Even if your loved ones know about your eating disorder, meals can still be really difficult. Especially when there is an increasing amount of diet-culture talk that go...

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are" (Marilyn Monroe). Oftentimes, more often than not, we perceive ourselves as our negative thoughts. We can intentionally do it or not. These negative thoughts are normal. Thinking of fighting off these thoughts or beating them can be overwhelming in the sense that they will automatically go away after one time of "beating them up." Instead of this mindset, we can use it to defuse them and detach yourself from made-up perceptions of yourself inside your head. Throughout treatment, I have found or been introduced to nine techniques to use that I find helpful when I am being invaded by unhelpful views of myself.  Cognitive fusion is having the frame of mind that "I am my thoughts, and what I am thinking is true." Some examples of these ideations could be, "I am not as pretty as him/her. I will never succeed in life. My legs are too big. I do not do enough movement for food." A simple exa...

It is normal to have a smaller window of tolerance during stressful times. The idea of the "window of tolerance" was developed by Dan Siegel, a clinical professor of psychiatry. When someone is inside their window of tolerance, they are in their best state and can function and flourish in events that day. When you are in this window, you feel as if you can deal with whatever is happening in your life. You might feel stress or pressure, but it does not bother you too much or to the point where you crumble. As an example, here you can be alert but not overly anxious. When we are pushed out of our window of tolerance, there are two states of arousal you can be pushed into: a mix or somewhere in between. There is no set definition of what someone might be feeling. The Window of Tolerance is not black and white because feelings and emotions are not black and white, there are lots of grays in between.  Hyperarousal Zone: When in this zone, you might feel anxious, angry, out of co...

(Set Point Weight) The body uses energy for many things. We need energy for brain power, moving around, sitting, standing, emotions, etc. When we are not getting enough food, aka "restriction," our body slows down. The body will go into survival mode and only use energy for what is absolutely necessary. Due to this, the metabolism ultimately slows down. From here, the body has to heal from this period of time when it hasn’t been fueled properly. Restriction does not look the same for everyone. Just having those mental labels about "good" and "bad" foods and neglecting groups of foods can still exhaust your body and brain. Mental restriction and physical restriction both take a toll on your body. The body needs way more energy than expected. If someone's labs are ok that does not mean someone has found their set point weight.  Set-point theory is brought into play during recovery, but this is something that needs to be talked about more. Your "set ...

     I began to tell her, “You have to strive for the best. You need to be flawless. You won’t be happy until you’re nothing.”. She beats herself up and tries to listen to the pretty voice. It consumes her and she begins to wonder, “Why am I telling myself this? I wouldn’t say this to anyone, so why do these rules apply to me?”. She is me. I am her. My mindset is fixated on this and others have told me it is stopping me from reaching my fullest potential. I haven’t been able to see that for myself because I am too scared that I will have to let go of a coping skill I have used for so long. The real question I have to ask myself is, “Will you decide to be comfortable in your ignorance? Or, will you go to discover that things beyond the cave are any more real than shadows?” This presents the idea of having a growth mindset. The thoughts I have are a perception of myself that I feel is forever set in stone. However, challenging those beliefs, with Plato’s growth mindset, I w...

  Did you know there are 7 different types of hunger cues? Something most people struggle with is reading these senses and acknowledging them. When someone has not been eating enough or restricting certain types of foods their hunger and fullness cues are hard to distinguish. This also goes for people who don’t have a bad relationship with food. It can apply to anyone. When people have a stressful event in their life, they haven’t been getting enough sleep, they are super excited, etc. These factors make your emotions heightened and can throw off your hunger signals that your body will normally give you. Society only deems stomach hunger as being the single way to determine if you need to fuel your body; though that can be hard if your hints of hunger are dismissed.  It is important that we teach others the many different ways we can tell if we need to feed ourselves physically and mentally.  In no particular order the first is Stomach Hunger, which is perceptible by peop...

  You never fully recover. Thoughts still find a way to creep back inside your brain, like an ant sneaking into your house on a warm day. The house is your brain and the ant is the abominable eating disorder opinions. When your house is infested with bugs, you get rid of them. You don’t let the ants take over. So why let ED do the same thing. In the beginning, middle, and end of recovery it is hard to not listen to your eating disorder ways of thinking. It is scary to realize but even after years of being “all in'', there still might be days where your ED gets the best of you. But that is where you take the bug spray and get rid of them because they are not doing you any good. They are harming your body. Just like ants can invade the food in your house, the eating disorder thoughts can lead to more problems than just mental health issues. They could affect your physical health by causing amenorrhea, ostoperious, hair loss, liver damage, and even more. My liver was failing due t...