Women Healing Through Crisis by Joanna Poppink

Boston Marathon Bombings. What You Can Do.

2013-04-17T22:00:22-07:00

Boston. OMG. The question flooding shock, helplessness, anger, fear, despair is, "What can I do?"

From the atomic age to this. It's not the world we knew. When my patients and I talk about the bombing, the best I can say with the truth of my heart is that each of us must be well.

We must heal from whatever ails us, grow, develop, be healthy, strong and courageous so we can take the best actions to meet these horrendous challenges. I've never been more committed to my job as a psychotherapist and writer than I am now.

The attack was brilliantly planned. The news articles I'm reading say the bombs were designed to kill. I disagree. They were designed to take legs, maim, instill terror, affect all sports gatherings and parades in the U.S., make us fear crowds and show us how vulnerable we are. And they succeeded.

This is not terrorism. This is a real war that uses terrorism as the ultimate weapon. Cheap too. Anybody can afford a pressure cooker and some scrap metal.

Yes, people with eating disorders have often experienced trauma in their lives. Yes, it's good advice to avoid too much exposure to the news of the bombing and to the graphic images. Witnessing trauma is traumatic too. Plus, if you have unresolved trauma in your personal history, too much exposure to the story of the Boston Marathon can trigger you into a trauma response and or eating disorder behavior.

The answer to the question, "what can I do?" I believe is big but simple.

"Get well."

Get healthy and strong. Heal from your eating disorder. Develop the remarkable person you are to be a stalwart adult capable of taking courageous positive action when needed.

I don't know what the future holds as you are faced with the wars, the climate changes and the health crises around the world. I do know that you need all your intelligence, creativity and determination to come up with solutions that elude us now. To do that you have to dispatch your eating disorder. You need to be free to bring your authentic self into the fray.

We live in a wonderful yet dangerous world. You have to be present for what really is in order to grapple with the probems and create the world you want this earth to be... for you, your children and all life you love.

Eating disorders weaken you, distort your mind and block you from awareness and reality. Health strengthens you, clears your mind, makes you capable of being aware of reality. Health creates and releases mental, emotional and physical power.

If you have an eating disorder you don't know who you are without it. You don't know the positive force you can bring to others by being your real self.

I hope you will recommit to your healing work as I have recommitted to mine. In recovery we can unleash a powerful healing force in an aggressive and wounded world. Your recovery is not for you alone. You, in recovery, help make a better world. In recovery, you are the solution.

Full coverage of Boston Marathon Bombings from L.A. Times

CNN coverage

Images: lots of them. Which inspire you? You can strive for that as you heal.

Images of courage

Peacemakers of the world

Real Heroes

* painting by Bolívar lino, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike

Exploring the feeling and power of dread

2013-04-03T18:01:53-07:00

Writing about dread in connection with eating disorders has raised many feelings and memories in eating disorder recovery readers. Here I write about real and fantasy based dread.

In exploring dread the first step is to name it and describe it. Then we look at how dread influences our choices and actions. *(See articles cited below.) In this article I'd like to explore with you where dread comes from so we can understand and diminish its power when possible.

Dread is an anticipation of something happening that is terrible. The feeling is all encompassing from within. It's not a surface feeling that contracts you. It's an inner feeling that creeps to every cell of your body. The feeling is so thorough that you are certain your dread is justified.

This certainty influences your thoughts and behavior. You don't show up for your committments. You pass on the job interview or the professional dinner meeting. You cancel dates with friends. You see an opportunity to take a class but don't follow up. You can't stay present in your body because the dread is too terrible to bear. You flee to TV or the Internet or movies (or drugs or alcohol or food). You want safety while you are certain danger is close and lurking.

I think there are two kinds of dread: one that is based on reality and one that is based on fantasy. Reality based dread could be the anxiety you feel as you approach a situation for which you are unprepared: e.g. an exam, a podium from which you will give a speech, a drive where you know the driver is often drunk, a room where the people waiting for you often abuse you and more examples from your own life.

You deal with reality based dread by acknowledging the reality. You study for the exam or you face the consequences. You prepare for your speech or face the consequences. You have power in these examples.

