How To Stay Calm When You're Anxious About Coronavirus (or anything else!)

These are uncertain and anxious times. It's no surprise that lots of folks are stress eating, binge eating, or using bulimia or restricting as a way to manage the anxiety of living through a global pandemic.

This is a scary time and we're all vulnerable. That's why I'm so pleased to share this guest post by Dr. Bob Rich, psychologist and author of 18 books. This excerpt from his latest book helps us feel calmer during a time of global anxiety.

Using his guided imagery techniques, you'll soon be feeling more relaxed and less anxious...

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Bob's book, From Depression to Contentment: A self-therapy guide:

Guided Imagery

One way of putting peace into your heart is by going on a little inner journey. Tell yourself a story, and live it within your imagination, as vividly as possible. 

Actually, this is the technique of hypnosis, so, good guided imagery is self-hypnosis. This technique takes you into a trance state, which is nothing mysterious. 

If you’ve ever felt as if no time had passed, but you’ve done something like reading a good book, driving from A to B, or doing the ironing, then you’ve been in a trance state.

Guided imagery can have up to six components, but it isn’t necessary to use all six.

Relaxation

Here is a relaxation script. Close your eyes, and imagine a source of Healing Light out in space. This can be almost anything: 

God, an angel, your long-dead, beloved grandmother, a glowing planet, or an entire galaxy. 

One client imagined it as the dog of her childhood, whose name had been Angel.

Invite this healing light to shine on top of your head. Feel it gently tingling its way in; relaxing, soothing.

Extend the area of healing light down so it’s like a cap over forehead, ears, back of the head.

Now it’s over your closed eyes, soothing, healing. Down your cheeks, over your mouth and jaw. Down to your neck, relaxing the strong muscles that carry the head.

Feel the beautiful healing light trickle into your shoulders, relaxing, soothing, smoothing, so your arms get heavy. Now into your upper arms on both sides... lower arms... all the way to your fingertips.

Next the upper body: chest, back, heart, lungs. Feel them glow.

The lower body: stomach muscles, lower back, all those wonderful organs within, glowing.

Then your buttocks... upper legs... lower legs... all the way to the tips of your toes.

Top to toe, glowing, healing, beautiful within.

Induction

This is a scene, vividly described using all the sense modalities, in which there is movement and progression. 

The script may invite you to walk in a valley between forested mountains, with a creek chattering on your left and grazing animals on your right, along a path to a waterfall. 

The path leads you behind the falling water, onto a stone ledge. Stone above your head, stone below your feet, stone at your back, the curtain of falling water in front. 

Water is the universal cleanser: it cleans away all hurt and pain. It is the universal solvent: dissolves all stress and trouble.

Or go down an elevator from the fiftieth floor, watching the numbers above the door going from 50 to 1 to ‘ground.’ 

A gentle downhill walk along a forest path is great.

People who have physical handicaps do best with a script in which they can stay still. A great one is to sit comfortably in the back of a rowboat. The person you trust most in all the world is behind you, out of sight but felt. This person is gently, slowly rowing. All your pain, suffering, worries are on the shore.

You can devise your own scripts, or check out my Healing Scripts CD at http://bobswriting.com/psych/heal.html

Safe place

This is somewhere you can feel absolutely the best. It can be a real place you love, or something made up in your imagination. 

Typical choices are a tropical beach, a mountain top, a comfortable seat by a waterfall, looking at a flower-covered cottage, being inside your childhood bedroom. You can remember, or construct, any environment you like.

But you don’t have to stick with realism. Especially if your body is not a nice place to be in because of pain, you can become someone or something else. Three of my favorites are:

*Being a trout in a rock pool, gently waving my fins so I stay motionless relative to the shore, my muscular, beautiful, shining body gently undulating, perfect for my world and my world perfect for me in the cool, crystal clear water, with the silver roof of the surface above me...

* Being an eagle.

My mighty wings are spread wide, motionless as I lazily circle in a thermal updraft, far above all the pain and worry down there on the ground. I can feel my clawed feet hidden within the feathers of my body, my spread tail steering me, the calm gaze of my powerful eyes scanning the ground far below. The wind is gently ruffling my feathers.

* Being a tree. This is similarly detailed. You can take perhaps ten minutes of creation, starting from the taproots and going up to the leaves. Once it’s complete, you can instantly return to it.

One middle-aged lady liked to sit on a fluff of a cloud. 

