Might you have an eating disorder?
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An eating disorder, or ED, is a mental health condition that causes an unhealthy relationship with food. Anyone can have an ED, many times without realizing it or getting a proper diagnosis. Research shows that 9 percent of people in the U.S. will have an ED in their lifetime.
Read on to learn about the types of EDs, how they’re diagnosed and treated, what barriers to care some people with EDs face, and how to find providers who can help.
What are the types and symptoms of eating disorders?
- Anorexia: Restricting food intake, fearing weight gain, and having a distorted self-image.
- Bulimia: Binging, or eating a large amount of food at once, followed by purging, or getting rid of the food by vomiting, taking laxatives, or over-exercising.
- Binge eating disorder: Repeatedly eating a large amount of food, followed by feelings of guilt and regret without purging.
- Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder: Not getting enough nutrients due to a lack of interest in food or disliking many types of food.
Some people may have symptoms of multiple EDs at the same time or cycle between different types of EDs.
Who is at risk of developing an eating disorder?
“Eating disorders don’t discriminate, they can affect anyone regardless of age,” said U.K. psychotherapist Kerrie Jones, who specializes in ED treatment, in a Women’s Health article.
While anyone can develop an ED at any time, some factors may increase your risk:
- Having a family member with an ED.
- Having another mental health condition, like depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
- Having a history of dieting, weight loss attempts, or body-related bullying.
- Experiencing a major life change, like moving or starting a new job.
What are some warning signs that you might have an eating disorder?
“A focus on ‘healthy’ eating or nutrition can become a red flag for disordered eating when it becomes obsessive, rigid, or interferes with daily life,” Jones said. “If someone is labelling food as good or bad, with no flexibility or they are avoiding social situations such as going out for dinner with loved ones, or they are spending excessive time thinking about food, meal planning and avoiding ultra-processed food, it’s worth speaking to a professional.”
Other ED warning signs may include:
- Feeling preoccupied with food, counting calories, avoiding certain foods or food groups, or changes in weight.
- Eating in secret.
- Feeling preoccupied with your body size or shape.
If you think you may have an ED, talk to a health care provider. Your provider will likely ask questions about your eating and exercise habits and run tests to see if your ED is causing health problems.
What are the physical consequences of eating disorders?
EDs can cause deadly health problems. In fact, approximately one person in the U.S. dies from an ED every hour. Some short- and long-term consequences from EDs include:
- Heart problems
- Digestive problems
- Low blood pressure
- Dehydration
- Brittle bones
- Organ and tooth damage
- Stroke
- Infertility
How are eating disorders treated?
Treatment for EDs depends on the severity of your symptoms and your health risks. It may include a combination of therapy, medications to treat underlying mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, and nutrition counseling.
While some people may only need therapy once a week, others may require intensive outpatient therapy—which includes multiple therapy sessions per week—or inpatient treatment.
What barriers to treatment do people with eating disorders face?
Weight stigma
People of all body sizes can have EDs. Less than 6 percent of people with EDs are considered underweight, and research shows that higher-weight individuals are more likely to experience delays in ED diagnosis and treatment. Health care providers may be less likely to notice ED symptoms in higher-weight patients or may even reinforce a patient’s ED behaviors by commenting on their weight or praising weight loss.
“If you’re leaving the appointment feeling any type of shame or discomfort or guilt about eating or your body, that’s a clue that something went wrong,” registered dietitian Marlena Tanner said in a Fortune article. “You never have to continue with a provider that is damaging.”
If your care team is not taking your ED symptoms seriously due to your body size, you can find health care providers, therapists, and dietitians through the Health at Every Size Professionals Listing.
Racial bias
Media representing EDs typically focuses on white women, and research shows that health care providers may be less likely to diagnose people of color—particularly Black women—with an ED. Additionally, people of color may struggle to find culturally competent care. Across disciplines, 73 percent of ED care providers are white.
“Some therapists and dietitians focus on working with [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] clients and understand how racism, cultural expectations, and body image intersect,” says Paula Edwards-Gayfield, an Oklahoma City-based therapist and clinical advisor for the National Eating Disorders Association, to Public Good News. “Seek out providers who talk about cultural identity, anti-racism, or social justice in their work. There are also groups and nonprofit organizations that may help fill the gaps left by traditional treatment centers.”
