Alongside the truism that knowledge is power lives the fact that ignorance is bliss. Especially when it comes to knowing the truth about ourselves.

I ran across a blog post that discussed why people avoid the truth about themselves. A recent study in the Review of General Psychology identified three main reasons (as distilled by the PsyBlog folks):

1. It may demand a change in beliefs. Loads of evidence suggests people tend to seek information that confirms their beliefs rather than disproves them.
2. It may require us to take undesired actions. Telling the doctor about those weird symptoms means you might have to undergo painful testing. Sometimes it seems like it's better not to know.
3. It may cause unpleasant emotions.

I think this phenomenon really captures why it's so hard to begin recovery. You have to face the truth that you're sick, that you don't control your eating disorder, and that you're going to have to begin the very unpleasant process of actually stopping behaviors. It's a monumental task.

Recovery means accepting some very unpleasant truths, and it's not something I always feel up to. The problem is that ignoring the truth doesn't make it any less true.

Humans have a particular blind spot for identifying their own foibles. Remember, though, that it's our own cars that have blind spots, and not anyone else's.  We can avoid the truth by creating our own alternate universe. Most of the time, the differences are really subtle. We're not that late, at least, not very much, or at least not when it's really important.  Doesn't everyone have odd eating habits?  There are plenty of people who weigh less than me that are doing just fine.  But as the ED progresses, the alternate universe begins to look more and more like the Twilight Zone. Everyone else can eat this food without gaining weight, but I can't. Chap Stick might have calories, so I can't use it.  I can't stop exercising or I'll gain 20 pounds.

If we really stopped to ask ourselves about how normal our routines really were and what would happen if they suddenly changed, we would have to face the truth that our eating disorder was far more problematic than we would like to believe.  Add in a healthy dose of anosognosia (a literal inability to understand that we're ill), and our brains can spin a web of lies and half-truths for years.

Recovery means admitting that we've been living a lie. It means facing those fears of food and dissolving those routines and rituals that have kept our sanity intact.  It means entering a world of the unknown.

It's much easier to just avoid the truth, put our heads in the sand like ostriches and just ignore everything.

The truth catches up to us, eventually.  It dogs our steps.  It scares us senseless.

Here's the thing that truth doesn't tell you: facing it head-on and chin up isn't as scary as we think it will be.  It's unpleasant, but stripping the lies from our lives (the lies we tell others, yes, but also those lies we tell ourselves) gives us a chance to face life on its own terms. It shows us that we are much stronger than we think we are.

I wish I had one of these videos for my recovery:



You know, being able to speed up time and watch things unfold, rather than just waiting around for infinitesimal changes that no one notices, not even yourself?  Changes are easier to see when you're watching someone's recovery, especially from farther away and with lots of time in between measurements. But living recovery--watching it up close and personal, day in and day out--means that it rarely feels like things are changing, even if they are.  Hence the desire for the time-lapse video.

I guess the good thing is that an oak tree doesn't have the awareness to navel gaze and wonder why the hell it takes so long to get from an acorn to a giant of the forest (or a suburban front lawn).

When I had a few minutes in between things at the conference I was at this past weekend, I tried to fit some fun reading in. So I was reading a non-fiction book about cancer (I'm a dork, this is proof) that was really fascinating, and I came across a passage that really struck me.

First, a bit of background.

Cancer drugs typically kill a fixed percentage of cancer cells.  To make the math easier, let's just make it 90%.  If your initial tumor had 1000 cells in it (most tumors are much, much bigger, but again, the math is easier this way), after one chemo treatment, you would be left with 100 cells.  Another round, 10 cells.  Yet another round, 1 cell.  Finally, a fourth round to obliterate that last bit of cancer.  It takes the same amount of drug in each round.

Doctors use hormone markers to monitor treatment progress in some cancers. As the tumor shrinks, so does the amount of hormone in the blood.  Back in the 1960s, scientists worked to reduce those hormone levels, but they never pushed to eliminate them entirely.  Either they didn't think it was possible, or they didn't think it was that important.  When one doctor did continue dosing his patient with toxic drugs to remove all traces of hormone, he was sacked from his job.

This brings me to the passage I want to quote:

But the story had a final plot twist. As Li had predicted, with several additional doses of methotrexate, the hormone level that he had so compulsively trailed did finally vanish to zero. His patients finished their additional cycles of chemotherapy. Then, slowly, a pattern began to emerge. While the patients who had stopped the drug early inevitably relapsed with cancer, the patients treated on Li's protocol remained free of disease--even months after the methotrexate had been stopped.

