"EDDigest" via Rachel in Google Reader

Emotion processing in teen girls

2009-07-19T16:10:39-07:00

Many mental health conditions begin to emerge in adolescence. Some conditions, such as depression and anxiety, are much more common in adolescent females than males. For me, OCD emerged before any full-blown depression, although I did get very depressed during my OCD episodes. As the OCD improved, so would the depression. It wasn't until college that I was walloped with out-and-out depression completely separate from OCD.

But a recent study looking at how adolescents process emotions and social interaction shows how these features change during adolescence and how they can make a person vulnerable to anxiety and depression. The study asked a group of healthy adolescents between the ages of 9 and 17 to view a series of photos and determine both who they would be most interested in speaking with and who would be most interested in speaking with them. While they were evaluating the last question (who would be most interested in speaking with them), the teens' brains were scanned using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).

During this evaluation, the fMRI scans found that older female adolescents showed greater activation in areas that processed social emotion, such as "the nucleus accumbens (reward and motivation), hypothalamus (hormonal activation), hippocampus (social memory) and insula (visceral/subjective feelings)." Very little shift in activity was found in younger vs. older male adolescents.

Lead researcher Daniel Pine, of the National Institutes of Mental Health, said this:

"In females, absence of activation in areas associated with mood and anxiety disorders, such as the amygdala, suggests that emotional responses to peers may be driven more by a brain network related to approach than to one related to fear and withdrawal," said Pine. "This reflects resilience to psychosocial stress among healthy female adolescents during this vulnerable period."

And it was this last quote that really stuck with me and made me think not just in terms of EDs, but in terms of ED vulnerabilities. Although I don't have social anxiety disorder, I do have social anxiety. Back in February, I had to go to a large science conference for work, and part of my task involved networking. My supervisor also went, and this is a man who loves to schmooze. He thrives on this kind of social interaction. I would just as soon volunteer to have a new dentist fix my messed-up teeth sans Novocain. I made my appearance, did my duty, and then got the hell out of there. I retreated back to my hotel room and read a book. When I have to mingle, I feel very anxious, very fearful, and more than just a little threatened. I'm edgy. I can't relax. I'm constantly evaluating how people respond to me and what they must be thinking and the second I can leave, I usually do.

So when Pine said that emotional responses in people with anxiety and depression are related to "fear and withdrawal," I realized how true this was. I'm guessing that I'm not the only person with an ED to respond this way to social interactions. This isn't true for all social interactions, but for many of them, especially where I might be "evaluated" by my peers. And maybe a transfer of activity from the more functional emotional circuitry (the nucleus accumbens, the insula, etc) to the amygdala is part of what drives not only the emergence of depression and anxiety, but also when these illnesses occur.

I'm Published!

2009-07-18T12:01:00-07:00

I'm so excited! The book that two of my poems are being published in is finally out, and I just received my copy in the mail. It is called You Are Not Alone. The Book Of Companionship For Women With Eating Disorders. It is a collection of personal recovery stories. I also just bought a copy of Writer's Market, which is a book on where and how to sell what you write. I'm really going to start focusing on getting more of my poetry, and hopefully a book of my poetry published. I'm not sure where to start, so that is why I bought the book to help me along. It has an extensive list of agents and publishers, so I'm going to start sending my work in, and see what happens.

Wish me luck:-)

"Harm reduction"

2009-07-18T03:54:46-07:00

"Hi,I am recovering from anorexia and regularly read your blog. I live in the UK and as I was reading earlier I wondered what you would make of the treatment of eating disorders over here. In hospital, people over 18 who suffer from eating disorders are given a choice between full recovery to a BMI of 20-21 and what they call 'harm reduction'. This entails teaching the anorexic to maintain a BMI of around 15, high enough to keep them out of hospital but not so high that they can't cope with the weight gain.

Personally I am not a fan of this approach, I think that anything that makes the anorexia happy is not something which is going to end in health and happiness. The people who go down this route are still going to end up with drastically restricted lives and health problems such as osteoporosis - but they won't be draining money from the NHS because here, anorexics are only hospitalised once their BMI goes under 13.5. It's incredibly sad that people are written off in this way, because given a choice, what anorexic wouldn't choose this far less scary option?Anyway, you have a lot of other important topics to discuss on your blog but I thought it you might be interested in this."

