In this ‘brain post’ I want to explain a little more about two important brain regions that play big parts in how we think and act and how these two different parts of the brain often work against one another, trying to take the driver’s seat in guiding our behaviours. The two parts of the […]
Category: Helping Family / Carers Understand
Every human brain (however old) has the ability to learn new skills, behaviours, thoughts and emotions. This is the concept of ‘neuroplasticity‘ or ‘brain rewiring’. Eating disorder recovery necessitates changing a lot of behaviours and thought patterns that in the years or decades of illness have become deeply wired into the brain, such that you […]
In the UK, this week is Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I am always uncomfortable about these awareness weeks because of the amount of damaging, stereotypical information on eating disorders that still rears its ugly and harmful head every year, but I wanted to do something to acknowledge the week in my own small way. Therefore, […]
Fundraising for charities or non-profit organisations is a challenge to say the least. It is hard work to raise money for organisations when you are up against so many charities now all competing for the public’s spare change. Eating disorder charities have the additional problem that eating disorders are considered by many in the general […]
In earlier posts, I have written about what neuroplasticity is (the ability of the brain to rewire and change) and why it is important for eating disorder recovery. Therefore, if you want to know more about neuroplasticity generally, have a read of my last post on the topic (here). In this post, I want to […]
When something stops being an option in your mind for long enough, you just stop seeing it. During my years of heavy restrictive eating, compulsive exercise and movement and painful isolation, my brain learnt and adapted to this being my new normal and stopped paying attention to the fact that anything else was a real […]
I have recently been reading an excellent book by Johan Hari called, “Lost Connections”. A book that I highly recommend if you have not read it. The book is predominantly about depression and the journey that the author, Johan Hari took to try to find an explanation for the causes of depression, beyond the explanation […]
Too frequently, I see people with eating disorders who are bravely attempting recovery from this all consuming, life changing and poorly understood illness, express shame. They feel ashamed that they have an eating disorder in the first instance, ashamed of what the illness has done to their life or the impact it has had on […]
‘Feast Always Follows Famine’…. These old sayings exist because they are true. And in eating disorder recovery when you think you are broken because you are hungry ALL the time and thoughts of food will never switch off, even when your stomach is stretched to a painfully full limit yet no amount of food that […]
A personal post… When I was going through my early stage of intense recovery last year, I stayed with my parents for a few months. And although I owned my recovery, my parents were there, providing emotional support and regrettably (for me now) taking the brunt of the pure, raw and very real emotions that […]
In eating disorder recovery, we frequently refer to the concept of brain rewiring as a fundamental part of the process. Unless we use the plasticity our brains have to change our habits and make recovery focused behaviours, thoughts and ultimately beliefs our norm, we won’t attain a lasting recovery. Frequently though when people talk about […]
In traditional treatment for eating disorders, meal plans are the ‘prescription’ every patient who walks through the door is given. They are the basis that treatment has been built upon for years. Wherever you live in the world and whether it is eating disorder treatment as an inpatient, out-patient, day patient or something in-between, meal […]
This post is a sharp reality hit about eating disorder recovery. I write this post because recognising how real and unavoidable this truth is, if full recovery is ever to actually be realised, took me far too many years in my recovery but it need not be so for others. And the truth I want […]
When it comes to eating disorder recovery today, we frequently refer to the concept of ‘rewiring our brains‘ into healthy recovery focused pathways in terms of our automatic behaviours relating to food, weight manipulation and other such things. I am currently doing a course in neuroscience and I have been learning about what we actually […]
This is a slightly different post today. I don’t usually share things like this but I am currently studying neuroscience and part of the course is about brain plasticity which of course is very relevant to eating disorder recovery. With an eating disorder, we have a brain that is hard wired to perform disordered behaviours, […]
RECOVERING NOMAD 