Li had stumbled on a deep and fundamental principle of onvology: cancer needed to be systematically treated long after every visible sign of it had vanished. The hcg level--the hormone secreted by choriocarcinoma--had turned out to be its real fingerprint, its marker. In the decades that followed, trial after trial would prove this principle. But in 1960, oncology was not yet ready for this proposal. Not until several years later did it strike the board that had fired Li so hastily that the patients he had treated with the prolonged maintenance strategy would never relapse. This strategy--which cost Min Chiu Li his job--resulted in the first chemotherapeutic cure of cancer in adults.

{emphasis mine}

I'm pretty sure most readers wouldn't have been struck by the parallels to eating disorders, but I was.  Most people think that once all visible signs of the eating disorder are resolved (weight is normalized, binge eating and purging have stopped, etc) then you can stop treatment.  The eating disorder is gone, right?  You can't see it any longer.  How can it be there?

But if the thoughts and urges are still there, if the fears and compulsions are still there, then the eating disorder is not gone.  You have to keep chipping away until everything gets down to zero.  That's how you get to full remission--not by stopping at "good enough" and "almost back to normal."  True, it's not possible for all cancers, and it isn't yet possible for all eating disorders, nor can we say for certain that someone with an ED will never relapse, but that's no reason not to try.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more, so you don't have to.

Binge eating to officially be declared a mental disorder.

From Seattle: Family-based treatment helps teen with eating disorder.

Effects of analytical and experiential self-focus on stress-induced cognitive reactivity in eating disorder psychopathology.

Addictive Personality? You Might be a Leader.

Dr. Lucene Wisniewski on Eating Disorders.

Don't assume guilt for your child's anorexia.

Predicting how much impact mental illness has in a person's life.

Association of Candidate Genes with Phenotypic Traits Relevant to Anorexia Nervosa.

Extraordinary microscopic food photographs.

ED recovery improves family climate, says new study.

Nick Watts of Men Get Eating Disorders Too writes for Mentally Healthy Magazine on the rise of EDs in men.

Finding independence from your eating disorder.

The 2 to 4 digit ratio (2D:4D) and eating disorder diagnosis in women.

ED behaviors can be harmful but not always obvious to others.

The clinical utility of personality subtypes in patients with anorexia nervosa.

Missing Gene Helps Mice Run for Hours.

Identifying eating disorders and compulsive exercise in pre-professional ballet dancers.

Dr. Daniel Le Grange on ED Research at the University of Chicago.

Sex differences precipitating anorexia nervosa in females: the estrogen paradox and a novel framework for targeting sex-specific neurocircuits and behavior.

Decreasing dietary restriction will help decrease bulimic behaviors.

I only have a few minutes, so here are the highlights:

Yesterday, the maintenance guys at my place sliced through the cable line, so I got to spend all day yesterday without Internet, phone or TV.  So I went to the library for a while (to get at least a little work done), where I also checked out some DVDs to watch, etc.  I was far more lost without the Internet than the TV, although I did flip my set on once or twice totally forgetting that there was no reception.  Oops...

But before I lost all connection to the "real world," someone found my profile on a science writer's website (I had honestly forgotten it was still up) for the DC area and was in desperate need of a freelancer or two to write up a conference summary newspaper thing for a medical conference in DC this weekend.  It's only for conference-goers, so no, you won't be able to read it, nor would you want to.  It paid well, and my financial situation hadn't turned around much since I told the universe it could go f*ck itself, so I took it.  I'm finishing up today's work right now, and then I'll be spending another weekend at the Best Friend Hotel.  Although I'll be working all day Sunday and Monday, then heading home late Monday night.

Tomorrow, I'm told I get to cover the sessions on obesity! *headdesk*

Now that the financial situation no longer totally sucks, my anxiety has eased somewhat, which helps.  I'm still really tired, and I had hoped to take a long nap this weekend, but will just have to wait.

Anyway, I have to run.

We've probably all done it: had some nasty side effects (or a health scare) due to ED behaviors and then vowed to do better next time. Except next time comes and we're still doing the same behaviors. Raise your hand if this sounds familiar.  I know my hand is raised.  

