Session 165: Let's Chill With the Quarantine 15 Jokes

Published Jul 22, 2020, 7:00 AM
Dr. Brooks and I discussed the link between trauma and eating disorders, why there has been a spike in disordered eating during the pandemic, how to recognize if your relationship with food has become unhealthy, and the role that social media plays in eating disorders.

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M hm okay. Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr joy hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session one of the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast. By now, you've likely heard the jokes about gaining the quarantine fifteen. But what you might not have heard is why jokes and messages like this can be harmful. So today we're gonna chat about it. For this conversation, I was joined by Dr Gail Brooks. Dr Brooks is Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer for the Room Crew Center. She leaves the Room Crew Clinical Excellence Board and the Clinical Training Department, and has clinical and administrative oversight responsibility for Renfrew's residential facility in Florida and for the non residential sites in California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, and Tennessee. For the past thirty years, she's treated patients from diverse backgrounds who suffer from eating disorders. Dr Brookes served as the eating disorder specialists in the HBO film Thin, has appeared on Good Morning America and has been featured in a variety of notable publications. A frequent presenter at conferences and workshops, Dr Brooks speaks on topics such as the treatment of the complex patient eating disorders and cultural diversity, the interplay between eating disorders and trauma, and eating disorders in midlife women. Dr Brooks is a member of the i a e d P Board of Directors and former co chair of the Academy of Eating Disorders Diversity Special Interest Group. Dr Brooks and I discussed the link between trauma and eating disorders, why there's been a spike in disordered eating during the pandemic, how to recognize if your relationship with food has become unhealthy, and the role that social media plays in eating disorders. If you notice something that resonates with you while enjoying our conversation. Please share with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in session. Here's our conversation. So muld be so much for joining us today, Dr Brooks, Oh, thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yes, I'm very pleased to have you joined us today because I know we have been hearing lots and lots of you know, jokes that aren't actually funny. I'm about like the quarantine fifteen, and you know, people thinking about their bodies a lot, and we know a lot of our like self care strategies in terms of going to the gym, and all of those things have been upended, and so it feels like there's just a lot more attention maybe than usual around like eating and body image. And so I'm glad that you were able to join us today for this conversation. Yes, well, you're so right. I think all of those things that are impacting all of us, but in particular people with eating disorders, I think are are really struggling right now. Absolutely. So. I know that the National Eating Disorder Association's instant messaging service has seen a seventy percent increase in volume traffic since the pandemic begin and I know that they're is a large connection between eating disordered behaviors and trauma. So I wanted to hear if you could talk a little bit about, you know, what you think is really being triggered for people right now. Yeah. Well, I think in so many ways, we're probably all being triggered by the crisis that we're in. You know. I think the fact that we are in the middle of this COVID crisis, and also what's happening, you know, sort of with racial inequity and all of that. I think it's causing a lot of heightened emotion among us all, you know, in particular, depression and anxiety, as well as other types of mental health conditions like eating disorders, disordered eating and even body image dissatisfaction are really on the rise over the last several months. And I think there are several factors that impact that. The fact that we were sort of very quickly thrown into isolation, you know, being asked to you know, stay at home, really separate from our connections, and also spend a lot of time around family members, which I think can be sometimes a mixed blessing, but you know, we're really social beings, and I think when we don't have connection that that really does make it much more difficult for us to deal with the stressors in life and to also just deal with with any sort of trauma that we may have along with that. I think the fears that we have around our own health and the fear of contagion and anxiety about death. I don't know about you, but I don't know that I ever really thought about death as much as I have in the last several months, thinking, you know, it could happen to me just as much as it could happen to someone else. And so I think that can certainly be very sort of scary. If you have an eating disorder and and you know, are struggling just with sort of how you're feeling about your body, I think all of these pressures are going to kind of be magnified in many ways, and the way it oftentimes comes out is in the sort of complex, problematic relationship that a person might have with food and with their body. So if you take somebody who's maybe struggling with arexia, which is really