A man chose to look at a poster of a waterfall in Tasmania, then step through it so he could look at the falling water, hear the roar, feel the spray on his face. 

You can be in a rocking chair, with a toddler you love (who is perhaps an objectionable teenager now!) quietly playing at your feet.

Tie your safe place to feelings of serenity, safety, comfort, strength, power, self-control... whatever personal qualities will help you to cope with your current situation. 

I always make the suggestion that you will be able to access the safe place when out of the trance, at any time, while doing any other task. This is quite possible. 

You can be in the middle of a painful medical procedure, having an argument with someone, being cross-examined by a hostile barrister in court, or doing a complicated job, and at the same time feel yourself in the safe place, drawing strength and peace from it.

Work

You enter trance for a reason. This could be pain control, healing some illness or injury, dealing with distressing memories, or merely stress reduction.

Return

Take time when emerging from a trance, especially a deep one. If for any reason a trance is interrupted, you can develop a headache, be disoriented, and be affected by suggestions made but not cancelled. In that case, you need to return into the trance, and come out slowly.

When using guided imagery with a person, my invariable script is to slowly count backward from 5. At each count, I draw the subject’s attention to some aspect of the situation: the feel of the chair against the body, breathing, the sounds around, etc.

You can record your total script, then play it for yourself, or just go through the concepts in your mind. The exact words are irrelevnt.

Enjoy!

Dr. Bob Rich

Bob Rich, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in psychology in 1972. He worked as an academic, researcher and applied scientist until "retiring" the first time at 36 years of age. Later, he returned to psychology and qualified as a Counseling Psychologist, running a private practice for over 20 years. During this time, he was on the national executive of the College of Counselling Psychologists of the Australian Psychological Society (APS), then spent three years as a Director of the APS. He was the therapist referrers sent their most difficult cases to. Bob retired in 2013, but still does pro bono counseling over the internet. This has given him hundreds of "children" and "grand-children" he has never met, because many of these people stay in touch for years. His major joy in life is to be of benefit to others, which is why he wrote a book that's in effect a course of therapy. You can find out lots about Dr. Bob Rich at his blog, Bobbing Around https://bobrich18.wordpress.com 

The Impact Of Social Praise by Candice Sand

Hey there, this is Dr. Nina writing to introduce you to my amazing guest blogger, singer-songwriter Candice Sand.  As a mom of two daughters, I've noticed that they are constantly complimented on their appearance.  I tell my girls, "It's nice to be beautiful, but what really matters is that you're smart, kind and thoughtful."

Friends with sons don't share my experience.  Their boys are told things like, "Good job, buddy."  "Way to throw the ball, big guy."  

Girls are praised for their appearance.  Boys are praised for their accomplishments.

How does this impact eating disorders?  Candice shares her thoughts about  how compliments and social praise influenced the development of her eating disorder.   She leaves us with some "food for thought" about the legacy and implications of seemingly-innocuous praise.

Take it away, Candice!


The Impact Of Social Praise
by Candice Sand

The first thing that crossed my mind when I was asked to be a guest writer for Dr. Nina’s blog was that in the many times I've discussed my eating disorder, in interviews, articles or in private conversations, the focus was usually around the process of recovery.

The circumstances that caused and continually fuelled my eating disorder were rarely brought up. Every individual’s triggers and motivations can differ greatly but in an effort to address something new, and which I believe is critically important, I've decided to share one of the conclusions I’ve drawn (after a lot of reflection with my former and trusted psychologist) in what I believe kept my eating disorder alive for 15 years.

I know now that it was all around me my entire life. Constant messages being delivered to me about what my body “should” look like. It wasn’t just media and magazines filling my head with images, although that was a solid foundation for my eating disorder to be built upon.

A major factor in developing and keeping my eating disorder thriving was consistent social reinforcement that I should strive to be thin.

This reinforcement came from the majority of people around me: everyone from classmates to a number of adults and role models in my life. Growing up I had a sneaking suspicion that the popular girls in school were popular because they were skinny. Fed up with being pudgy, somewhat friendless, and the target of weight related taunting I decided to test that theory by becoming bulimic during summer break when I was 12 years old.

I returned to school that fall 25 pounds lighter (and significantly taller thanks to a well-timed growth spurt) and when everyone suddenly wanted to be my friend my suspicion was proven true.

Skinny meant popular and popular girls had it all. All the friends, fun and attention from boys.

Skinny meant a better, easier life. Moving forward from this point, my memory is marked with certain moments when I received direct praise for my size, all the while I was essentially starving myself.

