Parenting Through Eating Disorder Recovery: Advice from Those Who’ve Been There
Mental Note is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Search for Mental Note, and subscribe so you never miss an episode!
Supporting a loved one through eating disorder recovery can feel overwhelming—but you don’t have to do it alone. In this special Q&A episode, we sit down with experienced parents Beth Ayn Stansfield and Amy Oberholtzer, who have navigated this journey with their own children and turned their experiences into advocacy. Beth Ayn, now the National Family Advocate for Eating Recovery Center, and Amy, founder of the nonprofit CATCH, share their hard-earned wisdom on self-care, technology, community-building, and trusting the process. Whether you’re just beginning or deep in the recovery journey, their insights offer guidance, hope, and reassurance.
Transcript
Ellie Pike:
Starting any journey can feel overwhelming. The difference between creating life-changing experiences or enduring miserable ones often comes down to one thing, the quality of your guides. For caregivers supporting a loved one through eating disorder recovery, two of the best guides I know are Beth Ayn Stansfield and Amy Oberholtzer. What makes them stand out? Not only have they both walked this road with their own children, but they've also transformed those personal challenges into a mission to help other families navigate recovery. Their hard-earned wisdom has become a lifeline for so many. For Beth Ayn, that's meant serving in countless roles as a family champion and resource finder. Today, she's the National Family Advocate for Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center.
Amy, on the other hand, used her experience to found CATCH, Community Action Together for Children's Health, a Chicago-based nonprofit providing education and support for families tackling mental health challenges. Together, they bring the experience, compassion, and insight to help you avoid common pitfalls, build momentum, and find peace on the long and winding road of recovery. In today's special Q&A, we'll explore what they've learned, what they wish they'd known, and their advice on self-care, trusting the process, navigating technology and building community. You are listening to Mental Note podcast, and I'm your host, Ellie Pike.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
It is great to be here today. I'm Beth Ayn Stansfield. I'm the National Family Advocate for the Eating Recovery Center. My daughter was initially diagnosed with an eating disorder when she was in middle school, and since that time, she is now 27 and she's strong in recovery.
Amy Oberholtzer:
My name is Amy Oberholzer. I live in Northbrook, Illinois. I am the proud mama of two young adults and I am the founder and executive director of a not-for-profit that supports families and kids in our area with their mental health. The organization is called CATCH, Community Action Together for Children's Health, and I'm very proud and happy to be here today.
Ellie Pike:
Thank you both for being here. I know you've gotten to meet before a couple of times, and so I'm sure that you'll enjoy your conversation together. And what I want to do is really be a listener today and really learn a lot from both of you who have such an amazing lived experience as caregivers and specifically so many skills to navigate mental health crises. So I'd like to share that with our listeners today. So I'd really like to know what you hope other caregivers take away from this episode.
Amy Oberholtzer:
Primarily for me, I hope they take away that they are not alone, that there are so many of us out here who are parenting and navigating journeys with our kids because it can be a scary and very lonely time. And I guess I would also hope that they could come away with some trust that recovery is truly possible.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
Amy, I couldn't agree more. Hold on to hope and know that recovery is absolutely possible, and I know at times that can be quite a challenge, especially when you're in the throes of supporting someone with an eating disorder and really practice self-care. You want to be your best version of yourself to be able to show up on a day-to-day basis, and again, not only in supporting your loved one, but in being able to continue to have a little bit of enjoyment for yourself as you move through this.
Amy Oberholtzer:
I agree with that.
Ellie Pike:
I just so appreciate the messages that you're coming with and the perspectives that you have behind them. And when you talk about wanting to instill the idea that hope and recovery is actually possible, are you talking about mental health recovery as a whole or just eating disorder recovery?
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
For me, I think about when we're talking about eating disorders, they often don't walk alone. There's the co-occurring illnesses, the anxiety, the depression, possibly the OCD, the ADHD. And so I feel like, gosh, when we're talking about mental health, it's an umbrella.