you know, intentional sort of self starvation that you know there, you tend to be pretty rigid and wanting to have certain foods available and whatnot. And and if in the pandemic you're having to stay home or grocery stores don't have the foods that you're sort of rigidly, sort of attached to, that that can become very uh frightening. You can feel very out of control, and just the uncertainty of life I think can really impact an individual and they may choose to really not want to eat because of that. I think more commonly what we're seeing is is with in the areas of bulimia and binge eating disorder, when someone is sort of home seven the routine is disrupted, you may have very limited opportunities to go out and even buy food, be more sedentary that this you know, understandably often times skills results and some changes in our body. You know that we may begin to gain weight, which is again when we're going through such disruption, it's no wonder that our bodies may also go through some changes in uh with this as well, and that this can lead to increased feelings of shame and depression and you know, maybe sleeping all day or really having a very difficult time with routine, and that that can lead to more binge eating and engaging and purging behavior. Perhaps, Um, so these are some of the things that I think we're really sort of impacting an individual right now. Yeah, And Dr Brooks, I'm wondering if you can talk about how we might know when something has risen to the level of a concern. Right. So, you know a lot of people like stress eat or you know, we talked about emotion no eating, right right, so, I think it can be hard to know where the line is, where it is just Okay, this is how I'm coping versus maybe I need to talk with someone about this. Can you say a little bit more about how we might know when it's a concern? Yeah? Yeah, you know, I think we can really sort of think about this on a continuum because probably all of us at times that emotionally eat, or maybe there are times when you don't eat when you're feeling really pretty stressed. Those are not unusual kinds of reactions. But when it comes to the point where it's really a focus, and it's more of an obsessive focus, an obsessive focus on weight, that weight and controlling of weight is becomes something that you're thinking about all the time and engaging in behaviors to manage it. If you're feeling very depressed about your body and really focused on, you know, comparing yourself a lot to others, and it's really beginning to disrupt your your daily functioning and your feelings about yourself. Um, that's certainly a sign that it's it's reached the point of of an eating disorder or possibly an eating disorder. And if you're having medical symptoms in relation to either how you're you're eating or not eating, that that also can be you know, certainly a clear sign as well. Yeah, and Dr Brooks, I know that one of the common misconceptions is that eating disorders only happen to young people, right, so you know, maybe if you're being yon high school age, you're not likely to develop it eating disorder. We know, of course that that is not true, and so I'm curious to hear can you share a little bit about how eating disorders develop? Yeah, you know, I think for so long the belief was that eating disorders were like an urban, suburban white girl's disease. And what we have come to understand through research and really just asking the appropriate questions, is that eating disorders cross you know, racial, lined gender, age, that It's not just you know, young, a young teenager who develops in eating disorder. You know, we can have complicated relationships with food at any age really and oftentimes I mean, I think what really sort of fuels and eating disorder is really how you relate to your emotions, and that when someone is having a hard time tolerating certain emotions like let's say, anxiety or sadness, depression, shame, whatever, that we look for things to help kind of numb that, to somehow make that less intense, and food can be a way of doing that, either eating or not even both things can result in you being able to somehow distance yourself or to reduce down the intensity of an emotion that feels intolerable. So oftentimes, what will you know? There are never several factors that can lead to developing and eating disorder, some of which you know, we believe sort of happened in childhood. But I think what's probably more important is what keeps in eating disorder going once you have it, And what keeps it going is the continual avoidance of really experiencing your full range of emotions that you are engaging in behaviors to really dampen down your emotional experience. So every time you start to feel, whether it's that anticipatory anxiety or sadness, depression, loneliness, that there's this feeling of I can't tolerate this, it's going to kill me. I need to do some thing to make it go down. And when they turn to food or turn to restriction, um, turned to exercise, purging, these are always to try to sort of reduce down the intensity of emotion. So this may be a good place to kind of talk about then what treatment looks like. Right, So if if a part of what keeps it going is not allowing yourself to experience this range of emotion, but that's the thing you're most afraid of, right, Um, of course there's that is where the treatment happens. So so how do you bridge that gap between somebody who feels really uncomfortable experiencing their emotions and getting them to a place where they can