Getting into a car with a drunk at the wheel? No matter who the person is, when a person is drunk he or she is no longer your friend, your boss, your family member, or a respected person from any walk of life. When a person is drunk he or she is a drunk. That's their full identity. You rally your strength and courage and mostly your self respect and desire to live. You don't get in the car. If you are in, you get out. The dread you feel is helping you to save your own life.

If people abuse you then your challenge is to find a way out of that situation. Dread is giving you a realistic signal about what is probably going to happen again when you walk into that room. It's up to you to find a way to help yourself out or to never go in.

When you face realistic dangers you may or may not have a way to cope with them. Your dread warns you, and then you do the best you can to care for yourself. That may mean asking for help from other or betraying secrets you should never have been carrying in the first place or both.

Dread based on fantasy is different. You imagine what will happen. You may have images in your mind that you are certain will be real if you enter a situation. You think you will be hurt or humiliated in some way. If you don't have images then your dread might even be worse. You feel the imminent danger of pain or humuliation without any story to go with it. You're lost in the certainty of looming doom.

Your feelings are real. But your feelings are caused by your thoughts and imaginings. You are creating in your mind a fantasy of what is going to happen, and you believe it. You are giving yourself incredible and impossible powers, i.e. you can see into the future. The vast power you give yourself is counterbalanced by the vast certainty of your own helplessness. Without self understanding you might even devote your energy into making your dread come true yourself.

Dread based on fantasy grows without limit because you have yet to learn how to appreciate your own strengths and weaknesses, your own humanity and your own authentic self. You build a small nightmare in your mind out of power and are frightened by that nightmare into your own sense of powerlessness. You can keep going over the years, building greater nightmares that are balanced by greater feelings of fear and helplessness until you are paralyzed by fantasy dread.

Worse, you can keep this procession of dreads coming by acting out your eating disorder. The eating disorder will help you feel powerful and help you feel powerless and help you go numb to some of your dread some of the time. This kind of sporadic reinforcement is what makes Las Vegas a money maker for the casinos. And it will maintain your dread producing way of life.

There's more to say. Certainly we have to start talking about how to get out of this dread producing pattern. Share your thoughts, please. And I'll write more.

Now or in the past, what dread have you experienced that was reality based?
How did you cope with it?
Now or in the past, was dread have you experienced that was fantasy based?
How did you cope with it?
What questions do you have about dread?
What suggestions do you have for others based on what has helped you?

Joanna Poppink, MFT, Los Angeles eating disorder recovery psychotherapist, author of Healing Your Hungry Heart

*See articles: Dread and More About Dread: Signals. Be sure to read the comments. They are part of a rich and heartfelt discussion.

Delighted that Healing Your Hungry Heart Reviewer, Leora Fulvio, Saw the Intention Behind the Writing

2013-03-22T15:35:53-07:00

***(see below)

In Leora Fulvio's beautiful review of Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder she says:

"Joanna writes as if she’s sitting there in the room with you, holding your hand and saying, “yes, I’ve been there, I know what it’s like, but look at me, I’ve really found peace with food, it’s so hard, but I know that you can do it too, and I’m here to help you.”

She caught my feeling and intention while writing. As I wrote I felt close to all the women I've known and worked with who struggled with eating and eating disorders. I saw them before me, heard their voices, felt their energy and wrote to them as if they were in the room with me.

People sometimes ask, "Isn't it lonely writing a book?" My answer is, "You might think so, but no, not at all."

I always felt the presence of encouraging companions. Some were blind with pain and in denial. I knew what that was like. Some were struggling on their path, but it was a path that led at best, no where, and at worst, to greater disaster. I knew about that too.

Some were full of doubt as they ventured toward their authentic but little known self. Yes, I knew about that, too.

Plus, I saw all the ages of the women I've seen, known and heard from, single and married, with or without children, isolated or lost in a crowd. You, too.

Everyone was looking over my shoulder, watching the words form on the page, accompanying me on my walks with my terrier, Winston, as I sorted out plans and allowed new material to rise up.

They and you showed me what you needed, what you wanted, wanted you could barely dare to hope for.

My arguments with my editor (wonderful, passionate and creative arguments) were often about cutting out material and I defending the material by saying:

"But she has to know that or be introduced to that. It's so important for her recovery work. I'd be doing her a disservice by leaving that out."

We continued to argue until out of the passion was born the the idea of an appendix. :) I could include what I knew in my heart to be necessary without writing beyond structural requirements. That was a great moment!

Leora got it. She saw, in this review, that I was close to you. She said it was as if I were in the room with you, and that's how I hoped it would come across on paper.

In reality, you were in the room with me!

Thank you, Leora. You were conscientious, thoughtful, insightful and caring as you wrote this review. I think you must be an excellent psychotherapist.

See Leora's blog:

RECOVER…
A resource to help people heal from binge eating, bulimia, obsessive dieting and body image issues

Joanna Poppink, MFT

author of Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder Healing

*** As close as I can get: women of all ages, struggling to be free, brave, determined and probably scared, supporting each other, moving into the unknown world of freedom against the odds. Sounds like eating disorder recovery, doesn't it? These are the suffragettes in 1911.

Weaving Your Life

2013-02-28T20:17:21-08:00

When you find and honor the threads of your true self, you can follow those threads and weave a life story for yourself that is rich in meaning and satisfaction. *

An eating disorder blocks your awareness of those threads and puts you on a narrow path of living where you obsess about food, weight, diet and where you reach for high sensation to overwhelm your feelings.

Consider a day in your life. What goals do you set out to accomplish? Perhaps you have work or study goals. Perhaps you have goals oriented toward your home and family. But the ongoing inner demands of your eating disorder can leave you too tired or numb or both to follow through or even begin the tasks you'd like to complete.

Still, you are weaving your life. You are using the commands of your eating disorder as threads to create a tapestry of limitation. You use the same threads over and over again as you weave the narrow and unaware life of a person with an eating disorder who cannot see opportunity and choices.

To change the tapestry you need to select and follow different threads. To do that you have to see different threads. To do that you need to be able to see. The threads are there. The blinders have to come off your ability perceive.

So the beginning of weaving your life from your authentic heart and soul is to know first that your eating disorder pulls you away from life. It does not come from your authenticity. It comes from your fear.

Knowing this can help you reach beyond your known and familiar ways of doing things with known and familiar foods (like eating disorder behaviors).

Change a pattern or routine in your life.
Recognize an automatic response, stop it and be still.
Pay attention to a whim that promises the possibility of joy and honor it. That whim could be a deeply felt yearning of your heart. See where it takes you.

These actions will show you more threads from your heart that you can use to support your genuine aims, work, experience, gifts and desires.

When your thought, mind and body are unified in honoring your true self, you choose threads of quality that your heart loves. You weave a life worth living.

This woman is showing how local textiles are woven. Cusco, Peru

The colors are wonderful, but more colors exist. Larger and more complex exist. You don't have to stay with one size and endlessly repeat your pattern. You can weave your life anew based on a growing range of interests and themes that enrich your life.

What threads are you neglecting?
How can you bring these cherished interests and yearnings into your life?
Can you weave them into a new pattern of living?

Joanna Poppink, MFT

Los Angeles eating disorder recovery psychotherapist

Author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder

Are you exhausted from racing to keep up with endless tasks?

2013-02-12T23:52:38-08:00

Replenishing your mind, heart and soul energizes you and gives you a fresh perspective that can help you simplify your challenging tasks. But if you have an eating disorder, you may try to do more than is possible in a day. Or you may postpone tasks and grow anxious as you watch hours slip by, bringing dreaded deadlines closer.

If your day begins with good intentions and to do lists and ends with self criticism, fear and more lists you will find yourself increasingly depleted, frustrated and feel like a failure.

How to create a different way of being in your day.

It's possible that you've forgotten or never learned a key component to being open, fresh, eager to greet new challenges and confident that you can.

Rachel Carson said:

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."

Racing along through your to do lists, can take you far away from being who you are. You get so tired from racing you lose your sense of wonder and dellight. You lose the ability to refresh your spirit.

Ah, but you may say, "I don't have time to be still for something as impractical as a sense of wonder. I have important things to do."

I counter that by saying, you can accomplish more if you are rested and enthusiastic about your tasks.

Can you let kindness enter your day? I mean, kindness toward yourself? If you can entertain this possibility then you might be able to be support an inner part of yourself who is a caring adult. Let that part of you be your own inner companion who slows you down so you can take delight and pleasure in the world we live in.

