Unmasking Myself: Growing Up with Addiction and Choosing to Break Free from My Eating Disorder

The defining moment when I realized that I had to end my relationship with my eating disorder was when my life became unmanageable.

The Weight of Weight Stigma: When Your Body Becomes a Measure of Who You Are

We talk a lot about weight in relation to health. We talk much less about what it does to a person to live in a body that other people believe tells them something about who that person is.

What I Learned When I Stopped Blaming Parents

What changed my thinking about the tendency to blame parents in eating disorder treatment?
I’ve been doing clinical work (assessment, diagnosis, and treatment) for nearly 20 years. Early in my career, I approached parents the way many clinicians are trained to, often viewing them cautiously, as potential contributors to the problem.
Remember the older theories that blamed mothers for schizophrenia? Assumptions like those cast a long shadow across mental health. Even today, subtle messages can still lead clinicians to suspect parents may be the source of—or at least adding to—the issues.