I am interested in this. I think it is beyond sad, and very wrong. We need to stop treating anorexia as a choice and understand this is a "can't" and not a "won't." Policies that offer a "choice" to stay unconscious are cruel and misunderstand the nature of the brain condition. The way you put it: "written off in this way" is exactly right.

We need policies that aim for real recovery, not "harm reduction." I am saddened and angered by the lives thrown away by a lack of will on society's part to do what needs to be done. Policies like the one you describe would not be acceptable if what we were talking about was oxygen levels or blood sugar levels. We can at least set the standards at levels with a possibility of sustaining a recovery.

Easy? Hell, no. But why would we settle for less?

Vice Versa

2009-07-17T22:43:23-07:00

The one upshot to "the whole anorexia thing" was that it definitely kept my nose clean as a teenager. My parents never had to worry about drugs, drinking, wild parties, or anything else, because I was too busy killing myself to get into trouble. I did have a boyfriend, but I was both ultra-religious and ultra-unhealthy, so there were no real worries about pregnancy. Considering the over-acheiving atmosphere in my family, everyone pretty much lucked out that I "picked" a mental disorder that led to extreme focus and perfectionism. I may have been creeping out of the world one day at a time, but at least I wasn't making a negative scene as I did so.

It should be noted that my family tree is so heavy with alcoholics that all of its metaphorical branches are probably dragging the ground. Every generation on both sides of my family has had several people deeply mired in the disease. By the time my biological father was my age (22), he had already been in and out of medical detox three times, and had pretty much fried his liver. He started the habit when he moved in with his biological father, also drunken and divorced, and they apparently bonded by just intoxicating themselves all the time. He was 15.

So, ever since I 1) started college and 2) started making progress in recovery, my mom has been very concerned about alcohol. Lectures, lectures, lectures. I would assure her that it was one of the last things she needed to worry about ("Do you have any idea how many calories are in vodka, Momma?"), but she would just give me that furrowed-brow look.

Not that I can blame her. Her dad, both of her grandfathers, many of her uncles, and sort of one of her brothers were all alcoholics. She got married when she was 19, and he turned out to be not just a drinker but a nasty, violent, hateful drinker from a family of drinkers himself. And when I say hateful, I am not exaggerating. She had a dog that was every bit as dear to her as my G. is to me (he was also the same breed, incidentally, I must have imprinted on the breed as a baby). Truly that dog was her first child, and her only friend because her husband kept her isolated most of the time. And then one night, when he was very drunk and violent, the dog got protective of us, and he killed it. So I would say she is justified in being vigilant about drinking issues.

And yet I still thought she was crazy for ever thinking I would develop an alcohol habit. But lately I am starting to see her point. I haven't mentioned it at all before, because I didn't want to admit it was happening, but I feel guilty for hiding things when so many people have been so awesome with their support and advice.

I think that I need to put a foot down soon. Liquid calories used to be a huge taboo for me, according to my ED overlords, and now I am learning that the more I actually like alcohol, the worse it can be for me, although in ways much different from the reasons I initially avoided it for so many years. Vice A used to protect me from Vice B, and now I've fallen into the trap of using B to manage A. Vice versa.

In a nutshell, I've discovered that alcohol can be very "useful" in some situations, probably a little too useful. With addictive substances, the line between use and abuse can be very fine indeed. I have been so wound up and stressed about so many things over the past few months, and it is more and more tempting to just let go and let myself forget about everything for a while. Also, I've been trying to stay on track with eating and everything, because I can't afford to slide backwards right now. Drinking 1) helps loosen my anxiety about food and 2) adds calories so that when I do eat, I need less food to meet my daily minimums. Feel calmer, have an emptier stomach, what's not to like? I don't go on drinking binges, don't pass out, don't get sloppy and stupid. I've only thrown up a couple of times. Basically, I have just enough to get me in the "zone" without making me feel to crappy to work out the next morning. But I'm afraid I'm getting too used to the buzz, too needy for that chemical comfort. And I know from past experience that if a problem is at the point to which I'm actually admitting it to myself, it is probably reaching a significant level.

