On this episode of Insight Treatment Hour, our host Frederik Schulin welcomes in guest Elizabeth G’Sell, a LMFT with the Discovery Mood Eating disorder program to discuss eating disorders and how teens can often be affected by and treated for them. With the holidays coming up come heightened expectations and potential for added stress, making it all the more important to manage our personal lives in a way that allows us to stay grounded.

Frederik opens the show by welcoming Elizabeth who mentions that treating eating disorders often has to do with what the primary challenge is for a particular patient. Other times, eating disorders come secondary and comes along with other diagnoses that must be addressed. Elizabeth discusses the Pathway To Peace Program which is one of the many options for those with eating disorders. Therapeutic meals including, breakfast, snacks, lunch, and family meals are offered to help address the issues systemically.

More than anything, Elizabeth echoes Frederik’s sentiment about the stressful holiday seasons and putting ourselves first as individuals as opposed to simply looking to appease our family, friends, and meeting expectations.

“Normalize not always being joyful during the holidays,” Elizabeth said. “That can put a lot of pressure on someone when they’re feeling anxiety, grief, stress, or other normal human emotions. Being compassionate with yourself, as humans were not designed to be perfect, and its important to remind ourselves that and with the holidays there are a lot of different things that contribute to that. All kinds of normal human emotions that we have as human beings, if we feel like we are not allowed to have those feelings during this time, it can create a compounded shame so it’s important to create space for not always having that jolly joyful feeling during the holidays.”