If you’re a person of color seeking care at an ED treatment center, Edwards-Gayfield recommends asking the following questions:
- Does the center have a diverse staff?
- Do they talk about race, culture, or identity in treatment?
- Can you meet with someone who understands your background?
Gender bias
A 2019 study found that men and boys make up one-third of people with EDs, yet many go undiagnosed.
“There was such a lack of awareness for a long time, and often men were more likely to be diagnosed with depression or something else versus an eating disorder because there has been this really inaccurate mindset that men don’t get eating disorders,” said Tiffany Brown, psychology professor at Auburn University and co-director of the Auburn Eating Disorders Clinic, in a 2024 American Psychological Association article.
Men and boys may also experience symptoms that don’t match typical ED diagnostic criteria, such as a preoccupation with having a muscular physique. If you’re overwhelmed with thoughts about food or body image, talk to a health care provider, even if you’re not sure if you have an ED.
While LGBTQ+ individuals experience higher rates of EDs compared to their straight, cisgender peers, many struggle to access LGBTQ-informed ED treatment, especially transgender people.
“The reality is that most medical trainings, administrative processes, and social discussions and understandings of bodies, gender, health, reproduction, and privacy are based on the erasure of transgender and intersex people, and bodies, creating a large gap in understanding them medically, and socially, for many providers,” members of the trans-led collective Fighting Eating Disorders in Underrepresented Populations (FEDUP) tell PGN.
Trans people are also more likely to face financial burdens that can prevent them from accessing ED care. FEDUP connects low-income trans people with EDs to dietitians who offer sliding scale appointments. The collective also maintains a list of trans-affirming ED treatment providers and hosts free, virtual, peer-led support groups for LGBTQ+ people with EDs.
Cost
“Eating disorder treatment is often out of pocket, geographically inaccessible, and time intensive,” says Edwards-Gayfield. “Furthermore, insurance often denies coverage for individuals who don’t meet strict weight or symptom thresholds, reinforcing a system that privileges a narrow presentation of disordered eating.”
If you’re uninsured, are struggling to pay for ED treatment, or don’t know how to find care, reach out to Project HEAL’s Treatment Access Program, which connects people with EDs to no-cost and sliding scale treatment, cash assistance, and insurance help.
NEDA also offers a list of free, virtual support groups.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
If you or anyone you know is considering suicide or self-harm or is anxious, depressed, or upset or needs to talk, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or text the Crisis Text Line at 741-741. For international resources, here is a good place to begin.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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What is psychosocial therapy? And why is the government thinking about adding it to Medicare for kids?
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The government is considering new, bulk-billed health checks for three-year-olds, to pick up developmental concerns and refer kids that might need additional support.
The detail was buried in the announcement of the new “Thriving Kids” program which aims to provide foundational support for autistic children and those with developmental concerns.
The government announced it is also considering creating new Medicare items to provide for children that health checks identify as needing additional support. These would be provided by allied health practitioners and include speech pathology and occupational therapy, but also a type of therapy you might be less familiar with: psychosocial therapy.
So, what is psychosocial therapy? Health and disability minister Mark Butler said it will support social and emotional functioning.
Let’s take a look at what psychosocial therapy is, which children might benefit from it, and the evidence for offering these kinds of support.
Catherine Delahaye/Getty Developmental milestones
Brain development in the first five years of life is faster than at any other point in a human’s life. We can measure this rapid growth against developmental milestones. These are key indicators parents can use to respond to their child’s changing needs, and can be observed across motor, language, speech, behavioural, and emotional skills.
The way a child develops involves a dynamic series of processes that are a complex interplay of genetics and environmental factors. So there are natural variations between children in the timing of these developments.
There are guides for roughly expected age ranges we would generally expect certain skills to emerge.
Examples of these early milestones include seeking connection with trusted caregivers, crawling, jumping, counting and communicating. These all emerge by the time children are around two years old.
When parents, early childhood educators or health professionals identify an unmet need that is delaying the child’s development, it can indicate the need for supportive services, including psychosocial therapy.
What is psychosocial therapy?
Psychosocial therapies are treatments that focus on the psychological factors (emotions, thoughts and behaviours) and social factors (relationships, community and environmental) that affect a person’s wellbeing and mental health.
For example, for a three-year-old who is anxious at daycare drop-off, changing social interactions with educators or adjusting the physical environment may help reduce their anxiety.