I have read enough about alcoholism to know that you don't have to get drunk in order to abuse alcohol. It's like the myth that all anorexics subsist on nothing but lettuce and coffee. It's not so much the quantity of the substance, but the mindset and manner in which it is used, and the degree to which you are dependent on it. And dependence at level A often does lead to levels B, C, and so on, until the situation is unhealthy in both overally quantity and psychological quality. And I'm afraid and ashamed of letting myself cross that line. I don't want to be my father, and I don't want to crush my mother. But sometimes, everything is just so tiring.

As I was saying...

2009-07-17T19:53:14-07:00

This is almost the perfect follow-up to the other day's "In the name of health" post. When I logged onto Facebook about 15 minutes ago, I was "invited" to get a free pastry from Starbucks in honor of their new recipes. What changed in the recipes? Although I don't have the details on exactly what changed (nor do I think finding out would be pertinent to my recovery), the ad really says it all:

How do you think this ad reflects our current attitudes about food? Would you be more likely to buy a Starbucks baked good because of the change?

Full disclosure: I'm probably going to go. I like the lattes at Starbucks, and it's probably good for me to try and work something different into my meal plan. Starbucks, like all of the other businesses out there, is trying to sell their product. I don't eat their baked goods enough to tell if the taste has changed any, so I won't try. It's a sales pitch, pure and simple. And if I get a free muffin out of the deal while being caffeinated, I'm okay with that.

Fortune cookie wisdom

2009-07-17T19:23:51-07:00

My fortune cookie from dinner last night says it all:

Late bloomers

2009-07-17T18:32:53-07:00

I read an interesting Huffington Post blog entry by Lloyd Sederer, a psychiatrist in NYC. His post referenced an article written by Malcom Gladwell in the New Yorker last fall called "Late Bloomers," where Gladwell discussed the idea of genius and precocity based on a Chicago economist named David Galenson. Galenson theorized that creativity among literary poets could have success at a later

Image Consulting For Kids

2009-07-17T18:06:29-07:00

What do you think about girls, some as young as 9, visiting an "image consultant?" I think it's whacked (plus look at the lady in the image coaching the kid). Can we not just allow our kids to just...

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Hiatus

2009-07-17T13:24:46-07:00

The stress. It is piling up.

It’s been rather quiet around FatGrrl.com these days, but not so quiet around my life. That is to say, not nearly as quiet as I would like it to be. I need to take some time to myself, work on a few things, go to some therapy (and then some more therapy), and try to get myself back on track.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Best,
Morgan

Fat Pig

2009-07-17T11:09:16-07:00

Of all the slurs hurled my way as a fat kid, “fat pig” was probably the most popular (and least imaginative) epithet of choice. So, I find it incredibly ironic now that I have two fat flying pigs grazing in my garden alongside my Buddha statuaries and shabby chic décor (yes, my garden [...]

tipping the scales.

2009-07-16T22:12:48-07:00

I went to the doctor today. The bad news is that it was because I felt like pure crap - most likely allergies, but I’ve been knocked on my ass for 3 straight days - and wanted to get checked out. It also resulted in me having to make an appointment with a pulmonologist and scheduling a CT scan of my chest. There seems to be some concern about my long-term problem with breathing, considering I’m only 22. (23 in 11 days! But that’s beside the point..)

Blah blah blah, health concern crap and so on. Whatever.

The point of this blog is that I stepped on the scale for the first time since the one in my friend’s apartment bit the dust months and months ago, as routine vitals require. I didn’t have a clue what I’d see, as I was pretty sure I had gained weight but have also been struggling to do so since I first started treatment. I would gain a pound or two, then lose it again. My body couldn’t keep it on, which is beyond frustrating.

Low and behold, I have gone up about 4 lbs from the weight that I have been sitting steady on since leaving treatment over a year ago. Not only had I hit a major checkpoint (I love checkpoints), but I passed it. I am currently at the highest weight I’ve been at since 2006, after my first discharge from Walden. It’s only 4 lbs, but it’s taken a lot of hard work and I’m pretty proud of it. My weight gain is not done, but I’m healthy and (aside from spring hating me) I feel pretty good. I’m not completely concerned, but I know I could afford to have more body to work with.

But, YAY, my body’s taking to food. Life is good.

Hello from The Great Northwoods!

2009-07-17T18:07:29-07:00

I am spending the week in a glorious cabin with my husband, kids and parents; boating, fishing, eating, drinking, laughing, and unplugging. We saw Green Day earlier this week in Chicago, and I nearly...