In this way you can replenish your spirit and give yourself great gifts, including the creative ideas and strength to get your tasks done. Plus, you can smile more and have energy to share with the people you care about.

Joanna Popppink, MFT

Los Angeles psychotherapist and author

book: Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder

Freedom to think and speak: have you got it?

2013-02-01T19:29:38-08:00

Freedom to speak assumes, I hope, that your mind is free to think and your speech reflects your thoughts. But is your mind free?

You live everyday in an environment that is constantly giving you information.You may seek specific kinds of information based on your environmental focus. Do you read the news or romance novels or self help books or study business or Chinese calligraphy? Do you watch television and seek out reality TV or dramas or sit coms or children's programming? But this is the easy stuff.

When you walk down the street you see people in all their various shapes and forms. You see plants, animals and structures. You see sky and feel the ground under your feet. You hear sounds. You sense temperature and moisture. Your body is picking up information every minute of every day.

How do you process it? What do you block and what do you take in? And if you didn't block what you block, would you think different about what you take in?

When you suffer from an eating disorder you have a tendency to be mired in all or none, black or white thinking. This creates a formidible screen that blocks information from your mind. You'll miss information without knowing it. With limited information you are not engaging the fullness of your mind to contemplate the input you are receiving.

Your boyfriend may have said, "I'll be late tonight." If your fear of rejection or abandonment prevails you will not be able to remember, or perhaps never heard him say three days ago, that he had a deadline he had to meet by Friday morning. Without that information you may speak freely based on what you think, and suffer needlessly. You hurt your relationship.

What do you need to notice to thrive in your relationships, your jobs, your families, your daily living that makes up the wholeness of your life? What do you need to notice and how do you allow yourself to think about what you notice?

A key here is that we also have emotions, powerful emotions. So when you notice something you will have an emotional responses that affects how or if you will think about what you've noticed.

Your eyes may pass over words that suggest a job opportunity for you, but your anxiety comes in so fast that you ignore the words as if you had never seen them at all. You are not free to think about what would be required of you to make a satisfying move.

It's a bit like not noticing rain clouds because you are in a hurry and don't want to be distracted by something that could disrupt your day. If the clouds pass by you won't know that you missed noticing. And if you are caught in the rain you will be unprepared.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with recovering from an eating disorder? My answer is: everything.

Your eating disorder tells you what to notice. Your eating disorder tells you when to avert your eyes and your attention. You eating disorder pushes you to a narrow track of awareness, a path with walls on both sides so you don't know what you are missing. Your evaluation of your experience that is crucial to your making decisions is flawed. You are missing what is in life.

How can you be aware of what you are not aware of?

Here's the beginning of a plan. You tailor it to fit what you think is important.

Goal: See a bigger picture than what the eating disorder allows you to see in life.

Themes to check:

my health and someone else's health
my goals and someone else's goals
my job demands and someone else's job demands
my family and someone else's family
my finances and someone else's finances
my fears and someone else's fears
my time and someone elses time
my age and someone else's age
my loves and someone else's loves
my priorities and someone else's priorities
my committments and someone else's committments
my idea of fun and someone else's idea of fun
my spiritual beliefs and someone else's spiritual beliefs

Making Connections

Ask yourself how does one relate to another? For example how does your friends spiritual beliefs and her idea of fun relate to her suggestion that you skip a 12 step meeting and go to a bar?

Or how does your friend's job demands and family situation relate to her refusing your invitation to go to a movie?

You can play with these suggestions and give yourself more topics to consider. Then, when your eating disorder tries to propel you into your narrow frame work for perceiving and thinking, you have a way out. You can see more of what is going on beyond those eating disorder constructed wall and really be free to think and speak.

What themes would you add to this list tat would help you make needed connections in your life?

What Brand Is Your Therapist? Connecting client with therapist in the best way.

2013-01-26T14:18:29-08:00

If you want to recover from your eating disorder you

want a therapist you believe can help you. You want

someone who understands you and your situation,

can listen and genuinely hear with compassion and

wisdom what you have been unwilling to share with

others or even yourself.  You want someone who can

go the distance with you as you embark on your

recovery journey that will lead to what you can’t

imagine from here. How do you find that person?

