Posts by Lily Sloane
Is Stigma Keeping You From Therapy?
researchers found that stigma around seeking mental health services was greatly reduced by TALKING ABOUT IT.
Eat and Let Eat
After years of hating my body I finally stopped and began allowing myself to eat what I want while learning intuitively what works and doesn’t work for me. Now I see clients in my private practice who are recovering from their own disordered eating and body image as well as patients in an intensive outpatient eating disorder program.
Sidelining White Shame and Joining the Social Justice Conversation
Two weekends ago hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in major US cities and throughout the world to stand up against police violence and racism. Here’s what I did: I slept in because I felt a little head cold coming on, leisurely made hash browns and organic free range eggs for breakfast,…
Can Therapy Help Us Save the Planet?
“How sad to think that nature speaks and mankind doesn’t listen.” -Victor Hugo For a long time, I’ve felt driven to write about climate change and our denial of nature (inside and outside ourselves) yet couldn’t get the words on the page. I’d pull up a blank document and just stare and stare until I…
Stepping Into My Shadow: Halloween as Therapy
“Hold on, man. We don’t go anywhere with ‘scary,’ ‘spooky,’ ‘haunted,’ or ‘forbidden’ in the title.” – Shaggy Rogers (Scooby-Doo) It wasn’t until recently that I realized why I love Halloween so much. I don’t really feel excitement over candy or overwhelming crowds. Yet the theatrical has always had a magnetic pull on me, and…
Sharing the Road: how driving keeps us emotionally distant from one another
When I was 14 ½ I signed up for driver’s ed, just barely old enough to take the class. The day I turned 15 I passed my permit test. The week I turned 16 I took my behind-the-wheel test. Anxious to get in the beat-down old hunk of steel my older brother so generously handed…
Sharing the Shame
Mortified: connecting with others to find relief from shame When I was 15, I wrote some pretty silly things in my diary (because I was 15). When I was 17, I went back through those entries and edited them, leaving critical comments about my intelligence and maturity as a 15 year old. Actually, a big chunk…
Running with it: exercise and the inner critic
I was thinking about going for a quick jog the other night when my inner critic burst in. She wanted to remind me that I shouldn’t even bother if it’s going to be so short and probably slow (“is that even running?”). She said, “You’re always going to be fat and lazy. You’ll never look…
I can’t get no satisfaction: food and relationships
The food in “food and relationships” I’m starving. I waited too long to eat. My stomach’s rumbling, my head’s starting to hurt. I can’t deal with cooking at this point. I need a super burrito. Now. The train is too slow. Everything and everyone is against me eating. My inner critic’s saying, “You’re so weak. Other…
Who Do You Think You Are: Identity Crisis or Opportunity?
A single text message from my brother nearly sent me into an identity crisis. He was trying to persuade me to sign up for an extreme sports event which includes running up steep hills, wading through mud, scaling walls…getting mildly electrocuted. If you haven’t heard of this and think I’m describing something out of Abu…