Conversation Starters

I've pulled a few things from social media that I thought could inspire different posts, but as I stare at them off to the side here, my brain wants to call them pieces of the same puzzle.   The first one is this: Then there's this: Finally, there's this: That last one is obviously from a Timehop of mine -- a quote from an episode of  This American Life  that bangs like a drum through my healing process:  Sometimes we're not ready to let go of the lie that preservers our existence .  Yes, Ira Glass.  Yes, sir. But that sentiment ties back to the notion of the first meme I shared:  so many broken children in adult bodies .  For where else do we learn that we're less-than besides our childhoods? Where else do these patterns get established and engrained?  Where else are we told more that  we are resilient  than in our childhoods?  Kids just bounce back.  They're too young to understand.  What we say or do now will ...

Background Avoidant-restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) was classified as a novel eating disorder (ED) in the DSM-5.  Prior to that, any severe notion of picky eating in children was categorized as EDNOS, a DSM-IV notation that referred to any ED that was not anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa (Fisher et al., 2011).  What patients meeting this classification had in common was no significant fear of weight gain or poor sense of body image, but, instead displayed a lack of interest in eating, expressed a sensory resistance, or feared physical consequences of eating, like choking or vomiting (Pinhas et al, 2016).  In some instances, patients may not be underweight but likely lack in nutritional health (Nicely et al. 2014).  Including ARFID as its own DSM-5 classification “improved clinical utility and captured a population of young people who had an eating disorder” (Fisher et al, 2011, p. 50) that previously was too undefined to warrant attention. The population ...

An Introduction to Adolescence  Psychologist G. Stanley Hall calls adolescence a “period of ‘storm and stress’” (Hutchinson, 2019, p. 192).  This era, which ranges roughly from puberty through the end of high school, is a period of immense growth for children as they make their way into adulthood.  According to Hutchinson (2019), adolescence is a “time of increased emotional complexity and a growing capacity to understand and express a wider range of emotions to gain insight into one’s own emotions” (p. 199). It is a time for cognitive development as well as growing independence that leads to more cohesive understanding of a young person’s social identity (Hutchinson, 2019).  As the human brain is able to retain more and more information, it also develops more specialized skills to apply what’s being learned across a broader spectrum.  It is during adolescence, then, that children are better able to empathize with others as their social complexities gain in sp...