By definition, psychosocial supports consider both the child and their environment – their family and their community. This is sometimes called a nested wellbeing approach.
There is good evidence that psychosocial therapies are effective and are considered best practice treatment for health professionals working with children.
These are sometimes called biopsychosocial therapies as they recognise the interaction of biological factors, such as genetics, as well as psychological and social factors that impact the child’s development.
Approaches that are suitable for very young children involve their family or caregivers. For instance, behavioural family therapy and parent training are programs that teach parents effective strategies to manage children’s behaviour and improve parent-child relationships.
These would be delivered by psychologists and/or occupational therapists.
For older children, psychosocial support could include cognitive behaviour therapy (which focuses on reframing thinking and behaviour) and interpersonal therapy (which focuses on improving relationships with others to alleviate mental health symptoms).
The evidence for psychosocial therapies
Psychosocial supports are not new to Medicare and are already part of the allied health items for those eligible disabilities, such as autism or other neurodevelopment conditions, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
For young children, there is good evidence that early psychosocial interventions (like those above) can lead to significant improvements. These include improvements in developmental delays and behaviour, and self-regulation and executive functioning.
The evidence shows that early psychosocial supports work when parents are also supported to facilitate responsive caregiving that is “good enough” (not perfect).
In some instances, this might include training and education for parents to better understand their child’s cues and preferences. In other instances, it might look like practical caregiver supports, such as in-home support, peer support or help navigating care options.
The evidence shows if young children need more targeted and tailored support, including parents and caregivers in these interventions lead to the best outcomes for children, family and community wellbeing.
However, in the current discussion about new supports and NDIS, early intervention should not be seen as a substitute or alternative for ongoing disability support. Some people may continue to need support for day-to-day living in later childhood and as adults.
Shawna Mastro Campbell, Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology, Bond University and Susan Rowe, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Unlock Your Air-Fryer’s Potential!
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Unlock Your Air-Fryer’s Potential!
You know what they say:
“you get out of it what you put in”
…and in the case of an air-fryer, that’s very true!
More seriously:
A lot of people buy an air fryer for its health benefits and convenience, make fries a couple of times, and then mostly let it gather dust. But for those who want to unlock its potential, there’s plenty more it can do!
Let’s go over the basics first…
Isn’t it just a tiny convection oven?
Mechanically, yes. But the reason that it can be used to “air-fry” food rather than merely bake or roast the food is because of its tiny size allowing for much more rapid cooking at high temperatures.
On which note… If you’re shopping for an air-fryer:
- First of all, congratulations! You’re going to love it.
- Secondly: bigger is not better. If you go over more than about 4 liters capacity, then you don’t have an air-fryer; you have a convection oven. Which is great and all, but probably not what you wanted.
Are there health benefits beyond using less oil?
It also creates much less acrylamide than deep-frying starchy foods does. The jury is out on the health risks of acrylamide, but we can say with confidence: it’s not exactly a health food.
I tried it, but the food doesn’t cook or just burns!
The usual reason for this is either over-packing the fryer compartment (air needs to be able to circulate!), or not coating the contents in oil. The oil only needs to be a super-thin layer, but it does need to be there, or else again, you’re just baking things.
Two ways to get a super thin layer of oil on your food:
- (works for anything you can air-fry) spray the food with oil. You can buy spray-on oils at the grocery store (Fry-light and similar brands are great), or put oil in little spray bottle (of the kind that you might buy for haircare) yourself.
- (works with anything that can be shaken vigorously without harming it, e.g. root vegetables) chop the food, and put it in a tub (or a pan with a lid) with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Don’t worry if that looks like it’s not nearly enough—it will be! Now’s a great time to add your seasonings* too, by the way. Put the lid on, and holding the lid firmly in place, shake the tub/pan/whatever vigorously. Open it, and you’ll find the oil has now distributed itself into a very thin layer all over the food.
*About those seasonings…
Obviously not everything will go with everything, but some very healthful seasonings to consider adding are:
- Garlic minced/granules/powder (great for the heart and immune health)
- Black pepper (boosts absorption of other nutrients, and provides more benefits of its own than we can list here)
- Turmeric (slows aging and has anti-cancer properties)
- Cinnamon (great for the heart and has anti-inflammatory properties)
Garlic and black pepper can go with almost anything (and in this writer’s house, they usually do!)