What Brand Is Your Therapist? is an article in the

New York Times, by Lori Gottlieb, that speaks to

therapists struggling to build their psychotherapy

practice.

I wrote this for them and you since connection

involves at least two  parties. I hope you will

contribute your thoughts and experiences to help

clarify what really goes on when a person selects

a clinician to be their healing companion

on the road to recovery.

What's sad to me about the voice behind this

article is that the writer is caught in the same

difficulties and naive state of mind as psychology

students were 30 years ago (when I got my license.)

Academic programs teach the subjects they are

designed to teach.  That's fair and reasonable.

Students immerse themselves in learning.

That's fair and reasonable.


But, many graduates and professionals early

in their careers seem to think that the learning,

the degrees and the licensing will bring clients

to them.  That is neither fair nor reasonable.

It's sad and naive - and can have painful

consequences.


The patients we see live in the world as it is.

We cannot design a world we prefer to live in

and have our professional careers blossom

as we make decisions based on our fantasies.


People looking for help to relieve their suffering

want to know that the clinician knows about their

kind of  suffering, has compassion and

understanding for them as individuals, has great

expertise and can help them live a happier and

more satisfying life.

Potential clients most likely do not know about

diagnoses or how their histories or family

constellations or biological inheritances have

contributed to their situation.  They want peace.

They want their problems solved.  They want to

sleep at night. They want to stop doing destructive

behaviors.  They want to start doing constructive

behaviors. 


How are these people to recognize the one therapist

who is the right match for them? How are they to

know  that they can trust this person to respect and

care well for them through healing while they are

vulnerable, frightened, in bewildering pain?


How clinicians answer the questions in the above

paragraph is how we build our practice. A degree,

a license qualifying internship, a license to

practice does not guarantee a career.  Those

achievements are the entry costs to entering

this profession.

Now it's up to the clinician to learn what is

required to earn the respect and trust of

potential clients/patients so they will take

a chance on him or her and invest their

time, money, hearts and souls into the work

that can bring healing and new opportunities

in life.

We use the vehicles our society offers and

that we decide are appropriate to our agenda

to bring information and personal authenticity

to those who need us. If people connect on a

deep level with what we share, they will call.

What are you looking for in a potential therapist for you?
How did you find your therapist?
What is or was not so good for you?
What is or was good for you?
What advice would you give someone on what to look for when looking for a psychotherapist?


Joanna Poppink, MFT
www.eatingdisorderrecovery.com
author: Healing Your Hungry Heart
www.facebook.com/joanna.poppink

Healing Through Thankfulness

2012-11-22T00:14:22-08:00

This Thanksgiving, when the question is asked, "What are you thankful for?" how will you answer? Rallying your gifts and compentencies to give to others brings you more self confidence and self appreciation, qualities necessary for eating disorder recovery.

Eating disorders narrow your mind, your focus and your perceptions. These disorders block your feelings and pinch your ability to feel so some feelins are squelched and others burst forth almost out of control. You can get caught in what you want from your friends and family. You visualize how you wish your holiday could be and how far short of the mark you fall.

Perhaps you are alone. Perhaps you dread being with your family. Perhaps you are ashamed to be the odd unattached person at a friend's home, feeling that you are invited because otherwise you'd have no place to go.

And certainly you may have strong fears about dealing with the abundance of food offered to you on this holiday.

You can turn this negativity around and heal through your thankfulness. For starters, please consider being thankful for the qualities within you that allow you to give. Instead of looking at what you've been given by others, look to see what makes it possibble for you to be the giver.

Do you sing, dance, write? Can you tell a joke or help a person to their car? Can you allow yourself to see little things that need doing in your neighborhood and do a little? Can you see little things that need doing that might help your neighbor and do them?

I'm not talking about anything major. I'm talking about straightening out trash cans that are askew after the trash pick up trucks leave or maybe putting a newspaper closer to someone's front door.

I'm talking about picking up an object on the sidewalk that someone dropped and putting it on a fence or wall so it's easily findable.

If you are with friends or family, you might ask a quiet person about what they are thinking about and really listen to their answer. Or you might ask someone you don't talk to very much to tell you about their favorite or memorable Thanksgiving from the past.