Of course, people with eating disorders aren't the only people to do things like this.  We all do, it's just that people with addictive-esque behaviors tend to do it more frequently. The question is why: if we know an ED behavior will make us feel like crap, why do we keep doing it?

The answer is simple.  We don't remember the bad bits (the ER visits, the being too weak to drag ourselves off the couch), we remember the good stuff (how good it felt to see the numbers on the scale going down, the endorphin highs).

Researchers studied a group of college-aged binge drinkers to figure out exactly why they continued to binge drink even when they regularly blacked out and wound up with a nasty hangover. From a news story on the study:

The college students rated the upsides to drinking as more positive, and more likely to happen in the future. And the researchers call this positive outlook "rose-colored beer goggles."


"It's as though they think that the good effects of drinking keep getting better and more likely to happen again," Diane Logan, study author and a UW clinical psychology graduate student, said in the statement.


And by letting the good times roll, some of these students lose perspective on the bad times. The psychologists found those that experienced small to moderate negative consequences from drinking didn't consider the episodes so bad, and didn't think they were likely to experience them again. The authors call this effect cognitive-dissonance reasoning.

Like I said: sound familiar?

It's easy to romanticize the eating disorder in our heads.  It wasn't that bad and damn if we didn't feel better.  Certainly parts of my eating disorder felt better than recovery, but they were both small and fleeting.  When I do the math--total up all the negatives and all the positives--it's much easier to see that the bad times were both a) actually quite bad and b) lasted a lot longer than the good times.

I think I forget this.  The other factor that accelerates my anorexia amnesia is that the anxiety relief from ED behaviors is immediate.  The nasty bits, the health issues and general life destruction, often take a lot longer to kick in.  So our brains immediately remember that ED=feel better while forgetting that ED=feel worse, too.

Said one of the study's authors:

The authors hope their findings will influence alcohol counseling programs at universities. "We should take into account how people don't think of negative consequences as all that bad or likely to happen again," Logan said.

It's a lesson I think the ED community could use, too. A lot of sufferers (and I include myself in this) hope that by sharing all the nasty bits of the illness, we can prevent others from going down the same path. After all, how many times have I said that if I only knew how damaging the ED was going to be, I never would have started down this path. Except that I probably would have told myself that I wasn't stupid enough to let it get "that bad." And I'm guessing those who knew a lot about eating disorders were the same way.

Taking off the rose-colored glasses hurts. It's not pleasant. Or easy. But it is necessary.

It was interesting: on my birthday, I saw a sign about ordering alcohol.  It said "You must be born on or before this day in 1990 to order alcohol."  I laughed at first--I've now officially been legal for a decade.  That got me thinking to my 21st birthday, which is when I stopped cold.

I spent my 21st birthday in the hospital, my first stay for anorexia.  I had been admitted the day before.  I remember trying to talk my psychiatrist into letting me have a can of Diet Coke as a special treat.  He said yes, but the message didn't make it through to the nurses who said no.  I pitched a fit and ran to my room, crying.

It's been ten years since then.  I've wavered from not thinking I had a problem, to thinking I would kick this thing in a snap.  Now, it makes me tremendously sad to think how much of a daily struggle it still is.  I have good days, yes, but a lot of days are just a grim slog.  I never thought my life would get so consumed for so long by this thing we call anorexia.

In many ways, that day in the hospital feels like just yesterday.  In other ways, it feels like a million years ago.  Again, I waver from thinking what's the point of recovery after trying for so many years, and thinking that surely now I'll kick this.  I guess part of me keeps hoping that eventually I'll get so sick of my eating disorder that it will just magically cure all of the fears and behaviors.  It's a nice thought, except it doesn't really work that way.

Mostly, I'm just tired.  Tired of having to fight all the time.  I want to be able to stop thinking about eating disorders and recovery, just for a few days.  I want to walk around in public without wanting to run and hide because of how disgusting and huge I feel.  I want to order off a menu without internally freaking out.  I want to stop feeling so torn about, well, everything.

I had hoped time would start to heal things, and it hasn't.  People tell me "This too shall pass." Except there's no signs of this passing and it's been over a decade.  And I'm starting to get really frustrated.

I probably shouldn't write blog posts when I'm literally exhausted--it makes everything feel so overwhelming.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more, so you don't have to.

Perception of emotion and bilateral advantage in women with eating disorders, their healthy sisters, and nonrelated healthy controls.