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"I was a baby bulimic"

2009-07-16T20:29:37-07:00

Disregard the sensationalistic title and check out this wonderful essay called "I was a baby bulimic: A food critic comes to terms with his appetite," by Frank Bruni.

What struck me, besides the descriptions of bulimia by a male in the early 1980s, was how early in his life the overeating and purging started, and how it appeared to be an echo of many of his mother's conflicts with food.

What also struck me was his haunting descriptions of his illness and how closely it echoed my own frenzied episodes of binge eating and purging:

To be a successful bulimic, you need to have a firm handle on the bathrooms in your life: their proximity to where you’re eating; the amount of privacy they offer; whether — if they’re public bathrooms with more than one stall — you can hear the door swing open and the footfall of a visitor with enough advance notice to stop what you’re doing and keep from being found out.

You need to be conscious of time. There’s no such thing as bulimia on the fly; a span of at least 10 minutes in the bathroom is optimal, because you may need 5 of them to linger at the sink, splash cold water on your face and let the redness in it die down. You should always carry a toothbrush and toothpaste, integral to eliminating telltale signs of your transgression and to rejoining polite society without any offense to it. Bulimia is a logistical and tactical challenge as much as anything else. It demands planning.

It is interesting, of course, that Bruni wound up as a food critic. This essay was adapted from an upcoming autobiography titled "Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater," which has now gone on my reading list.

Were you struck by anything in particular in the article? What could you relate to? What didn't you like? Share away in the comments section!

The Meaning of Longer Life

2009-07-16T09:15:44-07:00

I'm too busy this week for original thoughts, so here's some rational thought on "Calorie Restriction" and long life, from The Meaning of Life in the New York Times and from one of my favorite bloggers, Szwarc at Junkfood Science.

When out of the mouths of babes comes, “Mommy, that lady is FAT.”

2009-07-16T09:51:08-07:00

It's perhaps one of the most innocent social faux pas a child can make: "Mommy, that lady is fat." So, what's a red-faced parent to do when their pint-sized darling inadvertently sputters what many consider to be an insult of the worst kind? That's the dilemma Marjorie Ingall found herself in after her four-year-old daughter Maxine vocalized her observation of a neighbor's corpulence while out with the babysitter. Marjorie, who has written in other columns of her goal of raising a child with a healthy body image, shared her quandary in the May edition of the Jewish Forward: Read more...

Cohen on Caloric Restriction

2009-07-16T06:57:01-07:00

Finally, a journalist that eschews all the hand-waving and awe over the "benefits" of caloric restriction and offers a more grounded perspective.

(No, not the same Cohen that I wrote about in my last post!)

In the name of health, part one

2009-07-15T21:23:21-07:00

I first saw them in the refrigerated section of the grocery store today: Pillsbury Simply...Cookies. These were packages of the premade dough that you break apart and pop in the oven for quick homemade cookies. The package told me how "wholesome" they were and how they didn't have anything "artificial." This wasn't the first time I'd seen products recently that prominently advertised the food's simplicity and purity- Haagen-Dazs has a line of ice cream called "Five" because they only contain five ingredients.* Some types of Chex now have "gluten free" on the box. And on and on it goes.

But it wasn't until I saw the refrigerated cookie dough that I suddenly understood what I was seeing: a new trend. Of course, I am more than aware of the changing interests in how food is advertised and displayed, but the facts settled into place with a resounding clunk that this was going to be the Next Big Trend.

Spring 1996: I have to contribute items to a time capsule our social studies class is making, and I am in a group with three other girls. The items were supposed to represent our current culture and what it meant to us. I threw in an old banana clip** and a crusty tube of my mom's used mascara to indicate the emphasis on beauty and advertising. One of the other girls in my group brought in a box from some Snackwell's cookies, a popular brand of fat-free cookies in an emerald green box that were tremendously popular. They also tasted like the cardboard box they came in.

In the mid-90s, when I was in middle school and high school, low fat and fat free were the big buzzwords. Fat was bad and we needed to eliminate as much of it from our diets as possible. "Carbs" were not evil--in fact, no one really called them "carbs" much.