That same fall after I first became bulimic, a teacher stopped me in the hall to say “you really stretched out this summer, you look great!” Years later, while working a retail job during which I suffered through a brutal crash diet my district supervisor remarked on how tiny I was, and asserted “if you keep looking like that you can have anything you want in this world.”

Fast forward a few more years to a serving job I had when I first moved to Toronto. I was on my strictest diet, barely eating and working out six days a week. I was becoming dangerously underweight when one day my manager complimented me: “Have you lost weight? You look amazing!”

Each time the only thoughts I can remember having were “it’s working, keep going.” There are countless examples and much more that I could comment on. For instance, the way women learn they should want to be wanted by men and how that also feeds into the incessant striving for the body ideal.

I could talk about how I fell into commercial modelling and how I can say with complete honesty that the skinnier I was, the more jobs I booked. The truth is, all the while I knew I was hurting myself and that hiding my habits was a clear indication that what I was doing was harmful.

However at the same time, the skinnier I was the more social praise I received.

I’m not writing this to place blame or dodge responsibility for my choices and actions. I’m writing this to share what I honestly believed the world was telling me: that my size really did matter, and that I should want to be attractive and the only way to be attractive is to be skinny.

There is so much emphasis on how we look and it is so common that we rarely see how very dangerous and all consuming that focus can be. I hope I can bring some awareness to the impact that focus can have, and more importantly I hope for a day where in our everyday interactions with family, friends and even strangers, we can reach for something deeper than each others appearance to strike up conversations with or compliment each other on.

To read Candice’s true story of recovery, go to www.nedic.ca/CandiceSand

ABOUT CANDICE:   

Pop recording artist and songwriter Candice Sand is originally from Saskatchewan, Canada but is now based out of Toronto. Her music has been praised for it’s intriguing lyrics, infectious hooks, and her powerful vocal performance.

Candice’s most recent album (“Against Concrete Walls”) was co-written and produced by the Grammy nominated & Juno award winning production team Kuya Productions INC. The album also features guest performances by Juno award winning multi-platinum artists JRDN and Choclair.

In Sept 2017, she released her latest single “Closed Doors” which was written from Candice’s personal experience of overcoming an eating disorder she struggled with for most of her life.  The single also appears in the documentary series “Something’s Gotta Give”, which aims to raise awareness about eating disorders and promote recovery.  Candice is also interviewed in the documentary.

As she works in the studio on her new project, Candice stays active as a performer throughout Canada and the US. To date, she has completed 3 tours which took her across Canada and currently, she takes the stage for 100+ performances annually.  

Stay tuned and watch out for this girl... so much more to come!

Listen to “CLOSED DOORS” here:

YouTube: https://youtu.be/uupYga_dBlE

Spotify: http://spoti.fi/2jvL3ZC

Apple Music: http://apple.co/2wnSKSD

Soundcloud: http://bit.ly/2fogwZm

iTunes: http://apple.co/2f2LOI7

Connect with Candice:

www.CandiceSand.com

www.instagram.com/CandiceSand

www.facebook.com/CandiceSand

www.youtube.com/CandiceSand

www.twitter.com/CandiceSand

The Tyranny of Free Food

I'm pleased to share an essay by novelist JoAnna Novak.  She is the author of I Must Have You (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017) and also Noirmania (forthcoming from Inside the Castle 2018).  I’m thrilled that she has contributed to Make Peace With Food.  Here's a peek into our conversation about her work.

Dr. Nina:  JoAnna, can you share what inspired you to write this essay?

JoAnna: I attended an orientation recently--it was a morning thing--and the host brought bagels. That reminded me how much pressure even the presence of food can create for someone with an eating disorder.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that I'd skipped many, many, many orientations just to avoid negotiating this particular stress.

It's a stress that always makes me feel guilty, too, because of course many people would be grateful to be given food; that guilt sort of exacerbates the stress, which is really what I was trying to capture in this essay. 

Dr. Nina:  I think a lot of readers on this blog can relate to those feelings of guilt and stress over food.  Please tell us about your new book.

JoAnna:  I Must Have You is a novel, a coming-of-age story set in 1999, in the aftermath of the heroin chic craze, long before anyone was talking body positivity.

Chronicling three women's interconnected eating disorders, the book is about middle school, girl crushes, anorexia, drugs, first kisses, and hunger--hunger for friendship, hunger for solvency, hunger for a firm grasp of one's self.