These little things often turn out to be the big things in a day or even a life - and are so much more meaningful than what you eat or how much you eat or what is served and how the servings line up with your triggers and your food plan.

Tonight at bedtime for two little girls, six and eight, we all got into making up poems about Thanksgiving. They wanted to write them down. I wanted them to gentle down from the day and go to sleep. So our plan became this: After breakfast we will create our poems and write them down, maybe in pretty colors.

They decided they would write them in their notebooks and bring them to the family Thanksgiving. Then they could read them to everyone and wouldn't forget the words because they had their books.

My thankfulness cascades through having these girls in my life, appreciating the creativity and delight in filling empty space- like an empty page or empty new day coming - and sharing with each other. We are all thrilled about the fun of making and reading our poems.

I know the family will smile, perhaps with a tear here and there, during the surprise reading. And they will have more to be thankful for too.

With the thankfulness, the caring and sharing, comes healing. Try it. You'll feel it flow through your body and your heart.

What can you feel grateful about what you can contribute? The healing in this is for everyday as well as Thanksgiving Day.

Don't miss this fantastic TED talk video on gratitude. It's just right for today, and every day.

See: Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder.

Therapy When Your Crisis Has Passed

2012-10-07T20:54:01-07:00

You came to your psychotherapy because you were in emotional crisis or because you felt a crisis brewing. In this instant result demanding culture you may find it difficult to understand the immense benefits in staying in therapy after your crisis passes and you are in your normal routine.

In your normal routine you resume your familiar way of living. You find a way to balance your emotions, relationships, behaviors, expectations, sleep patterns, eating style, time schedules and inner expectations. You live your familiar life. This does not mean you are living a healthy or pleasant life, although you may be. It means that the balance you've established creates a kind of equillibrium.

When disruption of that equllibrium occurs you are thrown out of balance. If the disequillibrium is harsh, strong or deals with a sensitive issue, you are in crisis.

Examples:

1. You expect your job and therefore your income to be stable and base your spending on the income you receive regularly. If you lose your job and that income stream for any reason, you may be thrown into disequilibrium because of money insecurity and fear about your future.

2. You rely on the committment and loyalty you share with your spouse. If you discover he or she is unfaithful to you the reality you've assumed about your life dissolves. You discover you believed lies and trusted countless decisions that you didn't know were influened by an extramarital relationship/s. You are thrown into emotional chaos.

3. Your eating disorder behaviors aren't numbing you or soothing you as they did in the past. You escalate the intensity of your behaviors. You binge more and with larger quantities of food. You starve more and the numbers on the scale drop to a dangerous level. You are afraid of the momentum your eating disorder is building, and you are in disequillibrium as you feel feelings your eating disorder behaviors blocked before.

Other examples can include death of someone near to you or a serious illness affecting you or someone you care about.

Shocks to your system that create chaos and crisis don't always have to be negative. A sudden windfall of money, graduation from an educational program, a job promotion that means a change in lifestyle, the birth of a child can disrupt your normal routine and bring on a crisis in your life.

You enter therapy because the disruption is too much to bear. You can't rely on the inner resources you usually rely onto get you through difficult times. Anxiety spikes. Sleep is disrupted. Maybe you experience nightmares or weight gain or weight loss. Maybe you are tempted by drugs or alcohol or something else destructive to your well being.

These are all reasons to seek help and go into psychotherapy. You are in crisis. In solid work, you come out of crisis. Perhaps you learn methods to change your outer reality so you are in a more stable environment. Perhaps you grow and develop emotionally so you are more sturdy within yourself and can cope with your new status. Maybe both.

When a familiar or newly achieved calmness comes into your daily life you may have trouble justifying to yourself that remaining in therapy is a good choice. People in your life may question your being in therapy now that your crisis is over.

Yet, it's after the crisis is over and when you are living a more calm life that your therapy can be most powerful and helpful.

What was going on in your inner world while you were in crisis?
What are the elements in your psyche that created your helplessness in your vulnerable state?
What was weak or missing in your psychology that led you to be tempted by or turn to destructive behaviors (e.g. alcohol, drugs, eating disorder behaviors, cutting etc.)?
What new learning or development or spiritual advances do you need to be more sturdy when inevitable disruption occurs again?
Where and how can you build and incorporate new and healthy resources into your ordinary life so you can weather future storms?

