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Cuffing Season

Cuffing Season

By Shantay Williams
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
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From Surviving to Thriving: Choosing Self-Trust Over Self-Reliance

From Surviving to Thriving: Choosing Self-Trust Over Self-Reliance

By AZCC
Growing up, I learned that being independent was something to be proud of. While self-reliance can be a strength, it can also become a trap when it’s the only tool we use. Asking for help feels uncomfortable and often leads to a tug-of-war between the part of me that wants to power through on my own, and the part that longs to reach out but hesitates. That’s where self-trust makes the difference. Instead of proving we can carry it all, self-trust helps us know when to rest, when to ask for support, and when to let ourselves soften.
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Navigating the Social Landscape With ASD

Navigating the Social Landscape With ASD

By Maria Blahut
The Puzzle of Social Interactions Navigating the intricate social landscape can be a complex task, especially for children and teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Understanding and interpreting social cues can pose significant challenges for children and teens, impacting their social interactions and relationships. One primary difficulty individuals with ASD encounter involves grasping non-verbal cues,
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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