Rise in male eating disorders tip of iceberg says BEAT.

Predictors of Treatment Acceptance and of Participation in a Randomized Controlled Trial Among Women with Anorexia Nervosa.

Too perfect? Clinical perfectionism in an achievement-oriented society. Audio interview--I haven't finished listening to the entire interview, but it sounds interesting!

How fear perpetuates low food intake in anorexia nervosa.

Ipecac syrup to be behind the counter to reduce abuse.

Dimensions of depression in people with eating disorders.

Bulimia Seems to Weaken Brain's Reward Circuitry.

Development and validation of the Detail and Flexibility Questionnaire (DFlex) in eating disorders.

Sugar substitutes don't fool brains. When task-exhausted, brain's pre-frontal cortex performs better after real sugar.

Predicting non-suicidal self-injury in women with bulimia nervosa.

What could salt and prozac possibly have in common?

The Impact of Bulimic Syndromes, Mood and Anxiety Disorders and Their Comorbidity on Psychosocial Impairment: What Drives Impairment in Comorbidity?

High Levels Of Regular Physical Activity May Be A Useful Intervention To Prevent Panic And Related Disorders. I think this study also shows how exercise dependence functions in many people with eating disorders: previous studies have shown higher levels of anxiety and obsessionality in people with exercise dependence.

Rating of Eating Disorder Severity Interview for Children: Psychometric Properties and Comparison with EDI-2 Symptom Index..

Genetic Association of Recovery from Eating Disorders: The Role of GABA Receptor SNPs.

Gut feelings: the emerging biology of gut-brain communication.

Smoking for weight control and its associations with eating disorder symptomatology.

College students' definitions of an eating "binge" differ as a function of gender and binge eating disorder status.

The role of perfectionism, dichotomous thinking, shape and weight overvaluation, and conditional goal setting in eating disorders.

All the 'Harry Potter' movies relived in a five minute emotional look back. (video)

I not only had birthday cake...

...I also had seconds!

Happy birthday to me!

I was sorting through some of the links I had bookmarked on my Twitter page this morning, trying to use the current lag in work to get some other stuff done.  Like looking at random web pages I had one marked as "potentially useful."

Which is how I found this blog post from PsychCentral on creativity and work. The blogger quotes author Elizabeth Glibert:

Always, at the end of the day, the important thing is only and always that: Get back to work. This is a path for the courageous and the faithful. You must find another reason to work, other than the desire for success or recognition. It must come from another place.

It has a lot to do with writing and the creative life, yes.  But it also has a lot to do with recovery.

Many of us start down the road to recovery (if not dragged there, kicking and screaming) mostly because we want to feel better.  The ED is making us miserable.  This isn't to say we're especially keen to stop ED behaviors--an eating disorder does have an adaptive function, after all--but we generally get sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Which makes for a rude awakening when we realize just how miserable recovery is.  It's why many of us find we need the support of a hospital, treatment center, and family/friends.  Recovery is making us even more miserable than the ED (as if that were even possible!), so clearly our goal of feeling better was misguided.  So we piss and moan, something I'm rather expert at.

Get back to work.

I love writing, yes, but the process isn't always pleasant. I regularly sit down in front of my computer feeling like my brains have turned to spaghetti and I have totally forgotten how to put a simple sentence together.  The only solution is to start writing. Get back to work. 

Nor does recovery always seem intuitive or natural or even always more pleasant than the eating disorder. I've fantasized about "taking a break" from recovery or trying to get people to understand just how hard recovery is.  But easy isn't the point, nor is other's recognition.  The hard work of recovery doesn't stop with a pat on the back or even a trip and fall.

At the end of the day, there's only one thing left for us to do: get back to work.

I think my feelings about recovery are echoed in my feelings about life right now.  I feel almost like I'm banging my head against the wall.  I'm frustrated because I feel I'm throwing all my effort in and nothing seems to be happening.

This month has been way off the mark, financially.  As in: I have yet to earn a single cent since July 1. 

Yikes.

I've been doing everything a good freelance writer should do, but still, no nibbles.  Just rejection emails that keep piling up.  If they were letters instead of emails, they would be a fire hazard by now.

And so it goes with recovery.  I'm doing everything I'm supposed to--every last meal, snack, and hated glass of juice--and yet all I feel is foul, disgusting, and frumpy.  And, oh yes, that other "f" word: fat.

