White Picket Fence Counseling Center Newsletter Archives

Mindfulness and Meditation Resources for Your Journey

This month we’ve been talking about mindfulness and meditation, including a video about the benefits of meditation and how to open your mind to meditation. Here are a few recommended resources if you would like to learn more about these topics:

Books

• The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson
• Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth
• Natural Prozac by Joel Robertson
• Managing Stress by Brian Luke Seaward

Online resources

• Guided imagery recordings and other mindfulness and meditation resources from Health's Journeys by Belleruth Naparstek -
• Expert-recommended books about mindfulness and meditation at Shambhala Publications – including books by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Books and articles by Dr. Susan Albers
• Mindfulness mediation resources by Jon Kabot-Zinn

Recovery resources

For those in 12-step recovery, ask your sponsor or other recovering compulsive overeaters or food addicts about their experiences with Step 11. learning from others who have walked in your shoes can be a powerful and healing experience..

Related articles

A Few Mindful Moments Can Bring Powerful Healing

Open Your Mind to Meditation

What are the Benefits of Mindfulness and Meditation? (Video)

Yoga Resources for Recovery from Eating Disorders

If you would like a very gentle start to your yoga practice, I recommend the book yoganap: Restorative Poses for Deep Relaxation by Kristen Rentz. It contains restorative yoga poses, designed for complete relaxation. The author is a professional during the week and a yoga instructor on the weekend. Her instructions are easy to understand and the exercises are totally doable. There are even some poses you can do from your desk at work!

For further reading, you can explore the Yoga Journal website at http://www.yogajournal.com/.

Books and Resources for the Recovery Stage

Life Without Ed is a book that I recommend to anyone who struggles with anorexia or bulimia. By creating a persona named Ed, representing the eating disorder, author Jenni Schaefer teaches the reader how to separate the person from the problem. I heard Jenni speak at a conference of the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP) and what a gift it was to be in her presence – she's like a guru in this field and has helped so many people.

At the conference, Schaefer and co-presenter Michael Berrett, PhD spoke about how finding reasons to change helps eating disorder clients to reclaim their lives. Jenni also spoke more about the life she is continuing to build now that she is free of her own eating disorder, including writing a second book called, goodbye ed, hello me.

I also recommend Regaining Your Self, by Ira M. Sacker, M.D. Sacker is Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, New York University Medical Center and Bellevue Medical Center. He is also the Founder, President and Medical Director of HEED Foundation, Inc. (Helping End Eating Disorders), a not-for-profit organization, and the co-author of Dying to Be Thin. This book helps explain how an eating disorder can be your identity, and so recovery must include a grieving process for the loss of that identity. 

Recommended Resources for Recovery from Eating Disorders

 

 

Here are a few recommended resources from the team at White Picket Fence Counseling Center.

Erika suggests...

Stand Up, Speak Out, and Talk Back: The Key to Assertive Behavior. By: Robert ALberti and Michael Emmons

Super Girls Speak Out: Inside the Crisis of Overachieving Girls. By: Liz Funk

Let It Go!: Breaking Free from Fear and Anxiety, By: Anthony Evans

Girls Speak Out: Finding Your True Self, By: Andrea Johnston and Gloria Steinem

 

Janet suggests...

An article by Mike Robbins titled, "Speak Your Truth - 3 Tips for Communicating Authentically" on the Huffington Post website.

 

Sandee recommends...

Crucial Conversations - Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

The Power of Communication, an article on Gurze Books website in Eating Disorders Review, a publication for professionals

Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnston

 

These are just a few selections from our resources. We have many more to share with you! We are interested in your ideas, too. Let us know when we see you or contact us through the website.

Upcoming Groups and Workshops - New Starts and Ideas

Upcoming Groups and Workshops will help you get a jump start in your personal growth process.  Click here to view and download your own printable copy! Tell us what you think of the new workshops - let us also know what interests YOU!

Resources that will help you embrace your inner child and grow up

Books

Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families by Charles L. Whitfield

Growing Yourself Back Up: Understanding Emotional Regression by John Lee

Growing Up Again: Parenting Ourselves and Parenting Our Children by Connie Dawson and Jean Illsley Clarke

Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow by Judith Viorst

Support groups

Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA)

Journaling resources

Journal Writing: Your Therapist at Home (free report from White Picket Fence Counseling Center)

Spirit of Change (21-day journaling tool from White Picket Fence Counseling Center)

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

The Inner Child Workbook: What to do with your past when it just won't go away by Cathryn L. Taylor

 

We would appreciate learning about what has been helpful to you -- send us an email or give us a call.