Amy Oberholtzer:
Yeah. I mean, I think for me anyway, there was a realization at some point in my daughter's journey that she would probably always live with mental illness of some kind. She's always going to have anxiety and depression that I do not have or understand, but she has learned through all of her treatment and recovery choices, positive ways of dealing with them rather than withholding food and other things that were all wrapped up in that anorexic cycle. For me, certainly it's recovery from the eating disorder, which was the most terrifying because it challenged her being alive really. And I think it's learning to live with or alongside the challenges that she has mentally. Would you agree with that Beth Ayn?
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
Yeah, and I heard Dr. Philip Mehler one time speak, and he mentioned with eating disorders, it is the most complex mental illness, and yet it is the very, it's the one mental illness that you can fully recover from. And so just hearing that offered so much hope for me, and I knew that we were going to, Carly, she was going to gain those skills that she needed to be able to better navigate life with her anxiety and her obsessive compulsive disorder. And while she's engaged in treatment and I'm doing all the learning that I need to be doing, those words that Dr. Mehler shared just continue to return and resonate and to really help me. Hold on, again.
Amy Oberholtzer:
It seems like it's important to say for anyone who might be listening who's in the throes of it with their kid or with a loved one, this is by no means easy. We don't mean to say that you should "snap out of it". It's hard. It's really hard to see the light, but I guess what we're hoping for is to give people the idea that there is light.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
It's two steps forward, it's one step back. And for some individuals like Carly, full-blown relapses. And I think of it as you're describing as a whitewater raft adventure. I mean, honestly, when we're talking about the challenges, if I can get through this, I can just white-knuckle it and give it all I've got. We're going to move through this part of the river. And then there were other days or other moments and there was just this back-and-forth type of motion that we would experience. And of course, again, when we're talking about changing any kind of behavior or ways of thinking, there are going to be setbacks. But I really like to refer to those as learning opportunities and as scary and uncomfortable as those times were, those were the opportunities for Carly to get stronger in her recovery. So you're right, Amy, this is not easy at all.
Ellie Pike:
Well, that's a perfect segue, Beth Ayn, because there's a reason I brought you and Amy here, and you're not in the throes of it like you once were. And I think bringing that perspective where it's a little bit zoomed out and you've had some time to process your own experience as well as your loved ones, I'm hoping that I can really gain a lot of knowledge and inspiration from both of you for our listeners. And so you have very similar stories. You have adult children who had mental health crises when they were younger, and you navigated that as their caregiver. And so I'd love some time to reflect on each one of your stories, and I have a few questions for you, so I'm going to ask you what do you know now? What do you wish you'd known then? And what would you do differently if you could go back and raise your kiddos again?
Amy Oberholtzer:
So many things. I know that a couple of the most important things that I've learned are don't panic. The tendency is to sweat every minute, every day, every half day. And it wasn't until I realized that we were really on a long journey and I could settle into what Beth Ayn was just describing, the class sixes and the class twos, the ups and the downs, and realize that every really tough moment was nothing to panic about. It was just something to get to the other side of. I learned the importance of being silent, of just sharing space with my daughter rather than trying to fix the moment. I remember we spent so many hours on the big green couch, which I have since gotten rid of because I never want to see it again. Just sitting there with her and letting her know that whatever, that she wasn't alone and that whatever I could do to help her, I would do, but that there was nothing proactively that I could do to make it better except be there.
Ellie Pike:
That's a really hard lesson as a caregiver to just sit and create space and actually not try to fix every single thing.
Amy Oberholtzer:
I used to ask her so many times a day, Ellie, are you okay? Is everything okay? And it wasn't until I realized, no, she's not okay, but just show up. It was an important, really important lesson for me.
Ellie Pike:
I appreciate that. Beth Ayn, what was your experience of what do you know now?
