The articles & resources below are resources either in handout format by topic or approaches I reference in therapy. Please enjoy.

Intuitive Eating

As an addiction counselor, I have had the good fortune of coming across the Intuitive Eating Program, created by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA. These women are nutritionists from Beverly Hills. Their evolution from beginning with a traditional approach to weight-loss to this program is fascinating and makes complete sense. Basically this program helps people make peace with food, their weight, and their bodies. They state it as “a practical guide to make peace with food; free yourself from chronic dieting; and reach your natural weight. Their program also teaches people how to move back in the direction of “treasuring the pleasure” with food. Their website is intuitiveeating.com and their book is titled Intuitive Eating. I offer support and assistance with all eating disorders and/or addictions by integrating this intuitive eating philosophy.

Letting Go

Tuesdays with Morrie was a highly successful and inspirational book written about Morrie Schwartz, a professor who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His book was about his journey and was written by Mitch Albom. Morrie wrote his own book called Letting Go: Living While Dying. He offered invaluable advice for people who are experiencing disabling medical conditions; losses in everyday life; and terminally ill situations. I use this summary of some of the highlights from his book as a handout and helpful guideline to work with letting go. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for the letting go handout.

Breaking Cycles of Co-dependency or Women Who Love Too Much

I never resonated very well with the codependency checklist. I found it too hard to discern what was ordinary caring and what was codependent caring. But I knew one thing for sure. I had been raised to always stand on that slippery slope and clearly breach my own boundaries again and again. When I came across Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood, I found and heard her message loud and clear. After a two year study group with 4 women friends, using this book as our text and evolutionary outline, I successfully transformed my relationships to healthier boundaries and less blurred boundaries, as well as finding my husband, who was a “partner, not a project.” In a nutshell, Ms. Norwood states the women who love too much trait as (and I’m paraphrasing here): Women who love too much believe that if they just love hard enough, long enough, say the right words, that the project (not partner) they have chosen will live up to all their potential and be the man she wants him to be.” Right! Holding your breath the whole time…disappointed again and again. There is an incredible fable written by Edwin Friedman called The Bridge. It is excerpted here, one chapter, from a book he wrote called Friedman’s Fables. The Bridge is one of the most powerful handouts I have as women are learning to let their adult children stand on their own two feet….or women who take too much responsibility for everyone else’s life and happiness, to their own detriment. Read an exceprt of The Bridge.

Self-Care Checklist

Attending a Compassion Fatigue Workshop at Fairmont Hot Springs with Karl LaRowe, LCSW as the facilitator (he was wonderful) and we all learned many things about the helping profession problems when treating trauma survivors. He presented lots of useful tools for taking care of ourselves. One of the most useful tools he shared is a Qigong style he developed called Flow Motion. Visit Karl’s website at www.compassion-fatigue.com. One of the handouts that Karl gave us was the Self-Care Checklist, which was adapted from Saakvitne and Pearlman – Transforming The Pain, 1996 Norton. It works very well as a starting point to see where you may want to start implementing and addressing areas you currently leave out of your self-care. Download our self-care checklist.