Resources for emotional eating and food addiction

Following up our recent feature article about emotional eating and food addiction, here are some resources for dealing with both:

Recommended resources for emotional eating

Women, Food and God and Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth, as well as her other books

The Food and Feelings Workbook: A Full Course Meal on Emotional Health by Karen R. Koenig

Dieticians who specialize in eating disorders (our therapist team can provide personalized referrals for you)

Therapists who specialize in emotional eating

Eating Disorders Anonymous (EDA)

Recommended resources for food addiction

Books by Debbie Danowski, including a journal

Fat Boy, Thin Man by Michael Prager

Books by Kay Sheppard, including her daily meditation book

Writings and research by Dr. Mark Gold from the University of Florida

Overeaters Anonymous

Food Addicts Anonymous

Therapists who specialize in food addiction

 

At the White Picket Fence Counseling Center, we offer individual counseling as well as group therapy for treating emotional eating and food addiction. Group therapy can be a powerful experience, providing a comfortable environment to work on healing your relationship with food and body. Please contact us if you are interested. Some groups have immediate openings, and for others you will be placed on a waiting list.

 

P.S. Are you on Twitter? You can follow White Picket Counseling Center at http://twitter.com/wtpicketfence for interesting links, helpful resources and Center news. Are you concerned about your privacy? Instead of adding us to your public list of followers, you can add us to a private list.

Resources to get you connected

This month we have been talking about connection. Last week I introduced the practice of mindful eating as a way of healing your harmful mealtime practices, and opening yourself up to connecting with others.

 

There is still time to register for our November 2^nd workshop, and you can find out more at http://wpfcounseling.typepad.com/MindfulEatingGroup11-10.pdf.  If you are not able to join us this time, email me for a list of ideas to try on your own.

 

Susan Albers is an expert on this topic, and I recommend you check out the books and other resources on her website: http://www.eatingmindfully.com/bookoverview/index.html.

 

If you're looking to connect online with others who are recovering from an eating disorder, author Shannon Cutts (Beating Ana) coordinates a free mentor-mentee matching service and online help forum at http://www.mentorconnect-ed.org/.

Featured Resource

Recommended Resources   Discussing books with a group of like-minded people is wonderful, but did you know that reading can also be a powerful journaling tool? Simply read a paragraph, page, section, chapter or two and then write down your reflections about what you've read. For other journaling tips, download our free workbook, Journal Writing: Your Therapist at Home, and here is a 21-day spiritual journaling experience you can practice from the comfort of home.

Upcoming Events Next Book Discussion Group - Read about our next selection! Open to our clients and the community (Click for Printable Book Group Flyer)  At our next book group on September 29th (new date) we will be discussing Life Without Ed, by Jenni Schaefer (for more information about the book, see our previous newsletter article about transitions from April 2009). Another approach to letting go, this book takes the reader through the process of separating the eating disorder (Ed) from the person. This is a great read for individuals who struggle with any type of disordered eating, family members and friends.   Other ongoing groups include for those with anorexia or bulimia, monthly relapse prevention groups, emotional overeating therapy groups, food addiction recovery group and various workshops for family members and friends. We have several other groups in the works-- let us know if you have a special interest or do not see your group listed here.   For printable flyers of upcoming groups click here -- All groups flyer Family and Friends Workshop - this time focus is also on binge and compulsive overeating along with anorexia and bulimia Book Discussion Group - Life Without Ed Stories from Inside the Living Room  - we are very excited to introduce this opportunity to share stories of recovery and hear from other hope and helpful experience   Feel free to email our therapists if you would like to learn more about joining one of our groups or coming in for individual or family sessions:  Sandee Nebel, Liz Strong, or Tara Harvill. We also welcome your feedback about our newsletter on anything else you would like to share with us!

Recommended Resources

Distorted is an excellent book about the complex dynamic of a family dealing with an eating disorder. It was written by mother and daughter Lorri and Taryn Benson, who share their actual experiences with the daughter's anorexia and bulimia.
 
Al-anon (http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/) is a helpful resource, whether the person you are trying to help has an eating disorder, is an alcoholic, or has another issue. They also have a daily meditation book, Courage to Change.

We also recommend the following books to families dealing with an eating disorder:

Why She Feels Fat by McShane and Paulson
Surviving an Eating Disorder by Siegel and Brisman
Talking to Eating Disorders by Heaton and Strauss

Recommended resources

Beating Ana is a book about the healing power of mentorship in recovery from an eating disorder (http://www.key-to-life.com/book/). Author Shannon Cutts also coordinates a free mentor-mentee matching service and online help forum (http://www.mentorconnect-ed.org/ - link updated Oct 14, 2010).  I have just recently learned of her service, so if you have some feedback, I am most interested in hearing it from you (contact me here.)

Recommended resources

Here are just three books that will be helpful to family members of someone with an eating disorder and body image issues:

Andrea's voice – Silenced by bulimia, by Doris Smeltzer with Andrea Lynn Smeltzer
why she feels fat - Understanding Your Loved One's Eating Doisorder and How You Can Help, by Johanna Marie McShane, PhD & Tony Paulson, PhD
Reflections of me: Girls and body image, by Kris Hirschmann

As always, we are glad to make other suggestions for books that may be helpful to your situation in our sessions.