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
That I could get my kid back and she was really in there and that others will have a similar experience. When you were talking Amy, and we were talking about walking alongside them, you were mentioning that continuing to show up, knowing that she was more than her eating disorder and reminding her of that, that it wasn't so much what she was recovering from, but what was it that she wanted to recover to? And I think the other thing that comes to mind that Amy and I have talked about before is that, gosh, in those times when I didn't feel like I could make a difference, I really did have influence on her recovery and that if I could show up and I always lean on the four Cs, if I could show up as much as possible by being calm and consistent and compassionate and confident, then she could pull on my strength to continue to do the hard work that she had to do.
And so there were those days I really felt like, gosh, am I on the right track and do I really have the skills to be able to do this thing called support and am I doing it in the right fashion? All those questions, Amy, that we have when we're trying to help out, and it's like, that's it. It's those four Cs, which is, it took a lot of practice. Okay, so I'm going to put that out there too. I mean, it took a lot of practice. It took a lot of patience.
Amy Oberholtzer:
I'm coming back, I'm bringing myself back to the very start of my learning journey and my realization about how sick my daughter was and what we were in for. And I think one of the fundamental things that both of us learned, Beth Ayn early on or reasonably early on, is the importance of letting the anxiety be. I accommodated so many times her anxiety. Sure, you don't have to go to school. And then it wasn't until I learned the importance of getting through it to prove to herself that she could, that things, A, it took the pressure off of me, but also it helped her begin to really heal.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
Yeah, because it's not really my job to fix her.
Amy Oberholtzer:
But it's so hard to learn that, isn't it?
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
I'm telling you, that took a couple of years, and finally it was this aha moment. Gosh, my job is not to fix her. She's got to do the hard work and I've got to and she's got to trust the process and her treatment providers, these folks who specialize in this, and they're like you were saying, Amy, my position was to show up, and if I could stay focused on one thing by way of support, it would be how can I help bring the anxiety, her stress levels down on a day-to-day basis? What are those things I can do to help create a space for her to learn these new skills that she's being taught? And then to be able to have the space and the ability to tap into those things.
And that's where it was really just letting go and trusting the process and the treatment team. That was hard. And then once I had what my role could look like, and again, that was to help bring down the stress and the anxiety and then walk alongside her as a co-regulator, okay, then things started to happen. But again, that requires a lot of trust, and that was an aha moment for me.
Ellie Pike:
One thing I'm really noticing about what both of you have shared is the importance of noticing your own learning journey as a parallel to your loved ones. You both had to do your work and it was different work, but for both of you as the caregivers, you needed to learn how to hold the space for your loved one to process and to have their emotions and to make the right choices for their recovery. And that's hard. So I commend you both for doing your own learning, your own research, your own education and growth in that process. But I'm sure it wasn't perfect, because none of us are perfect. So I'm wondering what you wish you had known then when your family was in the mental health crisis.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
What I wish I would have known or been more on top of was there were going to be a number of changes that Carly had to go through in order to get where she wanted to be. So when we were going through treatment, I didn't recognize how scary, how hard and uncomfortable it was going to be. I really thought we were going to secure this treatment team. They were going to, she was going to walk into that office, their offices, she was going to be ready to do this thing called recovery, and they were going to immediately be able to set things in motion. I didn't recognize truly the complexity of the illness and that there were going to be physical changes and emotional changes and cognitive changes that were going to have to take place in order to get her where she needed to be. And so that required change on my part as well.
Amy Oberholtzer:
I think that's a really good point. I think what comes to mind for me are a couple of things. One, I wish I had known that we, my husband and I, our family was not alone because we definitely felt our family was doing this on our own, and we were not by any stretch of the imagination. Unfortunately, there were too many young people struggling the way our daughter was. And I'm hopeful that we can continue to talk in our communities about stuff like this so that people feel less alone for sure.
But the other part of it is parallel to what Beth Ayn said, and that is that we were ill-prepared, all of us, for what recovery would look like and how difficult it would be. And I don't know if it's because the caregivers and the teams there didn't know to share that with us, or if we were just so in the throes of stuff that we didn't hear it or maybe we couldn't understand it until we were in it, I don't really know. But we did not understand how complex and hard recovery from an eating disorder was going to be. And I hope to share that with people just so that they're braced and ready.
