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Cuffing Season

Don’t Ignore the Red Flags

During the holidays people tend to rush into relationships and/or ignore red flags. Most people want to be in a relationship even if it is temporary. Usually one or both parties force a relationship even though they lack commonality to prevent being single for the holidays. People tend to give affection (love bomb) that makes the person feel wanted even though there may be little to no intellectual conversations because physicality is the only thing that is getting met. Love bombing is normally an unrealistic expectation of affection in the beginning that tends to become inconsistent. People can also tell people what they would like to hear to make the person feel seen, heard and loved. However, creating boundaries and setting expectations at the start of a relationship can help decrease unwanted experiences. Expressing wants and needs as an individual could help benefit a relationship, friendship or an uncommitted relationship and/or a situationship.

Resources

Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
  • Comfort, soothing, nurturance
  • Numbing, sedation, distraction
  • Attention, a cry for help
  • Discharge of tension, anger, rebellion
  • Predictability, structure, identity
  • Self-punishment or punishment of "the body"
  • Self-cleansing or self-purification
  • Protection or safety (through creation of a small or large body)
  • Avoidance of intimacy
  • Proof for self-blame instead of blaming others (for exampl, abusers)
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201703/eating-disorders-it-s-not-all-about-food