Memories: those fleeting flashes of moments past, echoes of laughter, images of things seemingly banal to some, but meaningful to you and inadvertently stuck to your subconscious. While they are impermanent in their recollection, they seem permanent in their reverb of consciousness; in many ways, they are mere shadows. Dealing with memories can be a challenge, particularly in recovery. There are surely moments where unpleasant memories will creep into our present, possibly triggering old traumas, or reminding us how different things once were. Memories can also remind us of the way things have changed, how others have “moved on,” or …

What is that higher ground anyway? Oh, my, it’s just about here, that busy, family filled, often harrowing holiday season. But rather than  harping on the negatives and the what-ifs, I think it’s more apropos to talk about gratitude. There is certainly a lot to be grateful for, wacky family dynamics aside. It’s time to take a good look of where we are and where we’ve been and start making those gratitude lists. Often times, changing the way we look at things allows us to manage difficulties with grace instead of bombastic derivations. Certainly, we all have family members that …

Even as someone in recovery from self-harming behavior, the statistics regarding who and how many continue to self-harm still hits home. A recent study by Dr. Paul Moran at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, found that “1 in 12 young people self-harm as adolescents, with the balance skewed toward girls.” Moran’s study followed a group of “young people from Victoria, Australia, from adolescence (14-15 years old) to young adulthood (28-29 years old) between 1992 and 2008.” According to the study, out of the 1802 participants responding to the adolescent phase, 149 …

On the heels of my recent blog about fat talk and its negative ramifications, I am broaching the subject of food, anxiety, and eating disorders once again. It’s almost Thanksgiving, after all, a holiday which not only acts as a huge trigger for many suffering from or recovering from an eating disorder, but is often used as fodder for fat jokes and the subsequent fat talk. As if sitting down to dine with your already dysfunctional family isn’t enough. As we set our gaze upon Thanksgiving and give thanks for all that we have, those suffering from an eating disorder …

One thing is clear, there isn’t a definitive handbook for child-rearing. And while we parents try our darndest to “do the right thing,” we often fall flat on our faces as a result of being mired by our own childhood stories. I think I can safely say that most of us didn’t grow up in some idealized version of Leave it to Beaver, which is not to say that all of us suffered hellish childhoods either. Still, we have to be careful that we don’t project our own experiences and expectations onto our children. If anything, parenting provides us the …

According to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC), “Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide.” What we have is a growing epidemic of pharmaceutical overdoses, where the age of users and overdose victims vary from teens trying to achieve a heroin-like high to adults attempting to manage a slipped disc, or other painful injury. Some of the most commonly abused drugs are OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Fentanyl, a relative newcomer, but a dangerous one …

“To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness” Erich Fromm Grief is an experience, and while it differs from person to person, one thing is certain: there isn’t a predetermined end time for grieving. It is, in and of itself, a process. We often hear this process of grief described in stages: Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance This grief cycle, which is often referred to as DABDA, was described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her famous book On Death and Dying, written in 1969. …