Ellie Pike:
You're playing the long game and it's not, oh, okay, in four weeks you're going to be recovered, but it's really a longer process. Yes.
Amy Oberholtzer:
Exactly.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
When you were talking, connecting with others, whether it's immediate family members or extended family or close friends, it's challenging, especially as they're moving through. And they too are thinking, oh, surely you all are going to be in a better place in a couple of months, and then you're starting to feel like you have to explain yourself to these folks. And I wasn't prepared for that because I was still trying to wrap my head around all that needed to happen. And I remember Carly saying to me one time, gosh, I just carry so much guilt and shame because I feel like I should be further along, and I know other people are probably most likely thinking the same thing.
And I remember stepping back and saying to her, "You know what? This was a new learning for me. And now I better understand Carly, while you're moving through treatment, that means you're replacing unhealthy coping strategies with new coping strategies. You're working through trauma or micro traumas. I imagine there are a body for her body image concerns that you're having to address and just a number of other things while you're trying to move through your day to day." So of course, all of that is going to impact the way you show up every day.
Ellie Pike:
I'm picturing this knotted up ball of yarn that I saw someone in the airport trying to unwind the other day, and then she was trying to rewind it and the new little ball, and I could see how much time it was taking, but that it was also really satisfying, because she was doing something else with this knotted up ball. And that's what I'm picturing is you and your loved one were unwinding all the things that had created this perfect storm of an eating disorder and mental health crisis, and it takes time to relearn a better coping skill or a better way to behave in the midst of stress. And so just kudos, kudos to all of you because you've done that hard work, and you're right, none of that is going to be really fast. So I want to know what you would've done differently, not just in this mental health crisis, but differently, even just raising your children, knowing what you know now.
Amy Oberholtzer:
This question is part of a very deep personal journey for me, and that combines forgiveness of myself and discovery for myself. But one of the things that I would definitely do differently and that I hope to do differently in my relationships moving forward is trust them more. I would ask them more. I would be less apt to make decisions or move forward with things without their input. I would be less influenced by my community or my peers. That's what I would do differently. And I think that in doing so, that have allowed my kids to feel more comfortable in who they were rather than what they were supposed to be or what they thought I wanted them to be.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
Gosh, Amy, I can so relate. And along those same lines, I think I would've slowed down a little bit. I talk a lot about this fast-paced world we live in, do more, be more, get more. And I think I would've slowed down, smelled the roses. I would not have been so goal-oriented for myself, and I probably would've encouraged my two girls to take a look at what they really want in life and to recognize everybody's paths are different, whether it's going to college or whether it's securing a job or maybe getting out there and traveling or just whatever it is that they want to do. I would've encouraged them to, I don't know, walk to their own beat and do a little bit more exploration.
Amy Oberholtzer:
I agree with that completely. There's just so many different ways to live a life, and we happen to have raised our kids in a place where there's an expectation that college comes right after high school and that jobs come right after college, and that you just get on and go. And I agree with you completely, Beth Ayn, that I would possibly even chosen a different place to raise my children, but having not done that, I would've at least voiced and modeled differently than we might have without even realizing we were really doing it, because we believe it. Were we even living to our values? Our values are truly to embrace who they are as human beings, but I'm not sure that we necessarily lived that in the way that we marched through things.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
I could have been a different type of role model, hitting the pause button, taking the time to reset, recharge, reboot, think about where am I in this moment and where do I want to be, need to be in the coming days, the coming weeks, whatever, the coming years and stuff. It's funny, I've told Carly since that time, I said, "You know what? With self-care, I want you to think about your cell phone and you take a look at the top line on that phone of yours and you see that charge line. Well, when it reads red, I'm typically scrambling to find that charger." Well, my goal now is to prevent the line from even reading red, but rather staying in the green.
And that's a priority for me. And I think that's something looking back, I wish I would've done a better job. I was doing the best with what I had available, what I was able to do at that time. So I don't beat myself up around it, but I do look back and say, "Wow, I could have done a little bit better job of that and starting today, this is what I need to do." But yeah, self-care, I think that's also a big part of what our loved ones need to recognize as being important.