2001-2002: Fat is in and carbs are out. I remember this rather vividly, as the Atkins diet and other low-carb diet plans exploded in popularity just as I began recovery (well, the first round of recovery, anyway) from my eating disorder. I was plenty paranoid about food, and this was clearly not helping. But I eschewed fat far more than carbs, a pattern that has continued with each of my relapses. Fats went first, then proteins, then carbs, until I was living on lettuce, apples, and fat-free yogurt.

I was still far too phobic of fat to embrace the low-carb fad. But it is kind of hard to live in an environment saturated in this anti-carb propaganda and not absorb some of it. I began to speak "carb." Low-carb was fine, but it also had to be low-fat to satisfy my eating disorder. I learned about maltitol and sorbitol and how to count carbs should I be so inclined. Carbs were bad and we needed to eliminate as much of them from our diets as possible.

Today: Ah, yes. Simplicity. Purity. Wholesomeness. When I was younger, a "wholesome" food indicated more that this was what mom used to make you. It smacked more of nostalgia than morality. Within the past year, that has changed. Mott's for Tots apple juice has 40% less sugar- not because toddlers need to start counting their carbs, but that "added" sugars are unnatural and unnecessary; therefore, they're unhealthy. Stay away from "processed" foods, we are told. They're bad. We need to eliminate as much of them from our diets as possible. (Does this refrain seem at all familiar?) Over the past 15 years, we've moved from low fat to low carb to low ingredients as the new Key to Health.

The research still keeps coming out and constantly contradicting itself on how to live longer and healthier. In the nine months of my latest job, I've written about numerous compounds, foods, diets, vitamins, and/or minerals that hold the key to longevity and health. It's almost laughable because it's almost impossible to eat the amounts of those foods that produced such impressive results in lab rats.

The more I look around, the more I see EDs being triggered by "healthy eating," and less by a desire to lose weight and look better. My own ED started nearly a decade ago as I simply decided to cut out anything extra, which started as a switch from cream in my coffee to skim milk, and gradually turned into no snacks, then no fat, then no meat, then no meals, then no carbs, then no life and no freedom as I was corralled into the hospital. The more "extras" I cut out, the more extraneous everything seemed. I wonder how this pattern would translate in today's cultural lingo. If I got sick a year later, would I have been carb-o-phobic? If I had gotten sick six months ago, would I have cut out gluten and high fructose corn syrup?

I find these trends fascinating, both from a personal and an intellectual perspective. Is the increased attention being paid to orthorexia a result of an actual increase in the number of cases? Are more people becoming so obsessed with healthy eating that it ultimately becomes unhealthy? I see less and less overt dieting as the so-called gateway drug into eating disorders and more and more emphasis on healthy eating. This seems especially prominent in younger children with eating disorders, children who've been lectured about good foods and bad foods and who take the advice very literally. And then take it to the extreme. Don't get me wrong- a balanced diet is a very good thing, but when it becomes the focus of your life, that's a problem. When you become afraid of food and eating, that's a problem.

Tomorrow, I will look more in-depth at EDs in the name of health. In the name of my health, I'm going to bed because my train of thought is threatening to derail.

*I highly recommend the ginger flavor with grilled peaches or pineapple.
**Shut up. No really, just shut up. At least I didn't have mall bangs, okay?

[messy]

2009-07-15T20:24:54-07:00

I don't know. My heart hurts or my body hurts. Maybe it's both.I worked seven 11 hour days. In the hospital. Only standing. Everyone is cranky and in a hurry. Or sick. Or crazy. or everything. No one cares down there. But that's it , Manager was on vacation and is back. Good money though and that's what counts, right? No more waking up at 5am and getting home at 7. Thank God.Maybe that wouldn't

How "Bruno" Offended Me

2009-07-16T06:58:22-07:00

I saw "Bruno" the other day (wow! all I have to say is DO NOT TAKE YOUR MOTHER TO THIS MOVIE, several people in the theater with me had made that mistake). Doubtless everyone has heard about the movie right now, so I won't do a review of it. I saw Borat, and knew that Sasha Baron Cohen is extreme, but I was still surprised at the content of this movie, wow. I'm not a prude, I was mostly just taken aback at how much they were allowed to include while keeping the rating just at R instead of NC-17.

Yes, it is over-the-top and raunchy. But, considering my personal set of sensitivities, the issue that I kept fuming about afterwards was not homophobia, talking penises, or even poor victimized Ron Paul.