There have been other things going on in my life that aren't helping, but those won't be mentioned for privacy reasons.  I've found out that more friends than I can count are pregnant or getting married or doing something else significant with their lives.  And I'm bitching about Ensure.

I know a lot of this is my insecurities writ large: that everyone is going to see the nasty, awful person I really am, that I'm going to be a failure, that I'm going to be alone.  Those kinds of insecurities.  And they're all hitting at once.  I'm frustrated that I'm not "over" my eating disorder.  Part of me (okay, most of me) wants to go running back right now because then at least I wouldn't care so much. There would be less food and more exercise and everything would just be okay.

Rationally, I know that's a load.  The ED might make everything feel okay or seem okay, but it doesn't actually fix anything.  It does seem to take the edge off, though.  At least then I could slash my grocery budget, right?

::eye roll::

The most frustrating bit is that I'm doing everything--everything!--I can and it's just not enough.  Everyone loves to repeat the platitude, "Just do your best."  But what if "the best" just doesn't pay the bills?  What if "the best" still leaves you miserable, only now, you're fat and miserable.  What then?  Does anyone have advice for those days?  When nothing you do seems to make any difference?

I feel like I should just delete this whole post.  That it doesn't belong on a recovery blog.  That I'm supposed to have a positive spin on things. You know, like "I guess I'm just going to lift my chin and try again tomorrow."  What I want to do tomorrow is hide under the covers.  And maybe throw something breakable.  Yeah, that sounds more like it.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more so you don't have to.

50% of eating disorder carers (usually parents) exhibit clinically significant anxiety and/or depression.

Why does exercise make us feel happy and calm? (And why it can become addictive).

'It's like there are two people in my head': A phenomenological exploration of anorexia nervosa and its relationship to the self.

Why Our Ideal Self Seems Further Away For Us Than Others.

Is childhood OCD a risk factor for eating disorders later in life? A longitudinal study.

Kids' weight report cards don't make a difference.

Family work in anorexia nervosa: A qualitative study of carers' experiences of two methods of family intervention.

Meeting Marya: Letting go of eating disorder paraphernalia.

Immediate cognitive effects of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in eating disorders: A pilot study.

Rethinking Addiction’s Roots, and Its Treatment.

Perfectionism as a mediator between perceived criticism and eating disorders.

Sneaky Signs of Teen Eating Disorders.

How do eating disorder patients eat after treatment? Dietary habits and eating behaviour three years after entering treatment.

Being thin doesn't always mean you're healthy. The correlate is also true: being fat doesn't always mean you're unhealthy.

Cognitive interpersonal maintenance model of eating disorders: intervention for carers.

Eating disorders in different cultures.

People with eating disorders likely to die earlier.

Digital Domain: The Therapist Will See You Now, via the Web.

Eating Disorders Often 'Overlooked' in Elite Athletes.

Hi everyone!

I need to ask for your help.  I'm currently working on a book called Decoding Anorexia: How Science Brings Hope to Eating Disorders, and I've finished most of the research, and I've moved on to starting to collect interviews from people.

What I think is one of the best parts of the book is that I want to blend scientific expertise from researchers, clinical experience from clinicians, and wisdom from sufferers and loved ones.  As part of that, I need to talk to you, my readers.

I have a tentative list of people who I'd like to talk to about the following topics:

• someone who has been diagnosed with anorexia but lives in a non-Western culture (or a culture without the extreme pressures to be thin)
• someone who can talk about how learning about ED science has been helpful in their recovery
• a parent/child who have both had anorexia. I'd like to find a duo in which both people are willing to be interviewed, but I'm also interested in talking to single members where this is the case.
• someone who has experienced exercise addictions/compulsions as part of their ED
• someone who has been diagnosed with anorexia that then morphed into bulimia/BED
• someone who can talk about relapse and what they've learned
• someone who with a history of anorexia who is worried about passing anorexia on to their children

Several caveats:

• I may or may not be able to interview everyone who volunteers.  It has nothing to do with you, and may simply have to be a writer's decision on my part.
• Just because you are interviewed doesn't guarantee your story will be used.  Again, that's part of the nature of writing.
• If you are under 18, I will need to get permission from a parent or guardian.  It's a legal issue.
• If you have any questions about the interview process and how the material might be used, please email me and we can discuss this further.