Dr. Nina:  Thanks, JoAnna.   That hunger for connection to self and others is something that so many people try to fill or express with food.  What I appreciate about your essay is that it’s a rare glimpse into the actual experience of dealing with food:  thinking about it, ruminating, obsessing and perseverating.   It’s a powerful piece and I think it will resonate with lots of people.

TRIGGER WARNING!  This essay describes food in detail and may be triggering.

The Tyranny Of Free Food 

by JoAnna Novak

I don’t want the mini Danish with its gluey bull’s eye. The bready, pre-sliced bagel, cut-side shining its hole up at the fluorescent lights, ringing a tub of cream cheese flanked by plastic knives.

I don’t want to do communal fruit, a spree of honeydew, the jelly packets, Welch’s or Smuckers or Sysco, the butter bonnets, the honey sticks, even the coffee poses questions: decaf or regular, the organic regular or the fair trade regular, cream or milk or soy, sugar, raw sugar, splenda, the green one, the blue one, the stirrer, the scald of exposure when there are no lids and the person standing next to me, a familiar face who, in this context, wobbles like a hologram of a visitor from another dimension, remarks, “Huh. You take it black.”

 You warrior, you, I tell myself. You tough.

 But are you ninja enough to navigate free lunch? More pinwheels than a 1950s block party, wrap after wrap, salmon pink means tomato and mossy green means spinach and that undercooked graham cracker tone is whole wheat, a matte wrap rainbow to distract you from the fact that, whole, every one of those tortillas is calories-enough for a decent meal, and now here they are, the wraps, halved or quartered, or maybe they’re in thirds, and they sprout toothpicks wearing Christmas-light bright cellophane, which makes the whole affair a little trippy, not to mention fatty, what with the roast beef and the ham and the American and Swiss, slices thin as blotting papers in the roll-ups, which you must pick up with indelicate, ineffective, ridiculously gilt silver serving tongs. 

The iceberg salad. The spinach salad, dicey with turds of goat cheese. The fun-size chips and their fun-size bags and their fun-size crunch, an aural tattoo, marking you as a chip-eater, indulgent, fun, when they’re the only thing with a nutrition label in the room. 

You could take a brownie, but it would need salt, and if you salt your brownie you call attention to yourself, the incongruity of your meal, which, if it includes a brownie can’t include “real food.” You could take a cookie and pick out the chocolate chips or the macadamia nuts, but see “you could take a brownie.” See “coffee: you take it black.”

 Free food is supposed to be a gift, a grace, a sign that the world is not all business. It’s in the classroom, the boardroom, the backroom at funerals, at picnic tables, served poolside, in homes and offices.

You are supposed to be thankful. You are supposed to be tickled. You are an employee or a poor grad student subsisting on the myth of subsisting on ramen or a mourner or a daughter or a son or a boss or a volunteer at the literacy center downtown or an idle shopper at Whole Foods on Local Foods Friday.

 “Wanna try Spicy Mo’s Jalapeno Jack on a cracker?”

The only thing lonelier than navigating the minefield of free food is overhearing the way eaters demonstrate they are pleased by it. Their voices bounce with the enthusiasm of precocious child actors. “Mm, this is actually delicious!” “The vegetarian wrap is really good!” “I do love pesto!” “I have to have a cookie—ok, one more! It’s here, so I’m eating!”

You are supposed to appreciate the gesture. Have seconds. Take home leftovers. Fill up. If the food is free, it’s also over-ordered.

Because isn’t there always someone like you, like me? Someone who hears that the first hour of an event is going to be group breakfast—and skips that first hour? Someone who invents conference calls or urgent emails so they can postpone grabbing a plate? Someone with jumpy eyes, whose smile keeps wobbling into a frown? What’s the worst part? Skipping the meal and being alone as you sit and watch people eat? Taking the plunge and eating yourself?

That’s what no one tells you about free food: it’s not free. It’s not free of calories and, if you’ve had an eating disorder, it’s not free of stress. Because free food asks the eater to perform their diet. Who do you want to be to your colleagues, your new classmates, your fellow grievers? You eat nothing and stamp your hungry foot, plead some unseen meal that’s filling you up, say you’re not hungry. 

 You gobble a heap, the whole spread, and field comments about your appetite, your metabolism, your body, where do you put it, your sweet tooth. 

  You build a plate by meal plan, feel the hollowness of scant portions at a table of the ravenous, the regular, the relaxed. 