tolerate it a little better so that maybe food does not become the answer. Yeah, yeah, I think that's really really where the rubber kind of meets the road a bit here, is that you have to first understand the role of emotions and the fact that emotions are adaptive, it's important that we feel them, and all emotions are important. You know, people tend to want to only feel the good emotions and not have to feel the bad emotions, but in reality, whole emotions sort of a purpose, and that if we don't allow ourselves to sort of experience all of those emotions, that they end up then sort of developing sort of a vicious cycle of maladaptive behavior. More behavior that's not is functioning to not feel, but it doesn't really function well in our lives. And so I think treatment needs needs to first include just understanding the role of your emotions that they play and like for example, if you're feeling anxious about COVID, what anxiety does is that it prompts us to prepare, to to get focused and to prepare for what may be coming. And it's that sort of feeling that we have in our stomach and that sort of itcheness that we have in our body, and there's a purpose for that. That might mean then that you focus on the fact that you need to be washing your hands and wearing a mask and socially distancing. But if it goes you sort of you know, if that then becomes something that you get so terrified about that you can't allow yourself to feel this emotion. You might then start to really isolate yourself in ways where you're not at all going out and being with people and even in a socially distant way or through any sort of whether it's through the telephone or whatever. You may be cutting down your social connections because you don't want to feel that anxiety that you feel um right now. So I think a part of its sorting about the importance of emotions allowing yourself to actually feel them. So one of the things we do in our treatment model is that we really ask people to lean into difficulty emotion rather than trying to distract from it, you know, trying rather than trying to do something to not feel it. And that what happens when you lean into the emotion is that you discover that emotions have a natural life cycle. They kind of um rise rapidly and then sort of peak and then they sort of stuffcumb down slowly on their own. And that happens in a matter of you know, seconds to minutes to minute that you can the natural life cycle of that particular emotional experience you're having. But most people don't sort of allow themselves to feel that whole, you know, cycle of the emotion and instead begin to do things to to bring it down or to isolate, to really to avoid it. And what that does is make them the emotion more intense, because every time then you start to feel anything, you then start to you know, turn to behaviors, whether it's eating, not eating, substance use, you know, self harm, It could be lots of different behaviors that help to sort of bring the emotion down. Um So I think treatment really really needs to require really becoming a bit more of an expert around your own emotions, uh, knowing what you're feeling, being able to unpack the feeling, figuring out that you know, while I could turn to food right now, but if I were to really just tune into what is happening in this moment in a sort of mindful way. What's happening in this moment inside my body? What am I feel feeling in terms of sensation, What are my thoughts that I'm having right now, some of which can be kind of catastrophic, And what do I feel the urge to do? And when we can sort of look at our emotions in that way. We it sort of gives us some perspective and also gives us the ability to kind of look at So how do I want to respond to this, because some responses are going to be more adaptive than others. You know, if I go and binge eat, then what's going to happen That may in the short run give me some relief because I'm going to feel like I've distracted from those feelings, But in the long run, I'm gonna be feeling more shame and depression and distress because I've I've beene eat. Those would be the things I think would be important to kind of take a look at. And Dr Brooks, do you feel like virtual settings have adapted will to treatment for eating disorders? I know sometimes treatment for eating disorders sometimes involves like groups and very like experiential kinds of things. Um, I'm curious to hear just about how treatment has transformed maybe in a virtual setting. Yeah, it's a very good question, because we we found ourselves in you know, mid March. I think, like most of the country suddenly having to shift and be home and not be able to bring people into groups and and really put a lot more onto a virtual platform, and I know at Renfrew we it was. We did it in a matter of about three days. Was to take all of our programs that were not in our residential facility, but our day programs and our intensive outpatient programs and put them all on virtual platforms. So all patients had to move from being in person to being actually virtual. And as you can imagine, there was a lot of anxiety I think with patients initially around you know, what it would be like to be you know, on Zoom throughout the day and and that sort of thing. What we have found, which I think is um been interesting even just to the whole field of eating disorders, is that patients have adapted very well to this UM. I know, our treatment model which is one that we do a lot of psycho education and UM which is something you