There is a scene in which "Bruno" holds an audition for baby models, and the camera follows his interviews with various parents as he gets them to agree to let their toddlers do a range of ridiculous things ranging from just plain silly to downright disturbing. (Doing high-speed chase scenes without a car seat, being exposed to creepy crawlies and fire, posing on a crucifix, etc etc) I can't believe those people actually agreed to be included in the film, for fear of Child Protective Services coming after them. Remember, these are not actors, they are real people that have no idea Bruno is a fictional character that is just pranking them.

The one that really got to me, though, was a gem of a mother who was happy to promise that her 30-pound child could lose 10 pounds in one week in order to qualify for a photo shoot. She agreed to those conditions with a smile on her face, no problem at all. This was not some obese 30-pound neonate (not that losing 1/3 of body weight would even be acceptable in any case that young, don't get me wrong), it was a healthy, beautiful, perfect little girl, probably around 3ish years old.

Really? Come on America, this just makes my heart cry.

EDIT: I didn't mean to imply that homophobia does not offend me, just that 1) I expected to see it in the movie, so it was no shock, and 2) As raunchy and crude as the movie is overall, the main theme is to expose homophobia, not endorse it.

Can "Drop Dead Diva" Move Beyond Fat Jokes and Stereotypes?

2009-07-15T09:56:00-07:00

In the opening scene of Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva, Deb (the skinny, shallow character) primps in front of the mirror while her boyfriend dutifully prepares her usual breakfast of a grapefruit sprinkled with two packets of Splenda. The camera closes in on the grapefruit and suddenly we’re inside the refrigerator at a law office, where Jane (the plus-sized, smart character) reaches for a plate of pastries. She stuffs them in her mouth and closes her eyes in ecstasy. This is all a setup for what happens next: size zero Deb is killed when she crashes her car into a grapefruit truck (oh, the irony!) and the Price is Right prize model-wannabe ends up inhabiting Jane’s Lane Bryant body.

I have no doubt that the show’s stars, Brooke Elliott and Margaret Cho, are serious about raising awareness about body image issues. Cho has been open about her own past struggles with weight and eating disorders. “I was very obsessive as a dieter and I thought being thin was the answer to all of my problems and so I wrecked my health in order to become thin," she recently told Ok! magazine. Both actors also talked passionately about their personal connections to Drop Dead Diva last week at a blogger meet and greet, respectfully taking on the criticisms that the show plays into stereotypes.

“This is a journey from being invisible to being visible. When [my first series] All-American Girl came out, it was hard to get the Asian American community to accept it," Cho said. "They couldn’t believe they were seeing themselves, and they couldn’t believe it could be positive.” I get what she’s saying, but how does a plus-sized main character create positive visibility when she’s leaning back in her chair so her assistant (played by Cho) can squirt canned cheese into her mouth? That’s a tough one to swallow.

I came away from the premiere with the message that Jane's size is connected to her emotional overeating. Oh, and now she happens to have the soul of a skinny woman living inside her. As Kim from Big Fat Blog pointed out, isn’t that trope pretty much the party line of the diet industry? Everyone has the power to be thin! “The show is about self-acceptance,” Elliott responded. “I happen to love my body. There’s me inside of me, a me who knows I’m beautiful.” Unfortunately, Elliott isn’t playing herself—she’s playing Jane, an unfulfilled workaholic who takes comfort in doughnuts.

I am curious to see how Deb and Jane will find self-acceptance. Their food issues (Deb’s restricting and Jane’s bingeing) were put right on the table in first episode, so how will they be addressed throughout the series? Will we get to see a plus-sized character who is confident and healthy? Truthfully, I want to believe that the stars’ good intentions will eventually translate into a good show.

Drop Dead Diva Mother-Daughter Discussion Guide
Margaret Cho suggested that Drop Dead Diva is a good show for mothers and daughters to watch together. Here are a five discussion questions to get your conversations started. Feel free to submit your own questions in the comments section.

1. What messages did you get about thin people from this episode?
2. What messages did you get about fat people from this episode?
3. Does Deb feel good about her body? Does she eat in a healthy way? Talk about examples from the episode.
4. Does Jane feel good about her body? Does she eat in a healthy? Talk about examples from the episode.
5. How did you relate to the characters in this show?

Drop Dead Diva airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on Lifetime