Turmeric has a sweet nutty taste, and will add its color anything it touches. So if you want beautiful golden fries, perfect! If you don’t want yellow eggplant, maybe skip it.
Cinnamon is, of course, great as part of breakfast and dessert dishes
On which note, things most people don’t think of air-frying:
- Breakfast frittata—the healthy way!
- Omelets—no more accidental scrambled egg and you don’t have to babysit it! Just take out the tray that things normally sit on, and build it directly onto the (spray-oiled) bottom of the air-fryer pan. If you’re worried it’ll burn: a) it won’t, because the heat is coming from above, not below b) you can always use greaseproof paper or even a small heatproof plate
- French toast—again with no cooking skills required
- Fish cakes—make the patties as normal, spray-oil and lightly bread them
- Cauliflower bites—spray oil or do the pan-jiggle we described; for seasonings, we recommend adding smoked paprika and, if you like heat, your preferred kind of hot pepper! These are delicious, and an amazing healthy snack that feels like junk food.
- Falafel—make the balls as usual, spray-oil (do not jiggle violently; they won’t have the structural integrity for that) and air-fry!
- Calamari (vegan option: onion rings!)—cut the squid (or onions) into rings, and lightly coat in batter and refrigerate for about an hour before air-frying at the highest heat your fryer does. This is critical, because air-fryers don’t like wet things, and if you don’t refrigerate it and then use a high heat, the batter will just drip, and you don’t want that. But with those two tips, it’ll work just great.
Want more ideas?
Check out EatingWell’s 65+ Healthy Air-Fryer Recipes ← the recipes are right there, no need to fight one’s way to them in any fashion!
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Get Better Sleep: Beyond “Sleep Hygiene”
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Better Sleep, Better Life!
This is Arianna Huffington. Yes, that Huffington, of the Huffington Post. But! She’s also the CEO of Thrive Global, a behavior change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live—in particular, by challenging the idea that burnout is the required price of success.
The power of better sleep
Sleep is a very important, but most often neglected, part of good health. Here are some of Huffington’s top insights from her tech company Thrive, and as per her “Sleep Revolution” initiative.
Follow your circadian rhythm
Are you a night owl or a morning lark? Whichever it is, roll with it, and plan around that if your lifestyle allows for such. While it is possible to change from one to the other, we do have a predisposition towards one or the other, and will generally function best when not fighting it.
This came about, by the way, because we evolved to have half of us awake in the mornings and half in the evenings, to keep us all safe. Socially we’ve marched onwards from that point in evolutionary history, but our bodies are about a hundred generations behind the times, and that’s just what we have to work with!
Don’t be afraid (or ashamed!) to take naps
Naps, done right, can be very good for the health—especially if we had a bad night’s sleep the previous night.
Thrive found that workers are more productive when they have nap rooms, and (following on a little from the previous point) are allowed to sleep in or work from home.
See also: How To Nap Like A Pro (No More “Sleep Hangovers”!)
Make sure you have personal space available in bed
The correlation between relationship satisfaction and sleeping close to one’s partner has been found to be so high that it’s even proportional: the further away a couple sleeps from each other, the less happy they are. But…
Partners who got good sleep the previous night, will be more likely to want intimacy on any given night—at a rate of an extra 14% per extra hour of sleep the previous night. So, there’s a trade-off, as having more room in bed tends to result in better sleep. Time to get a bigger bed?
What gets measured, gets done
This goes for sleep, too! Not only does dream-journaling in the morning cue your subconscious to prepare to dream well the following night, but also, sleep trackers and sleep monitoring apps go a very long way to improving sleep quality, even if no extra steps are consciously taken to “score better”.
We’ve previously reviewed some of the most popular sleep apps; you can check out for yourself how they measured up:
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Make Time – by Jake Knapp and John Zeratzky
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We live in an information-saturated world, and we have done for so long now that it’s easy to forget: we did not evolve for this!
It’s easy to say “unplug”, but the reality is:
We also have to actually function in this fast-paced info-dense world whether we want to or not, and we are expected to be able to handle it.
So… How?
Appropriately enough, authors Knapp and Zeratsky present the answer in a skimmer-friendly fashion, with summaries and bullet points and diagrams and emboldened text forease of speed-reading. Who uses such tricks?!
In short, less living life in “default mode scramble” and more about making an impact in the ways you actually want to, for you.
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Dial Down Your Pain
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This is Dr. Christiane Wolf. Is than an MD or a PhD, you ask? The answer is: yes (it is both; the latter being in psychosomatic medicine).
She also teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which as you may recall is pretty much the most well-evidenced* form of meditation there is, in terms of benefits:
No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness
*which is not to claim it is necessarily the best (although it also could be); rather, this means that it is the form of meditation that’s accumulated the most scientific backing in total. If another equal or better form of meditation enjoyed less scientific scrutiny, then there could an alternative out there languishing with only two and a half scientific papers to its name. However, we at 10almonds are not research scientists, and thus can only comment on the body of evidence that has been published.
In any case, today is going to be about pain.
What does she want us to know?
Your mind does matter
It’s easy to think that anything you can do with your mind is going to be quite small comfort when your nerves feel like they’re on fire.
However, Dr. Wolf makes the case for pain consisting of three components:
- the physical sensation(s)
- the emotions we have about those
- the meaning we give to such (or “the story” that we use to describe it)
To clarify, let’s give an example:
- the physical sensations of burning, searing, and occasionally stabbing pains in the lower back
- the emotions of anguish, anger, despair, self-pity
- the story of “this pain has ruined my life, is making it unbearable, will almost certainly continue, and may get worse”
We are not going to tell you to throw any of those out of the window for now (and, would that you could throw the first line out, of course).
The first thing Dr. Wolf wants us to do to make this more manageable is to break it down.
Because presently, all three of those things are lumped together in a single box labelled “pain”.
If each of those items is at a “10” on the scale of pain, then this is 10×10×10=1000.
If our pain is at 1000/10, that’s a lot. We want to leave the pain in the box, not look at it, and try to distract ourselves. That is one possible strategy, by the way, and it’s not always bad when it comes to giving oneself a short-term reprieve. We balanced it against meditation, here:
Managing Chronic Pain (Realistically)
However, back to the box analogy, if we open that box and take out each of those items to examine them, then even without changing anything, even with them all still at 10, they can each be managed for what they are individually, so it’s now 10+10+10=30.
If our pain is at 30/10, that’s still a lot, but it’s a lot more manageable than 1000/10.
On rating pain, by the way, see:
Get The Right Help For Your Pain
Dealing with the separate parts
It would be nice, of course, for each of those separate parts to not be at 10.
With regard to the physical side of pain, this is not Dr. Wolf’s specialty, but we have some good resources here at 10almonds:
- The 7 Approaches To Pain Management
- 10 Tips To Reduce Morning Pain & Stiffness With Arthritis
- Science-Based Alternative Pain Relief: When Painkillers Aren’t Helping, These Things Might
When it comes to emotions associated with pain, Dr. Wolf (who incidentally is a Buddhist and also a teacher of same, and runs meditation retreats for such), recommends (of course) mindfulness, and what in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is called “radical acceptance” (in Buddhism, it may be referred to as being at one with things). We’ve written about this here:
“Hello, Emotions”: Radical Acceptance In CBT & DBT
Once again, the aim here is still not to throw the (often perfectly valid) emotions out of the window (unless you want to), but rather, to neutrally note and acknowledge the emotions as they arrive, á la “Hello, despair. Depression, my old foe, we meet again. Hello again, resentment.” …and so on.
The reason this helps is because emotions, much like the physical sensations of pain, are first and foremost messengers, and sometimes (as in the case of chronic pain) they get broken and keep delivering the message beyond necessity. Acknowledging the message helps your brain (and all that is attached to it) realize “ok, this message has been delivered now; we can chill about it a little”.
Having done that, if you can reasonably tweak any of the emotions (for example, perhaps that self-pity we mentioned could be turned into self-compassion, which is more useful), that’s great. If not, at least you know what’s on the battlefield now.
When we examine the story of our pain, lastly, Dr. Wolf invites us to look at how one of the biggest drivers of distress under pain is the uncertainty of how long the pain will last, whether it will get worse, whether what we are doing will make it worse, and so forth. See for example:
How long does back pain last? And how can learning about pain increase the chance of recovery?
And of course, many things we do specifically in response to pain can indeed make our pain worse, and spread:
Dr. Wolf’s perspective says:
- Life involves pain
- Pain invariably has a cause
- What has a cause, can have an end
- We just need to go through that process
This may seem like small comfort when we are in the middle of the pain, but if we’ve broken it down into parts with Dr. Wolf’s “box method”, and dealt with the first two parts (the sensations and the emotions) as well as reasonably possible, then we can tackle the third one (the story) a little more easily than we could if we were trying to come at it with no preparation.
What used to be:
“This pain has ruined my life, is making it unbearable, will almost certainly continue, and may get worse”
…can now become:
“This pain is a big challenge, but since I’m here for it whether I want to be or not, I will suffer as I must, while calmly looking for ways to reduce that suffering as I go.”
In short: you cannot “think healing thoughts” and expect your pain to go away. But you can do a lot more than you might (if you left it unexamined) expect.
Want to know more from Dr. Wolf?
We reviewed a book of hers recently, which you might enjoy:
Outsmart Your Pain – by Dr. Christiane Wolf
Take care!
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When You “Can’t Complain”
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A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It
In today’s Psychology Sunday feature, we’re going to be flipping the narrative on gratitude, by tackling it from the other end.
We have, by the way, written previously about gratitude, and what mistakes to avoid, in one of our pieces on positive psychology:
How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)
“Can’t complain”
Your mission, should you choose to accept it (and come on, who doesn’t like a challenge?) is to go 21 days without complaining (to anyone, including yourself, about anything). If you break your streak, that’s ok, just start again!
Why?
Complaining is (unsurprisingly) inversely correlated with happiness, in a self-perpetuating cycle:
Pet Peeves and Happiness: How Do Happy People Complain?
And if a stronger motivation is required, there’s a considerable inverse correlation between all-cause happiness and all-cause mortality, even when potential confounding factors (e.g., chronic health conditions, socioeconomic status, etc) are controlled for, and especially as we get older:
Investing in Happiness: The Gerontological Perspective
How?
You may have already formulated some objections by this point, for example:
- Am I supposed to tell my doctor/therapist “I’m fine thanks; how are you?”
- Some things are worthy of complaint; should I be silent?
But both of these issues (communication, and righteousness) have answers:
On communication:
There is a difference between complaining, and giving the necessary information in answer to a question—or even volunteering such information.
For example, when our site went down yesterday, some of you wrote to us to let us know the links weren’t working. There is a substantive difference (semantic, ontological, and teleological) between:
- ❝The content was great but the links in “you may have missed” did not work.❞ ← a genuine piece of feedback we received (thank you!)
- ❝Wasted my time, couldn’t read your articles! Unsubscribing, and I hope your socks get wet tomorrow!❞ ← nobody said this; our subscribers are lovely (thank you)
- Note that the former wasn’t a complaint, it was genuinely helpful feedback, without which we might not have noticed the problem and fixed it.
- The latter was a complaint, and also (like many complaints) didn’t even address the actual problem usefully.
What makes it a complaint or not is not the information conveyed, but the tone and intention. So for example:
“You’ve only done half the job I asked you to!” → “Thank you for doing the first half of this job, could you please do the other half now?”
Writer’s anecdote: my washing machine needs a part replaced; the part was ordered two weeks ago and I was told it would take a week to arrive. It’s been two weeks, so tomorrow I will not complain, but I will politely ask whether they have any information about the delay, and a new estimated time of arrival. Because you know what? Whatever the delay is, complaining won’t make it arrive last week!
On righteousness:
Indeed, some things are very worthy of complaint. But are you able to effect a solution by complaining? If not, then it’s just hot air. And venting isn’t without its own merits (we touched on the benefits of emotional catharsis recently), but that should be a mindful choice when you choose to do that, not a matter of reactivity.
Complaining is a subset of criticizing, and criticizing can be done without the feeling and intent of complaining. However, it too should definitely be measured and considered, responsive, not reactive. This itself could be the topic for another main feature, but for now, here’s a Psychology Today article that at least explains the distinction in more words than we have room for here:
React vs Respond: What’s the difference?
This, by the way, also goes the same for engaging in social and political discourse. It’s easy to get angry and reactive, but it’s good to take a moment to pick your battles, and by all means fight for what you believe in, and/but also do so responsively rather than reactively.
Not only will your health thank you, but you’re also more likely to “win friends and influence people” and all that!
What gets measured, gets done
Find a way of tracking your streak. There are apps for that, like this one, or you could find a low-tech method you prefer.
Bonus tip: if you do mess up and complain, and you realize as you’re doing it, take a moment to take a breath and correct yourself in the moment.
Take care!
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