can try and slate pretty well into Zoom, but we were also able to do a lot of experiential things as well UM with patients. You know, being able to provide support during meals was something that we had to sort of learn how to do. Patients do have their meals on camera, so you know, they will fix some meal, come back and you know they're in a group with other people eating their meals and getting support and whatnot, and believe it or not, I think people have found that to be actually very very helpful. I think ultimately when we can come back in person, I think ultimately that's that's where we sort of want to be, because again, I think social connection via zoom is not the same fully as a social connection in the room. But I think we've we've been very surprised that it has seemed to meet the needs of our our patients pretty well. Mm hmmm. Yeah. And I wonder if that might not be something that you all might think about kind of keeping later, right, because I would imagine that for certain people, like getting to one of your facilities may have been difficult, but now that you've tested this out and seeing that it can work, though not maybe as great as in person and me, you know, and for the option for other people to be able to participate in some of the programs right right exactly. I mean, I think it has really allowed for more access to care, you know, so that if you can't you're not within a driving distance, you still can, you know, join treatment. And you know, we're doing research right now to really look at whether the outcomes are any different on virtual than on in person, you know that, and and so far we're not really seeing that adding totally. But we're really going to sort of back it up with with research as well to show that you can get you know, the same level of treatment effect even if you are doing virtual versus in person. Mm hmmm nice. So Dr Brooks, she talks earlier just about anxiety, right, and I feel like that has been the overwhelming like feeling for much of what a lot of us have been experiencing since more. It's right, just this anxiety about what's going to happen, and we know that that can be a tie in for eating disordered behavior. And I'm wondering how you maybe have had to work differently with clients given that what we typically teach around anxiety is okay, is this realistic? And you know, like, are you kind of going too far? And you're thinking when so much of it really is? It is realistic? Right at this point? Um, you know some people who had, you know, concerns about germs and those kinds of things that kind of seemed for fitched, you know before March is not so far fished right now, right, And so I'm wondering, you know, what kinds of things have had to change in your approach of working with clients, given that you know so much more of anxiety does feel like it is grounded in reality right now, right right now, you're right, and you know, I mean, anxiety is a natural part of life, and you know, oftentimes when you're talking with someone who has high anxiety, they can give you a lot of good reasons why they're anxious, you know, and if our minds dwell on the things that could possibly be dangerous, yes, you could really kind of be um walking around, uh, feeling like you don't want to leave your house because there's so many things that can happen, and so there is always, i think a realistic component to the things that that would make us anxious and that we're fearful about, and not right now it's it's it's even probably more pronounced. But I think when we start to catastrophize, meaning that we are not really weighing the likelihood that something is going to happen in this moment, in part partly because we're sort of uh, just ruminating over it and whatnot, that that's what begins to affect our ability to function. And right now we're we're having to function even in spite of the fact that we are in a pandemic, and that we have to learn how to be able to kind of feel that anxiety but still be able to weigh the amount of danger that there really is. You know. So for example, if I can't what are my groceries and I have to go to the groceries store, yes there's some risk, but there's some things I can do to try to mitigate that risk. And if I don't go to the grocery store, I mean, I have anything to eat. So I've got to somehow way the risk and also doing what I know I need to do to be able to function. You know, early on Dr Brooks kind of when all this first started, you would read a lot of stories and hear a lot of stories just about like all the hoarding, you know, like people getting all these groceries and totally paper and all that kind of stuff. And I'm wondering if there has been some connection or like in your work maybe or maybe through the research, there is some connection between like people who had maybe early experiences with like food insecurity, and how that has now been connected to our experiences of the pandemic. Yeah, well, we're learning a lot more about food insecurity and the relationship between that and eating disorders. And also, I think in terms of what we're seeing here with with being in the pandemic, you know, we used to think that eating just order behavior was really something of more an affluent kind of thing where you have food and you just don't want to kind of eat it kind of thing, or you have so much food around. But what we're learning is that when there is food insecurity, when a person truly does not have enough reliable food available, that that produces many of the same kinds of behaviors that we see in someone who is bolimic or antorexic or engages in binge eating disorder. This sort of preoccupation with food, guilt around eating, also even just issues around weight gain, if if you can imagine that as well, and if you have a lot of anxiety not only about feeding yourself but feeding your children, that that seems to eat really increase one's vulnerability to developing and eating disorder. And this is something that's really new that we're starting to sort of understand in the field that wasn't seen before. M hm. So we out at early on talking about how we've seen like lots of you know, jokes and memes about the quarantine fifteen and people being very mindful. I want to hear you talk a little bit about why those kinds of messages are harmful. Yeah. I could probably go on and on about but I'm sure you know that one of the things I think that happens during right now, during this time, is that when people are home more and you know, sort of feeling more bored and maybe their routines have been disrupted, that they're probably spending more time on social media. And I think the what maybe started out as a joke in terms of the quarantine fifteen, I think it's really legitimate anxiety that and that individuals are having about some natural weight game that probably people are experiencing. You know. Again, I think there's been a major shift in our lifestyles, and it wouldn't be surprising that that might result then in a shift in how we're eating and also the amount of movement that we have in our lives and if we gain and messages about that on social media and comparing individuals and whatnot is really rampant. I think it's understandable that we're going to see a lot of people be really traumatized by this and feel a lot of self hatred, a lot of distress around their own bodies, and not being able to be in an accepting mode that these are unusual times and that we have to take care of ourselves and be able to accept ourselves. You know, when you're home balancing kids and work and you know, trying to get a meal on the table, or you may be turning to very quick things to satisfy everybody, and that that may have an impact on on things, but it doesn't mean that you've failed or that something's wrong, or that somehow you're you're inadequate. Yeah, and I think that there isn't also the awareness of just how our bodies respond in a stressful situation, right, you know, so there may be the tendency to hold on to weight because we are like preparing for battle almost in some ways. Exactly. Well, that's one of the things when we look at eating disorders among black people and people of colors that you know, there's there's been so much focus on obesity being about what you eat, you know, and you know, I think clearly what we're coming to understand is that, you know, it's not about the fried chicken, It's about the stress, and that stress really has much more an impact on how a person, you know, the impact physiologically on an individual that may result in them gaining weight and that sort of thing. So, you know, I think we need to understand that the stress itself is gonna be very impactful on both our behaviors and on how our bodies respond. So what tips do you have, Dr Brooks for people who may be struggling with disordered eating and seeing like the memes and things shared on social media with tips would you have for them for how to maybe protect themselves or you know, to manage some of that. Yeah, well, you know this is coming from somebody here sort of refuses to be on social media for the most part. So I do sort of put that out there, but I think it's it's really important to reduce it down. You know. I think when you're looking at something, if you're finding yourself going through your feed and feeling that it's time to get off, it's time to either you know, mute those people that may be putting things out there that are really triggering shame inside of you and and a lot of negative self talk that you don't need, that that's not helpful, and so I think to be able to to really just say no, turn it off. The other thing I think is really thinking about any time that we're going through a lot of stress, that what we need more than anything is self care, that that's really what the body is creating, is something that is going to feel as if you are you know, listening to what your body is needing in the moment, and that maybe everything from what you eat in terms of what your body is kind of wanting in this moment to what you need in terms of being able to get some relaxation, get some you know, sometimes it's getting out and just getting some fresh air, being able to engage in joyful activity, you know, which is not the same thing as going out and running in the heat and sweating and all of that, but really doing something where your body actually feels good in the moment while you're doing it, that you know, that can be very very important as well. I think finding connection is so important during this time, um that if you are finding yourself really not connected with friends and colleagues, you know, even though zoom is not the same as being there. It is better than sitting in your own isolation and in your own boredom. And so I think to intentionally put those moments in your schedule where you're staying connected um is very very important. And I also think just being able to think about what what you value, what's important to you, what you feel grateful about in your life too, sort of be in the moment that you're in right now, as opposed to maybe stressing out about the future or you know, dwelling on what you didn't do and dwelling in the past. But to really find some mindful moments and the mindful practice I think can really take you a long way. Yeah. Those are great. It was Dr Brooks, Thank you. Yeah. So I think something else that is happening on social media, and I think particularly on platforms like Instagram and sick time because there are more visual platforms. And I know you said you're not really on social but I'm sure you know because of your work what these are, all right, And it feels like they're tends to be lots of like videos are like beautiful pictures of food right in and in some ways, you know, it feels like people are sharing tips for like how to be healthy and like this is how you can make you know, these vegetables interesting, and you might not have thought about it that way, right, And so it feels like there's a fine line between like what kinds of things could be helpful on social media and what kinds of things Like there's a TikTok hashtag that we found that talked about like what I ate today, right where people are kind of sharing, you know, like they may eat like a handful of raspberries or something, you know, kind of thing, right, And so it feels like there is a very fine line between what can be helpful and what can be harmful. Yeah, you're you're right. And I think that so much of of those extremes are out there um for individuals to get sort of caught up in. You know, I think it's probably better too, in some ways sort of step out of it if you can, because you don't know if you're going to be necessarily the person that's going to get so kind of preoccupied with it that it becomes more destructive to you rather than than helpful. I think that there's a lot of moralistic sort of attitude out there that if you can eat this particular way, or if you can do this particular exercise program daily and then put it online, and that sort of thing, that that somehow that makes you a better person. And I think that that kind of thinking is really destructive, you know that we start to think that somehow, how we look what our weight is is going to have us feel differently inside. And the reality is if that's really not true. You know that if the thought is that if I lose weight, I'm going to be you know, more confident, you know, well, you know that doesn't wait in confidence really don't have anything to do with one another. And if you ask yourself, you know, how, how would you be if you were confident? What would that look like? Those behaviors are really what are important? Thing? How do I want to be behaving in a way that is more in line with my values for myself and that has nothing to do with body sides, you know, And so just beginning to sort of think more about sort of the deeper values that you have rather than hanging so much on weight and body image, which is really driven by I think our societal messages that are that are really not healthy. M M. Yeah, So before we started recording. Dr Brick, you and I were talking a little bit about, um, just the the reliance on Zoom and other video platforms that we have now and how that is impacting our body imagined. That is not something I had thought about. UM, So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about, like how you're seeing that show up first in terms of just how I think it affects us, whether you haven't eating disorder or not. I think being in a interaction with someone where you are just basically staring at their face, you know, you're not you know, when we're in the room with one another, you look all around, You're not so concentrated on looking at the other person and having the other person look at you. And I think that that can create in us. And I think about for myself even this sense of oh my god, what are they seeing on camera? You know, and then you can sort of see yourself on camera, and I think that sort of discomfort that comes with it. I find myself sort of looking at the gray hairs and thinking, oh, my goodness, I should have done something about that. And you know that it can be a real preoccupation we find with some of our pictures that we treat that really struggle with an eating disorder. One of the things that they have a hard time with is being seeing themselves on camera and being very preoccupied with sort of pointing out in themselves all the flaws that they see, and they're worrying about what other people are seeing in them and whatnot. So, you know, one of the things that we do, we do ask our individuals that are sort of going to be on camera is to take your picture off so that you're not constantly looking at yourself and trying to sort of evaluate how you're looking, you know. So, so I think it's it's just we have to understand that this new way of being with each other can sort of bring up anxieties that you know, maybe weren't there quite as significantly before. Mm hmm. Yeah, not to mention with you know how many of our grouping practices have been shut down, right, so people are not able to get their brows in and all of these things. So it definitely makes you attend to things that you maybe wouldn't normally. M Yeah, for sure. So do you have some favorite tips for how people can begin to practice body positivity? Dr books? You know what I think one of the first steps, even before you get to body positivity, is just some body acceptance, okay, because you know we we come in all shapes and sizes, and you know, being able to sort of be in your body and just have some sense of it being all the things that your body really does do for you. You know, it keeps you upright, it gets you here to there, it you know, keeps you breathing every day. I mean, your your body does a tremendous amount. And if you're not sort of embracing and having some appreciation for that body that, you know, I think you really put yourself at war with yourself and then really I think you can really affect your health in some ways. So I really being able to look at yourself. You know that that part of treatment can be this sort of exposure work that we do with individuals, which we asked them to just be able to look at their body and sort of describe it in neutral terms. You know, not good, bad, you know, ugly pretty, you know, but just this is this is what my body is. And being able to be with that and to accept it is I think that the greatest gift we might you might not ever be able to get to, oh boy, I love my this or I love my that, because that may not be what you sort of feel in the moment, But can you except that your body has value and that it is important to you, and that it is worth taken care of and and appreciating. I think that that's really the where we need to try to get to, so not even as much body positivity as body acceptance and really just appreciating our body for what it can do for us. Yeah. Yeah, Sometimes people work on affirmations, you know, being able to say positive things about their body, but oftentimes even if you're saying it inside your head, you're kind of saying other stuff yourself, you know. And so I think just to be able to look at the you know, so after I take a shower, I stand here kind of look at myself. There's some roles, Yes, there's you know, there's what it is, what it is, And I think to be able to have an appreciation for that rather than the negatives, you know, sort of noticing the negative self talk that comes into your head and if you can just sort of let that, let that go, just kind of okay, I don't have to dwell on this I don't have to feed it in my head right now. And the more you do that, I think you'll find is that you need You may notice some shifting and how much you are sort of detegrating yourself when you when you look at yourself. Mm hmmm. So do you have some favorite resources that you typically like to share for people who maybe want to learn more or you know, need some assistance in this area. Yeah, Well, for those individuals who are struggling with eating disorders right now during this time, there is you know, I'm not down on all social media, but there is an instagram I think of COVID nineteen Eating Support. At COVID nineteen Eating Support, which eating disorder professionals from around the world are providing eating support to individuals who are struggling with with their eating disorder seven. So if you're having a meal and you need some support, you can tune into this and there will be someone there that can help with you know, sort of how you're feeling in the moment and to sort of get you through. So, I know that's been something that a lot of people in the eating disorder field patients have used that I think it's been very helpful there's a lot of information. There's a organization called NIDA, the Nationally Eating Disorder Association. They have a lot of information for anyone that may be struggling with an eating disorder. Also, there's a lot of information for anyone who knows of somebody with an eating disorder that may be struggling like it maybe a family member or you know, a friend or whatever, and just how do I deal with this? What do I do to help um? There's a lot of information around that. And also I think a lot of good information around just if you're having you know, disordered eating or just some problematic eating it doesn't necessarily have to be eating disorder that there's a lot of good resources there as well. People can certainly go onto the Renfrew website, the Renfro Center website for center dot com, we have a resource page that has resources and from lots of different areas for teens, for families, for individuals from special populations, if you're a person of color, also looking at professional resources that are there as well. Thank you so much for all of that, doctor folks. I really appreciate the wealth of information you share Today. You're welcome and skreat talking with you. Thank you. I'm so glad Dr Brooks was able to join us this week. Don't forget to visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash session to check out some of the resources she shared, And don't forget to share your takeaways with us on social media using the hashtag tb G in session. And please text two sisters in your circle right now and encourage them to check out the episode as well. If you're looking for a therapist in your area, be sure to check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash directory. And if you want to continue digging into this episode and meet some other sisters in your area, come on over and join us in the Yellow Couch Collective, where we take a deeper dive into the topics from the podcast and just about everything else. You can join us at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash y c C thank gel so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continue in this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care

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The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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