  You excuse yourself after and puke even if you haven’t puked after anything in years. You try to meditate in plain sight. 

  You make space for your mind to run laps around the dining room while everyone doubles up on dessert.

JoAnna Novak is the author of I Must Have You (Skyhorse Publishing 2017) and Noirmania (forthcoming from Inside the Castle 2018). She has written fiction, essays, poetry, and criticism for publications including Salon, Guernica, BOMB, The Rumpus, Conjunctions, and Joyland. She received her MFA in fiction from Washington University and her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy. She lives in Los Angeles. ​  Find out more at www.joannanovak.com

The TRUTH About Eating Disorders

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Alex Wehrley of Focus Magazine.  We had a conversation about what eating disorders are - and are not!  Check it out!!



Interested in the book?  Get it here>>>  Food For Thought

Your Holiday Survival Guide

It's that time of year again.  The holidays are upon us.   Does that bring you joy?

Or dread?

Maybe you feel a combination of both happiness and anxiety.  If you feel conflicted about the holidays, you're not alone. 

Why are the holidays so difficult for so many people?

TV commercials and magazine ads start showing happy, loving, close families gathered over a table loaded with food.  Everyone is beaming and grateful for their wonderful lives. 

If that’s your reality, consider yourself lucky.  But for many people, if not most, that’s a fantasy world that’s not even close to reality.

If it seems as if everyone in the world is living a perfect Hallmark holiday life, full of peace, love and happiness - and then there’s YOUR family, that can be painful.

The contrast can be really difficult especially if you think the picture perfect image is how it’s supposed to be, and it’s just not.  

That’s upsetting, which leads to overeating or bingeing (or other forms of disordered eating) as a way to numb or distract from the pain. 

Or, because these families are often shown having meals together, eating, overeating or bingeing can be a means of “feeling” like you’re part of the picture perfect holiday family.  If you can't have the family, at least you've got the food.

And what about the food?

The holidays start with Thanksgiving (at least they do in the United States) and Thanksgiving is often referred to as “National Binge Day” – the whole day is a tribute to excess. 

You’re expected to overeat.  It’s even considered bad manners not to try everything on the table.  If you struggle with food, this can be extremely challenging.

Another problem with the holidays is everyone talks about food.  A lot.

Some relatives get offended if you don’t try everything.  Someone will say, “I know you’re watching your weight but you’re just GOT to try my pecan pie.  One bite won’t hurt you.  Go on, have some.”

And then there are the people who watch every bite they eat – and every bite YOU eat.

They say, “Oh, I shouldn’t have this.”  Or worse, “Do you think you should eat that?  Do you really need that?”

All this focus on food can lead to a lot of stress – you’re anxious, upset, and sad – and if you don’t have other strategies to deal with those stressful emotion, that makes you more vulnerable to using food to cope. 

So it can be a vicious cycle.  The key is to learn to express feelings in words, instead of behavior.

How do you stop the cycle?

People often think they are triggered by food but they’re not.  They’re usually triggered by situations and experiences that are painful or upsetting, and make them want to turn to food to cope – to numb, or distract from what’s upsetting them.

Start by asking yourself some questions:

What is the most difficult part of the holidays?  Food?  Family?  Lack of family?

  

Are you emotionally hungry, lonely, upset, or maybe even jealous?  

What is eating "at" you the most?

When you deal with and process those situations and feelings directly, you won’t use food as a coping strategy.  

What is my top survival tip for the holidays?

Be a social anthropologist.    

When you're watching and observing, you're not a participant.  Observing means creating some distance and that distance can be very illuminating.




Hearing your grandparents criticize your sister or brother or cousin, helps you see you learned to criticize yourself. 

When you realize that your mother apologizes for every bite she eats, you’ll recognize how you learned to feel guilty for every bite you take.

It doesn’t matter whether you celebrate Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanza, or nothing, pay attention to what’s going on around you.

What do you like about them?    What do you dislike?

What do you appreciate?   What do you wish was different?

Give yourself permission to hold the positive and negatives about others – it’ll make it easier to hold both about yourself.

When you’re observing others, you don’t feel as much under observation.  That makes you feel less self-conscious, and you feel better.  When you feel better, you’re less likely to use food to cope.

Add some gratitude!

It’s the holidays, and ultimately the holidays are about gratitude, so be grateful.  Think of one thing you appreciate; whether it’s a person or a situation, because hanging onto one good thing can keep you going when things are challenging.