This May 6-12, 2019 the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) is celebrating their 68th Annual Mental Health Week and they’re doing so by encouraging everyone to #GetLoud. This week is about promoting the importance of mental health and emphasizing the prevalence in which mental health affects us all. This week also provides a platform for spreading more awareness about mental illness and works towards ending the stigma, discrimination and shame that is often associated w

Assertive communication is an important relational skill that can be challenging for someone with an eating disorder. Communicating assertively involves expressing our needs, desires, thoughts and feelings with openness and clarity. It can be helpful to understand assertiveness by comparing it to the alternatives: Passive / submissive communication: yielding to others preferences while discounting your own needs or desires. Passive communication is often accompanied by fe

Every day we are asked to make commitments – to our jobs, to our friends and family, even to strangers. We are expected to focus our attention on following through with these commitments, which involves giving our time, energy, and thoughts to people and things outside of ourselves. We get caught up in doing, striving, “hustling”, as Brene Brown puts it. And as we’re caught up in that hustle we forget about someone really important – ourselves. People who are in recovery are

The ability to identify and express emotions is often challenging for people in recovery from an eating disorder. When someone feels insecure, they might put forth great effort to say and do the things they think others want to hear due to fears of being judged or rejected if they shared thoughts or feelings that they fear would be unwanted by others. Wanting to accommodate or please others can also cause us to push down our authentic thoughts and feelings. When we practic

May 7-13, 2018 marks the 67th Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) Mental Health Week. The goal in previous years was designed to bring more awareness around mental illness and to help end the stigma, discrimination and shame associated with it. This year, CMHA Mental Health Week, along with their #GetLoud Campaign, is going a step further by promoting mental health for what it really is and how we are all affected by it. As many as 1 in 5 (20%) Canadians will experience

International no diet day is fast approaching. This year I would like us all to take a moment to not only push back against the harmful diet messages that state that in order for us to be happy we need to change our shape and weight, and to take some time to think about our own personal relationship with our bodies and with food. It has been proven time and time again, that the more one focuses on trying to change their body, the worse one tends to feel about themselves. In o

January 31st, 2018, is Bell Let's Talk Day. It's a day where people are encouraged to post, tweet, call, text, and most importantly, talk about mental health. It started in 2010, as an attempt to get more Canadians to engage in conversation about mental health. Although we all know that mental health struggles exist, we rarely talk openly, candidly, and compassionately about them. Many people have limited information about how mental health effects our everyday lives, and som

Many people have a hard time in social situations, often feeling anxious, worrying about what others are thinking, and over-analyzing everything they say. This can make it hard to form new relationships, maintain existing connections, reach out for support, and engage in group activities. Social anxiety involves mindreading, fear of judgement, anxiety, and avoidance. In short, it can greatly impact the quality of your life, because it takes away the one thing all humans crave

Social media can be an amazing tool for connection, learning, and sharing – it allows us to have access to information, people, and images that we may otherwise never get to experience. But while platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can enrich our lives in many ways, they are also rife with negative messages and unhelpful photos. For someone struggling with an eating disorder and negative body image, this can be particularly difficult. With summer starting and th

This year, the CMHA Mental Health Week falls on May 1-7, and their message is powerful. They want Canadians to #GetLoud about mental health – to talk about it, to ask about it, and to demand help with it. Everyone struggles with mental health to some degree – it is a normal, human experience, and it's time for people to speak up and reflect on what it means to be mentally well, and what it means to struggle. Issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, depression, grief, fear, tra

On January 25 it is the official Bell Let’s Talk day! Bell is committed to moving mental health forward in Canada by promoting awareness. On January 25th, Bell will donate 5 cents every time you talk, text and join in on social media to mental health initiatives, so please join in. Bell focuses on 4 key pillars in their efforts to increase awareness and action. These include fighting the stigma, improving access to care, supporting world-class research, and leading by examp

Cultivating gratitude is a very valuable practice that can increase our sense of well-being. It has been linked to increased joy and increased feelings of connectedness. "Without exception, every person I interviewed who described living a joyful life or who described themselves as joyful, actively practiced gratitude and attributed their joyfulness to their gratitude practice. And both joy and gratitude were described as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in hum

Summer has arrived!!! And along with it all the wonderful perks of family & friend gatherings including BBQ's, potlucks, Bonfire treats and sinking our teeth into some of Mother Nature's finest in season fruits and vegetables. With all these social events and countless nights of indulging in summer foods at their best we can very easily forget to check in with our internal hunger/fullness cues and find ourselves eating for reasons other than true physical hunger. Most people