Blog posts, news articles, and other resources from The Center • A Place of HOPE
Substance use disorder and eating disorders are both serious illnesses that can lead to dangerous health consequences. They’re often talked about together because they tend to appear together; people with substance use disorder are much more likely to also have an eating disorder than the general population. On top of...
Multiple strategies for coping with urgings and cravings.
“Things were going well all week with my wife and me, and I thought the tensions were behind us,” a client told me recently. “But no, last night, she got all upset again over nothing.” If your marriage has been disrupted by your spouse exploding over their discovery of your...
The Addiction Cycle Do you ever sit reading your phone, reach for that second cookie and then sit baffled and disappointed when you discover it's gone? You don't remember eating it! You were acting on automatic pilot. Something similar is true with any bad habit or addiction. Whether it is...
How can you put your life back together after addiction? Healing happens when you reintegrate healthy connections with yourself and others. Once you admit you’re broken, you must agree to look at reconnecting the pieces of your life that addiction has torn apart. Your relationships may be strained, estranged, or...
The term narcotics covers a broad spectrum of substances that affect mood or behavior. They include both naturally occurring opioids and opiates, such as opium, morphine, and heroin, as well as those synthetically produced, such as Oxycontin and its generic, oxycodone, hydrocodone, Demerol, Percodan, or any number of branded or...
I encourage you to consider your truth. Are you able to recognize it? Has it become obscured by denial, shrouded in secrecy, deflated by minimization,or inflated by maximization?
People respond to stress in two basic but different ways: they’re either go-getters and stay-putters.
Boundaries are an important part of life. They help us see where we end and others begin. They define and protect us. They let good things in and keep trouble away. In a way, they are like a fence around someone’s house or property. Sound pretty good, don’t they? Think about every person you care about. Do you want them to have boundaries?
Generally, when people talk about caffeine, they’re talking about caffeinated drinks, such as coffee, tea, and soda. But caffeine is also found in chocolate and foods that use chocolate or coffee as flavorings, including ice cream and yogurt. People aren’t always aware of the amount of caffeine in some of...
Healthy people are growing people, and people do not grow healthy in isolation.
Addictions are compulsive behaviors that take over your life. They can come through behaviors that charge up the body's own feel-good responses. They are meant, initially, to bring relief, comfort, excitement, or pleasure. They do not provide control; they take control.
To help you understand if food has moved out of its God-given realm and into an inappropriate place in your life, answer the following questions, and be sure to explain why you answer the way you do.
Recent technology has presented us with a new, potentially devastating forum for inappropriately sexualized relationships. The Internet with its anonymity and wide-open content can tempt us to cross physical and sexual boundaries.
There is a wide difference between control and self-control. Many of us would admit to a desire for control in our lives and in fact have developed patterns and behaviors to attempt to achieve it. We’re not as diligent, however, when it comes to incubating an environment as amenable to...
You may be over forty, but most of us have one stubborn little kid rattling around inside. This “kid” represents some unfilled childhood need. And until we either fill or let go of that need, there he or she stays—never aging, always demanding.Kids like to eat junk food. They’re not...
One of the prime factors in denial of an eating disorder is pride. An eating disorder and many types of disordered eating patterns begin as a way to cope with pain, but along the way pride can take root.In the beginning, pride in your cleverness in handling the pain through...
How do you know if you and your family have crossed that line from technology use to obsession? Perhaps the true answer to whether or not you have control over the technology in your life is to do a tech detox. You may want to begin first by trying out...
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The whole person approach to treatment integrates all aspects of a person’s life: