Welcome to Joanna Poppink’s Healing Library for Midlife Women
Psychotherapy insights, tools, and support for your journey
Doors can open for you if you knock or simply turn the handle.
Here you can find articles that may answer your questions and support you in your personal recovery work.
You'll also find a series of inspirations and affirmation that may help you stay on your healing path.
Please remember, helping yourself does not mean going it alone. Helping yourself means discovering what what you can do to support your own recovery. That includes how to recognize opportunity and reach out for what supports your health and personal development.
When you help yourself you are looking to people as well as books, websites and classes, who are in a position to offer you genuine recovery help on your journey to healing.
Open new doors to find your recovery path.
Preparation for Eating Disorder Recovery
In following these exercises you will create a book which will become a map, guide and vital resource for your triumphant journey. As you proceed on this new healing path, you will gradually see your secrets unfold and become known by you in many surprising and relieving ways. You will begin to recognize how overeating and other out-of-control behaviors shield you from self-knowledge.
Situation - verge of a binge:
Situation - anxiety - an amorphous feeling spreading out of your undefinable self. You can't tell if it's going in or going out or both. It feel like it will overwhelm you. Yet, like the reflection nebulae, there is a shape to it, and while the anxiety is vast, it's not endless. But you won't know that if you eat or binge to block your awareness.
To rally your internal forces to keep you committed and motivated on your recovery path, please explore this checklist and compare the items with your life experience.
Your doctor, friends, family, nutritionist, and calorie tables may describe your eating as too much, too little, or strange. They may describe it as healthy and within reasonable limits. Only you know the details of your eating habits and the influence food has on your life.
Do any of these food-related statements describe your experience?
Situation - reaching for a snack: You are reaching for a snack. You want to say "no" to the snack, and you can't.
Exercise: Pause. Pay attention to your breathing.
1. Think. Where else do you say "yes" because you can't say "no"? Do you smile or silently accept behavior or requests from people despite your discomfort?
2. Write down an incident that occurs to you where you wish you could have said "no" or "stop."
3. Write down the snack situation.
4. Answer these questions regarding the snack:
What do you think would happen if you said "no"?
What would you feel?
What benefits might you get if you said "no"?
What benefits might you get for saying "yes"?
What hardships might you get for saying "yes"?
5. Answer these questions regarding the incident. What do you think would happen if you said "no"? What would you feel? What benefits might you get if you said "no"? What benefits might you get for saying "yes"? What hardships might you get for saying "yes"?
Compare your answers. Do they have anything in common?
You may be saying "yes" to the snack and "yes" to a person or organization to protect yourself from some kind of discomfort. Your unwilling "yes" may be a way of sacrificing joyful opportunities.
Keep what you've written about these situations, questions and answers. Include them in your journal. Compare them to other situations where you say "yes" with words or with body acceptance but would prefer to say "no."
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