Eating Disorder Hope Blog Update

To our dear Visitors:

We wish to thank you for your continued support and loyalty to Eating Disorder Hope.  Presently, our blogs are temporarily under construction as we seek to improve, enhance, and develop greater resources.  During this time, blog posts will be kept to a minimum, but we excitedly look forward to offering you increased resources in the very near future.  In the meantime, please follow Eating Disorder Hope on Facebook for up-to-date articles, resources, and support for eating disorders or access our website at www.eatingdisorderhope.com.  We thank you for your patience during this time and hope you will continue to choose Eating Disorder Hope for your one stop resource for eating disorder treatment information and recovery tools.  We look forward to continually serving you!

Blessings,

Eating Disorder Hope

Blue, Blue Christmas

For millions of Americans, the holiday season can succumb to overwhelming feelings, including depression, loneliness, stress, and anxiety.  Mental health experts maintain that depression tends to climax during the holiday season, affecting an estimated 17.6 million Americans.  Financial constraints and worries can be one of the many contributing factors to the “holiday blues”.  The National Mental Health Association has offered several suggestions for ways to effectively cope with stress and depression during the holiday season such as enjoying activities that are free or don’t require purchasing anything.  Please continue reading here to learn more about ways to effectually manage stress during this holiday season.

What factors during the holiday season contribute to stress or depression?  How do you attempt to manage any stress you might experience during this time?  

Black Friday Advertisements Already!

What's a compulsive shopper to do in times like these? There is so much pressure to buy, save, prepare, shop ahead, relieve stress, it is unrealistic to rely on the outside world for any sense of containment over compulsive spending. Of course, I had already been encouraging you to rely on your inner self but if your inner self is still fragile, receiving e mails targeting your weakest link can be very challenging, to say the least. However, it really is an opportunity to develop a foundation of safety for yourself by resisting certain compulsive and impulsive acts. Even if you have to suffer anxiety and feel the wanting in the meantime, you create a stability that you need in order to continue on a path free of debt and compulsive spending that gives you HOPE! The stability, in case you are wondering, comes from feeling the feelings that surface when you do not allow yourself to shop, spend, and indulge. Feelings are meant to be felt, that's it. There is nothing to "do" in the face of feelings other than to feel them through. I know this may feel like torture for some of you, like a third degree burn victim, your emotional skin is thin. But, in trying to heal your burn, skin needs to grow and your foundation of feeling needs to grow and it grows through experiences.

Are You A Compulsive Shopper?

Check out this interview with associated content and post your responses here!

Know~ing Your Worth - A Course in Personal and Financial Abundance

Know~ing Your Worth - A Course in Personal and Financial Abundance

An online course to help women find abundance both financially and emotionally. Perhaps it could offer motivation, structure and hopefulness to many who are feeling lost and out of control with regards to their personal and financial lives. There really is no separation between personal and financial lives since our life is singular. Finding some balance, meaning and insight can most likely be helpful across the board, however you may choose to do it. Reading blogs, attending workshops, seeking therapy are all ways to learn and grow and finding the way for you, personally, is part of the journey!

The Repetition of Compulsive Shopping

The repetitious quality of compulsive shopping is part of the addictive process. By doing something, like shopping, over and over again with the hope of a different result is in large part why someone would repeatedly shop (till you drop) or develop credit card debt, not just once, but several times. The repetition that is involved in compulsions needs to be understood and dealt with in order to overcome a compulsion and resolve the need to re-engage in the behavioral process. It can be compared to dieting. For instance, if dieting were effective in helping someone overcome compulsive eating then the dieting industry would be out of business. Dieting only curbs the behavioral addiction to eating temporarily by focusing on the "food" rather than the "eating process". The same would be true for a budget for a compulsive spender. Incorporating a budget to get out of debt will only curb the spending temporarily by focusing on "money" rather than the "spending of money". Without looking at and trying to understand the process of compulsive spending the repetitious quality of the shopping will once again grab hold and provide the emotional glue that holds the person together. It is imperative to incorporate both behavioral change, such as a budget, as well as understanding the behavioral and emotional process of compulsions to achieve and sustain long term change.

Shopping for a Sense of Self

Compulsive Spending is being taken more seriously as a true problem especially since the economy has taken a turn for the worse and people are looking more honestly at how they budget, rationalize, and manage money. One, of many, purposes of over spending that seems to surface is that shopping behavior leads to a sense of self. For those who have this connection breaking with compulsive shopping is going to be a hurdle because the purpose that the shopping serves links directly to identity. To abandon a behavioral process that is so meaningful psychologically can be devastating and troubling to a person especially if it's meaning is not acquired. Helping people who have attached identity with shopping involves incorporating the process of weaning in therapy. Being realistic about what is possible and likely and creating promising and doable time lines helps a person feel understood and acknowledged. Developing a weaning process is specialized and specific to that person. It is like weaning a baby from a bottle and there will be pain and frustration in tolerating the new freedom and estrangement from the source of "food". As a therapist, holding the emotional reactions for the patient is essential in helping him or her go through the process while it also teaches the patient how to manage and hold their own feelings for the future. A bridge is built. This may be harder to do with out the assistance of a therapist, but it can give hope and understanding to the deeper underpinnings of compulsive shopping and why breaking with it can be so difficult. Most importantly, it will not leave the person stripped of their identity but rather help them continue to develop where the shopping interrupted their sense of self.