Excerpt from The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia

As you think about bulimia nervosa, it’s important that you understand that each of the symptoms interacts with every other symptom. Typically, when you’re struggling with bulimia, your weight and body image have a very strong effect on how you feel about yourself. Therefore, if you believe your body isn’t perfect, you then decide that you’re not a valuable person, and you feel bad about yourself—embarrassed, guilty, angry, sad, and so on. This self-invalidation and negative self-evaluation leads you to feel compelled to change how you look so that you can feel better about yourself. Through the messages of Western culture (for instance, “You’re not in the healthy weight range” or “You look different from the women in magazines or on television”), you have learned to invalidate yourself and now believe that losing weight is one powerful way you can feel better.

by guest blogger Margo C. Watt, Ph.D., co-author of Overcoming the Fear of Fear

Like death and taxes, everyone is familiar with fear and anxiety. Speaking in public, watching a scary movie, or meeting a bear in the woods; all can elicit physical sensations that accompany feelings of fear and anxiety – racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating, and dizziness. Although we often use the words "fear" and "anxiety" interchangeably, they are not exactly the same thing. Fear, for example, is the emotion we feel when we encounter a clear and present danger such as meeting a bear in the woods. Anxiety, on the other hand, is what we feel when we anticipate a fearful situation or event in the future (anticipating the bear in the woods).

Excerpt from The Binge Eating & Compulsive Overeating Workbook

Melinda, a patient, says of her binge eating disorder, “I eat and eat and I know that I should stop, but I can’t. I eat so much that I want to throw up, my stomach hurts, and I have to lie down. Sometimes, I feel like if I don’t eat everything I can get my hands on, I’ll explode.” Her words highlight the anguish that many people feel when food controls their lives.

Both binge eating disorder (BED) and compulsive overeating (CO) are conditions in which food is typically used for unhealthy reasons. People with BED or CO tend to feel powerless, and often lose hope that their behavior can change.

Excerpt from Biting Anorexia

That’s it. That’s it. My hair is stuck to my cheeks with tears. A whole part of me has finished. A feeling of heady liberation and utter redundancy. Speech night: over. School: over. My speech as head prefect to two thousand parents and girls and teachers: over. To all those who failed to support me, who told me to just give up and drop out of school to save myself the effort, who cared more about asking me to “pull up my socks” than how I was, as I stumbled, bone-thin and gray, down school corridors… this speech was as much for them as it was for anyone else.

Excerpt from The Well-Ordered Home

Multitasking is that wonderful ability to per form several tasks at once. It’s a key skill in house-hold and life management. There are examples every where—some good, some not so good. Talking on the phone while at the gym. Putting on makeup while driving. While it is an effective technique, like any thing, it can be over done. Here are two types of multitasking.