Blogs
On New Year's Eve 2009, I was with my husband, David, at a party. I ate without too much fear and had earlier wrote that I was on my way to complete recovery from anorexia nervosa in 2010.
It wasn't meant to be. However, I always try to live my life with hope. I vow that 2011 will be the year I recover. I also believe each one of you can make this the year you recover from your eating disorder.
Angela E. Gambrel Lackey, author of Surviving ED blog, talks about her struggles with Anorexia Nervosa during 2010 and offers advice about how recovery from eating disorders comes from learning to love oneself and wanting recovery for you.
Recently a reader asked how to get over the feeling that her sister is faking dissociative identity disorder. If you doubt your friend or family member's diagnosis, I think it's important to identify why you're skeptical. What in particular has you questioning it? Write it down, and be specific. Now find out everything you can about each of those nagging suspicions. I'm willing to bet a healthy majority of them are based on common misconceptions about dissociative identity disorder. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong. Sometimes people who say they have DID don't have it at all. That could be because they're pretending for some perceived gain, e.g. sympathy. But I believe the discrepancy is more likely due to misdiagnosis and genuine confusion.
There are certain relaxation techniques I've found genuinely helpful - and have come to rely on - to deal with specific anxiety issues like:
getting to sleep - ever;
my phobia of flying, and;
managing daily anxiety and depression.
Relaxation techniques relieve anxiety because they literally change your mind. They allow you to settle into the brain wave states that are normally only active during sleep. Basically you're alert and fully relaxed, getting a whole heap of the benefits of sleep, without the bother.
Katie Rios developed acne at 11-years-old and started picking at her skin. Ten years later, Katie still struggles with what she now knows is dermatillomania (also known as excoriation disorder). An impulse control disorder marked by secrecy, compulsive skin picking holds sufferers hostage in a painful cycle of compulsion and shame. Many people with dermatillomania go to great lengths to hide their skin picking and the resulting scars, limiting their ability to get treatment and support. Severe cases can interfere with an individual's ability to work, have relationships, or even spend much time out in public for fear of having the embarrassing secret discovered.
Congratulations; if you’re reading this you’ve survived the holidays, or most of them anyway. You’re past the late-night wrapping sessions, the overindulgence in eggnog and the stuffing that you never like but every year are forced into eating anyway. Huzah.
But if you’re a bipolar like me, you’ve found that all that forced merriment has left you feeling hollow, tired and depressed, so it’s time to take action to get back to your pre-holiday self.
Most people have the same or similar resolutions for the New Year: lose weight, save money, and, [insert your romantic objective here]. Those are all good resolutions (if you can keep them past January), but this year I’ve decided that I’m going to keep it simple, and just focus on one main objective: to think positive.
I'm still working on that post I've been promising--you know, the one where I address my perception of anger and blame being directed primarily at parents when it comes to psychiatric illness. I think about it often--when I'm in the shower in the morning, thinking about my own parents; when I'm checking my email, reading a comment from a reader who believes parents are the root of all evil; when I'm at home, and my adoring firstborn has just reminded me I'm not only an idiot, I'm annoying as all get-out.
Lack of funding for the mental health system is not as visible as this bus stop, but it is just as real. The consequences include a lack of talented treatment providers, difficulty accessing treatment and an overburdened prison system.
One of the problems I have with the mythology surrounding dissociative identity disorder is that it makes finding support and treatment difficult. DID is hard enough to contend with on its own without having to fight your way through fallacies and stereotypes just to get help. Some common misconceptions about dissociative identity disorder come from entertainment media. But DID itself, in the hands of those who don't understand it, is also a source of prevailing myths about the disorder.
Where do we go from here? Most of the family thinks just to let her hit bottom and then if she reaches out to help any we can. Some want to just keep paying her bills and just let her sit in the house with no responsibilities. Never been on medication and impossible to get to her when she refuses to talk to ANYONE.
Help.
On the day we agreed to videochat to make things less awkward IRL she woke up with a migraine so we rescheduled to the day after, I made sure to assure her that it was okay and to take her time. Later that day, in the late evening we had a nice chat but suddenly she stopped replying, even though nothing had happened. The day after I texted her good morning and said I hope she was feeling a little better. she wouldn't open my texts.
A couple days after I sent her a longer text saying that even though I had only known her for a short time I care a lot for her and would like to know how she are doing, telling her I'm there for her, assuring her I'm not going anywhere even though things might not be very easy. She wouldn't open it.
A week later I sent a text saying not to feel bad about not answering and that I will be there when she is able to answer again. It's been two weeks since this and she still hasn't opened my texts. She hasn't been active at all.
I don't know what else I can do. I assumed she might have fallen into a depression. I have tried to just not think about it anymore, and I haven't that much but when I do it sort of kills me inside...