Ellie Pike:
Well, I like how you're saying you wish you had modeled that more because you see that as a value for your loved one, but it's hard to teach that unless you're actually modeling it yourself. So I can really appreciate that tidbit, especially as someone who's raising toddlers, and it's always hard to step away. And then when I do, I always come back a better human, and I know they appreciate that. And so you're teaching me lessons and I will integrate them in.
Amy Oberholtzer:
It's ingrained in us that stepping away feels selfish. Taking care of ourselves feels selfish. I mean, I believed that for a long time. When my daughter was really in the throes of things, I was afraid to take time for myself because I felt as though, A, it felt like she can't get away from it, so I got to stick in it. And B, what's going to happen if I do? And as it turns out, of course, it was critically important for me to ensure that my fuse was charged because otherwise all that you described before being calm and confident and capable and present is very difficult to do when you are fried.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
And oftentimes I would say to myself, I don't have the time, like you just mentioned, I can't really step away from Carly right now. I had to learn that if I just carved out 10 minutes a day, that's all it takes. 10 minutes a day to engage in something that used to bring me enjoyment.
Ellie Pike:
I really appreciate the example of just 10 minutes because I think oftentimes we say self-care and then someone's like, a bubble bath or get your nails done, but self-care might be as plain and simple as setting a boundary or a cup of tea. And self-care might be saying, no, someone can't come over right now just because you need your house a little less chaotic. So I think being creative with what self-care can actually look like, it's really creating whatever that is that can give you the most peace.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
But self-care, for me, it's creating balance because we all have our typical day-to-day expectations, tasks, things that need to be taken care of, and then we take care of our loved ones, and that's our priority, and we take care of ourselves. And many of us are showing up whether we're paid or not paid, but we all have a position or a job that needs to get done every day. And so it's that creating that balance so it all can happen.
Ellie Pike:
I appreciate that. The balance and the recharge, those are great ways to think of it in a visual way. So we may have already touched on this, but I'm wondering your little elevator speech of what your soapbox is because you're both passionate people, you've both come out of your own caregiving stories and then also developed your own nonprofits because you care and you want to share this with the world and also change the world. So when you hop on an elevator with someone and they're like, "What do you do? Or why do you care about that?" What are some of your tidbits that really ring true to who you are and the message you want to share?
Amy Oberholtzer:
I feel extremely strongly that it's important for us to remember that kids are kids and childhood needs to be childhood, and we just got to let them marinate in their own development, marinate in their own journeys through being a kid and a child. And when we do that, we allow our kids to just become who they're supposed to be. Failure and falling and hurting themselves and all, we just got to let them have a childhood that is without overprotection and overparenting and worry, and kids take risks for which they're developmentally ready. And those risks are important in order to develop resilience and the confidence in oneself is crucial to becoming a human being who believes that they can go and change the world and they can do what they want to do. And so my soapbox is very often like, let's get childhood back and let's make sure that all this anxious parenting gets checked.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
First off, recovery is absolutely possible. We're not alone. Treatment is stronger than it's ever been. It's available for caregivers to get that support they need while their loved ones are getting help as well. So I would say to folks, please stay strong. Know that there's help out there. There are a number of amazing nonprofits. Amy's CATCH is one of them for folks to take advantage of. We've got higher level of care now where your loved ones will be in good hands, and then you'll have folks in your community who will extend their hand and want to walk alongside you as well.
Ellie Pike:
I love both points that you hit home. And particularly I can relate, Amy with what you were talking about of trusting your child that they'll take risks according to their developmental milestones. And I was trying to think of what that actually looks like. And for me, the visual I have is my five-year-old trying to do something risky and instead of saying, "Be careful, be careful, or don't do that." I've been trying to practice as the parent to say, "Do you feel confident and do you feel safe?" And she'll say, "I really do. I can do this." And I let her do it even though I'm squirming inside a little. And so I can only imagine how much that changes throughout life when she's only five now versus 15 trying to make some big kid decisions. But to be that support person alongside of them to take risks and to do that in a supportive environment is so beautiful.
