change therapy

welcome to this month’s carnival of eating disorders, a reader’s digest of blog posts about mental health issues related to problems such as anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, binge eating disorder, food addiction, exercise anorexia, as well as body image. parents and anorexia let’s start with a very controversial issue: pro-anorexia mothers. ex-model, ex-anorexic “mamavision” refers to [...]

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following in hootin’ annie’s scary footsteps, i promised i’d hand out hallowe’en link treats to strangers this week. here are some bloggers who’ve knocked on my door lately who i had never met before. i found them through stumbleupon, one of my favourite internet toys. life in the fast lane (oh! she’s canadian! cool! lots [...]

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so much of blogging is about building relationships, and sometimes even friendships. and ideally, it’s not just about using relationships to further the blog; it’s about furthering relationships. maybe blogging can help us do that, can help us learn a bit about relationships. take this: linkfarming, linkbait, link begging and, urgh, link whoring. these words [...]

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i just stumbled across my term paper of my very first counselling class, 17 years ago. here is what i wrote about my view of human nature. i’m sure i could nip and tuck here and there, and would probably use a slightly different writing style – but generally, most of what i said still [...]

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one of my favourite sayings is, “acceptance is the key.” it’s something that can be misinterpreted as fatalism, as acting like a doormat. but that’s now how it works. acceptance is saying, “ok, this is what is. this is what presents itself. let’s deal with that, rather than denying what’s going on or deluding myself.” [...]

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have you experienced recovery and healing in your life? goodtherapy, a great new resource for people who believe in affirmative therapy, therapy that is non-pathologizing, empowering, collaborative is starting a healing story collection. if you have something to share, go here. the first contribution you’ll find starts like this: once upon a time there was [...]

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“never mind the answers – just ask the right questions!” this is so true. last sunday i participated in a conference, dream vancouver, intended to encourage citizens to articulate their visions and hopes for an even better vancouver. the main process of the conference was organized around appreciative inquiry. appreciative inquiry is a philosophy and [...]

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share your scare, says lifecruiser. a propos hallowe’en, she’s collecting stories about bloggers’ biggest scares. here’s mine. okay, this was quite a few years ago. i had just facilitated an incredibly exhausting focus group at the carnegie centre (everyone who knows the carnegie centre will immediately nod, “yes, that would be exhausting”). that afternoon, my [...]

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i’d like to thank alex for his reply to my last post about guilt and for initiating an interesting discussion. alex asks, “why she has to feel sad or bad if joe forgets their wedding anniversary? she has to be confident and sure enough to know that he cares about their marriage even if he [...]

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last month, i started a little series on change and transformation, inspired by a post by my blogging friend nancy that asked, how does change occur? that time i talked about the precursors of change – the “rumblings”, so to say, that precede an earthquake. aaah, but is it an earthquake? is transformation really about [...]

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what is guilt? we usually think that guilt is a feeling. however, it is not a primary emotion like fear or happiness, sadness or even shame. it is more complex. when joe feels guilt over having forgotten his and mary’s wedding anniversary, a number of things happen. he needs to have a basic concept of [...]

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i recently found out that my friend aaron zacharias wrote an article on mental health and homelessness. you can find it at heretohelp, an e-zine dedicated to mental health. the article shows very clearly how mental health and homelessness interact. tenuous mental health, especially when coupled with adverse events such as divorce, workplace accidents, or, [...]

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last sunday, a man was killed at the vancouver airport. robert dziekanski died after he was tasered by police at vancouver international airport. police say he was agitated, screaming, shaking and throwing things. he had been at the airport for 10 hours. i have no idea what exactly happened in this situation but it is [...]

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some posts back, i had started to offer a few more chinese love poems when i got interrupted by an angel … remember? well, today you can finally read those poems. this time, i’ll just tease you with incomplete poems – go to the original sites to enjoy the full versions. a song of changgan [...]

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blog posts are great. but comments are equally important. when you think of it, that’s similar to life. experts can talk all they want. what’s important is how their ideas are applied in real life. so it occurred to me that once in a while i should dedicate a post to comments, so that you [...]

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