Now that you've read all of the fine print, if you're interested in contributing, please email me at carrie@edbites.com so we can discuss things further and try and set up some interviews.  This probably isn't a complete list of everyone who I will want to interview, but it's hard to tell until I start writing more. I look forward to hearing from you!

Please feel free to share this on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. I really appreciate it!

It's a question I've asked and been asked many times: why did I develop anorexia? Of course, I wanted to know because of my own natural curiosity; I also wanted to know because I thought it was my key to recovery.

The idea was predicated on a simple assumption: if I could understand why I was starving myself, then I could stop.

The problem is that this assumption isn't correct.  After all, we know why the pancreas stops producing insulin in Type 1 diabetes, but that knowledge doesn't magically jump start insulin production.  Even from a behavioral perspective, understanding our motivations doesn't always mean we can just change. Most smokers know that lighting up isn't healthy, but this knowledge doesn't necessarily mean they'll quit.
Today's Fxck Feelings blog had some similar advice, to a girl who liked to date men already in relationships:

As such, asking why you’re attracted to pre-attached guys is about as dangerous as asking why you love Martinis; it allows you to study and indulge your predilection until you find an answer that will make it easy to stop, which won’t happen, and in the meantime, all your research is just fodder for rehab.


Accept the fact that the answer will never come or, if it does, it will change nothing, and it will never be easy to stop.

This comment answers the question of why so many of us get trapped in the never-ending quest for "why."  Simply put, the search for why doesn't require us to stop the problematic behavior.  After all, we can't stop (according to the theory) because we haven't answered the "why."  So there's no point in trying.  Yet we get to tell worried friends and family that we're in therapy, that we're "working on it."  Meanwhile, we don't have to challenge these behaviors.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't ask questions, just that "why" might not be the most useful.  I think better questions to ask might be:

• When am I most vulnerable to using behaviors?
• How can I get better? How can I stay better?
• What are warning signs of illness returning?
• What are the benefits I get from the ED?
• How can my friends and family provide support?

I don't think understanding the why behind an illness hurts.  After all, understanding that my eating disorder is triggered by not eating properly helps me make serious efforts to actually eat properly.  My problem with asking why is expecting that the answer will automatically lead to significant behavior change.  It's a nice theory, but I think it's an overly optimistic view of how the brain works. 

It also makes the assumption that people with eating disorders are able to see their behavior rationally--and that's often not the case.  Nor are ED behaviors choices.  They're much more like compulsions.  When I have OCD compulsions, I don't give a damn about why I'm doing what I'm doing.  I can even understand it.  But in the moment, all I want to do is feel better.  Eating more and gaining weight freaked me out.  The why didn't matter.  My brain never even got to that point.

We don't need to understand exactly why we're doing something in order to stop doing it.  Understanding why might be a nice bonus, but it's not necessary.  Maybe my next question is: why do so many people insist on asking us why?

I was watching a Bones rerun the other day, and there was an interesting dialogue between the main character, Temperance Brennan (aka "Bones"), and one of the night guards where she works.  I tried to find the exact diaglogue, but it didn't seem to be online, so I'm going to have to summarize here:

The guard told Bones about a study in which a group of men wore special glasses that made the world appear that it was upside down. After three days, the world was right-side up again. When the men took their glasses off, the world once again appeared upside down. Again after three days, their brains caught up and the world appeared as it should have.

It reminded me a lot of recovery.

I got so used to seeing the world with the ED filter on.  Food was bad, scary, and needed to be avoided.  I isolated myself from others.  I lied and cheated.   How I saw the world depended on my eating disorder.  If I got upset, the ED calmed me.  It was a pretty dysfunctional system to be sure, but I eventually got used to it.

When I started recovery, the glasses were uncerimoniously yanked off.  The world just felt "wrong."  Without the ED buffer, I was terrified of everything.  I couldn't get over how bizarre it felt to actually sit down to a meal. To eat in a restaurant. To order something off a menu besides a garden salad with no dressing.  When things went pear-shaped and the eating disorder was gone, I had no idea what to do.

My world was upside down.

The problem is that the world can stay upside down for a really long time, even longer than you or I might think it "should."  Nor is there always anything we can necessarily do that will make life right itself any faster.  Simply, it takes time for our brains to adjust.  Not only does ED recovery mean that our brains have to renourish themselves, but we also have to lay down new pathways that atrophied during illness or never formed in the first place.

I wonder what the men in the study (if the study was even real or went down like it did in the dialogue) thought during those days after they took of their glasses. Did they wish for them back?  Would putting the glasses on again have made the world look right-side up again?  How would this affect the length of time for the mens' perceptions to normalize?

Our brains are wonderfully plastic.  If you want to know exactly how plastic the brain is, read the book The Brain That Changes Itself.  But just as my brain learned to be afraid of food, it can unlearn that.  Or at least, it can learn to challenge those fears even if an initial jolt remains. In the Bones study, the mens' brains eventually figured it out.  Up is up.  It took time, lots of time.  I have no doubt plenty of them tripped and fell.  Again, that's part of how we learn.  Food isn't scary.  It's necessary.  It just is.  Life doesn't need to be avoided.  Keep the glasses off and the brain will learn.

Hi everyone.

Sorry for the almost complete lack of posts over the past few days--my cousins were visiting from out of town, and by the time we got done for the day, I pretty much collapsed into bed.  Blogging was pretty much the furthest thing from my mind at that point!

We had a really nice couple of days, and they left this morning.  This means that I will be back to my normal blogging schedule this evening (assuming I can stay awake that long!).

I missed you all and hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend.

It's once again time for your weekly Sunday Smorgasbord, where I trawl the web for the latest in ED-related news, research, and more, so you don't have to.

Major Depression and Avoidant Personality Traits in Eating Disorders.

The case for early intervention in anorexia nervosa: theoretical exploration of maintaining factors.

Brain Type 1 Cannabinoid Receptor Availability in Patients with Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa.

Internalized weight bias in obese patients with binge eating disorder: Associations with eating disturbances and psychological functioning.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Anorexia Nervosa.

Emotional Perception in Patients with Eating Disorders in Comparison with Depressed Patients.

The Relationship Among Compulsive Buying, Compulsive Internet Use and Temperament in a Sample of Female Patients with Eating Disorders.

Examining the Match between Assessed Eating Disorder Recovery and Subjective Sense of Recovery: Preliminary Findings.

A One-Message Question in a Structured Interview: Investigating Psychological Needs of Children and Adolescents with Eating Disorders Directed toward Their Mothers.

Re-thinking DSM-IV classes of EDs, with evidence from mortality data over two decades.

Increased Neural Processing of Rewarding and Aversive Food Stimuli in Recovered Anorexia Nervosa.

Restrictive anorexia nervosa and set-shifting in adolescents: a biobehavioral interface.

I received a message from the University of Chicago ED Treatment Program that let me know of the following treatment opportunities:

We provide free treatment services through our NIH-sponsored research studies. We are currently recruiting for the following studies:


Adolescent Bulimia Nervosa Treatment Study: This study provides no-cost outpatient treatment to adolescents suffering from bulimia nervosa. To be eligible, participants must be between the ages of 12-18, have a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa or partial bulimia nervosa, live with at least one parent/guardian, and be prepared to participate in up to 6 months of no-cost treatment along with assessments. Participants can receive up to $200 if all assessments are completed. For more information, please contact Colleen Stiles-Shields at 773-834-5677 or bulimia@yoda.bsd.uchicago.edu.

Adolescent Overweight Treatment Study: This study provides no-cost outpatient treatment for adolescent obesity. To be eligible, participants must be aged 13-17, must be overweight, living with at least one parent/guardian, and be willing to participate in up to 24 weeks of no-cost treatment for weight loss as well as complete assessments. For more information, please contact Kali Ludwig at 773-834-0360 or kludwig@bsd.uchicago.edu.

Adult Anorexia Nervosa Treatment Study: The University of Chicago is conducting a National Health funded research study designed to develop and refine a family-based treatment manual for young adults (aged 18-30 years) with Anorexia Nervosa as well as assess the feasibility of this out-patient psychotherapy. Treatment involves up to 6 months of cost-free individual and family therapy sessions. Interested individuals may contact our Research Coordinator at (773) 834-9120.

If you would like to find out more information about our general outpatient eating disorders clinic or educational services that our team may be able to provide, please contact our clinic coordinator, Leah Boepple, at 773-702-0789.

You can also visit our website at www.eatingdisorders.uchicago.edu or our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/University-of-Chicago-Eating-and-Weight-Disorder-Program/112762265461075.

Carrie's note: As always, participating in a research study has risks and benefits.  Click here to get more information on participating in clinical trials.