These kinds of questions can be addressed when you are not in crisis. One of my favorite quotes from Gregory Bateson:

"The laws of gravity cannot conveniently be studied by observation of houses collapsing in an earthquake."

After the crisis is the time to explore the nature of your internal world and what triggers your behavior. That's when you can look at what governs your decision making and what the meaning behind your dreams can offer you. The pressure of an ongoing crisis and the wild disruption in your psyche that may lead you to cling to fast and temporary safety interferes with deep healing.

When your immediate crisis is over you can work with your therapist to explore and develop yourself beyond the limits that plunged you into the crisis state. That's where the real healing work happens.

Have you entered into psychotherapy during a personal crisis and left once the crisis was resolved or passed?
Have you entered into psychotherapy during a personal crisis and remained after the crisis was resolved or passed?
What was your experience in either situation?

Joanna Poppink, MFT, Los Angeles psychotherapist, speaker, author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder.

Quotes for Healing, Support and Inspiration

2012-09-30T19:16:53-07:00

Wisdom quotes you carry in your pocket or post on your wall can inspire your mind and heart plus help keep you on your recovery path. Here are a few you might not know.

This one is a guide for anyone with separation difficulties.

"There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a joh, a life stage, a relationship is over - and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its value."

Ellen Goodman

-------

Oh, I so like this one!

"Our discomfort is actually a gift of spirit. It is the backside of the dram, the part of us that is held back at this moment. It shows itself as a feeling of 'I'm not happy. I'm feeling a longing, and I don't quite know what that is.'

The early stage of dream-building is to honor your discontent, which is the greater part of you yearning to be discovered and expressed.

Honoring the discontent is the doorway into the next dimension of life."

Mary Manin Morrissey

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"My only advice is to stay aware, listen carefully, and yell for help if you need it." Judy Blume

She's so great! I believe her writings have guided countless young girls to a more healthy path in life than they might have followed without the Blume books in their psyches. I believe her books are part of eating disorder prevention in our culture. Happily for me, I met Judy Blume at an Author's Guild even and was able to tell her so. She was surprised at the eating disorder recovery reference. I think she's a champion in this area without even knowing it. :)

Judy Blume does not wrote about eating disorders. Her stories support the development of a healthy, sturdy person who can meet challenges in life, feel what she feels and learn to make good decisions. Anyone who can do that does not develop an eating disorder.

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"To get smarter, do the unfamiliar." Magaly Rodriguez Mossman.

Oh, yes, I agree. I call it "jibing" in Healing Your Hungry Heart. Do the familiar in unfamiliar ways. It breaks up rigid patterns in your mind and allows new growth and healing to happen.

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"Many tribal peoples consider illness to be one of the most reliable sources of revelation. Many of the practices that traditional religions impose upon seekers - abstinence, isolation, stillness - are practices that illness imposes upon us, so it is in a sense a cocoon that allows revelation to unfold."

Kat Duff

Healing Your Hungry Heart offers you practices to achieve personal growth and revelation without the illness to move you to revelation and healing.

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Kat Duff

What clarity, insight and wisdom have you gained from suffering with an eating disorder?

If you can't name anything, how can you use your illness to allow your own revelations to unfold?

Women Healing Through Crisis by Joanna Poppink

Boston Marathon Bombings. What You Can Do.

Exploring the feeling and power of dread

Delighted that Healing Your Hungry Heart Reviewer, Leora Fulvio, Saw the Intention Behind the Writing

See Leora's blog:

RECOVER…A resource to help people heal from binge eating, bulimia, obsessive dieting and body image issues

Joanna Poppink, MFT

author of Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder Healing

Weaving Your Life

Are you exhausted from racing to keep up with endless tasks?

Freedom to think and speak: have you got it?

What Brand Is Your Therapist? Connecting client with therapist in the best way.

Healing Through Thankfulness

Therapy When Your Crisis Has Passed

Quotes for Healing, Support and Inspiration

RECOVER…
A resource to help people heal from binge eating, bulimia, obsessive dieting and body image issues