Amy Oberholtzer:
To piggyback on what you were saying, I don't know if you've ever seen the documentary Chasing Childhood, but one of the things in that film, they challenge parents to go home and ask their children regardless of what their age is, what's one thing that you feel like you're ready to do on your own that we haven't let you do yet? And kids will say, "Well, I should be able to ride my bike to Frank's house.", or "I want to walk to school.", or "I want to go to the grocery and get dinner tonight.", or whatever it is. But it gets back to what I was saying earlier too, about listening to your kids, checking in with your kids. It's a challenge for parents, but it's also like, okay, we can do that. Let's do that. And we're going to have to sweat it out a little, let them out of our sight and get through it because they'll get home. It's a really good film.
Ellie Pike:
I just wrote that down. So what's one thing you feel ready to do on your own that we haven't let you do yet? I love that. I love that so much because if that will allow them to build confidence, that goes so far when dealing with anxiety, depression, social relationships.
Amy Oberholtzer:
Absolutely
Ellie Pike:
Any of it, even walking into a treatment setting.
Amy Oberholtzer:
And it also shows them that you're willing to listen to what they're trusting in themselves, you're willing to listen to that. And I think that's a really beautiful thing.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
You're making me think about that word collaboration when you're talking about trust and gosh, what is it that you need? This is what I need. Together, let's sit down, come to the table and let's see how we can make that happen.
Ellie Pike:
I like what you're talking about, trusting your child, letting them practice slowing down and being curious. And I wanted to ask exactly how you see this paralleling with the conversation about raising kids in a digital world where there's not really the same type of free-range childhood where you could just really unplug and make mistakes. People will never know about it. There's so many pieces to that, but I'm curious your perspective and tips for parents raising kids in a digital world.
Amy Oberholtzer:
I think we could probably talk about this topic alone for a very long time. From having read the Anxious Generation and from having a lot of conversations in my community and watching my own kids, I would suggest that living in a digital world is not going anywhere. It's here to stay. And so I think it is our responsibility as parents to talk openly with our kids about what it is that they are doing on their phones, but more importantly how it's making them feel. Without question, I think when my daughter was younger and she was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, the way it made her feel was different than I think what she was perceiving it to make her feel. And I know from my own use on a phone, if I pause and think, oh my God, I'm an hour in here, I don't feel good. I think it's important to ask our kids what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how they're feeling about it, because we need to be aware of what it is that's happening on that phone. But also, I'm a huge believer in phone free time, dinner, play dates, bedtime. It just isn't necessary. School. So I think we can have phones, have all the technology, but limit its invasion into our kids and our own lives.
Ellie Pike:
Well, sure. And I think that's where some of the modeling even comes. I have to be mindful to sometimes pull out a recipe book instead of always using my phone just to show that I'm not fully attached to my phone for every single thing. So it's hard to model it in a way that I would want my children to actually learn it. So I'm practicing this and I can really appreciate that piece of it. But then if you add on the layers of the anxiety piece or the social comparison piece and being in an identity defining phase like adolescence, that becomes even more complicated. And so I'm curious, Beth Ayn, your experience with this as you work with caregivers, especially in eating disorder recovery, and if there are any helpful boundaries or pieces of advice around using social media or phones.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
It's really important to recognize to any eating disorder that the mind follows the body in healing. And so we know in recovery, food is medicine. And we know that it takes six months to a year after weight restoration is achieved for the brain to come fully back online. Now, we're supporting our loved ones. They're moving through recovery. We're trying to achieve weight restoration or nutritional stabilization. When someone's in the throes of eating disorders, we know that cognitive functioning is limited, it's impaired because the brain is needing to heal. And so in that state of mind when you're talking about insight, motivation, the ability to learn, to remember, behavioral changes, to tap into therapy or to do the right thing, it can be really, really challenging. And that was new information to me. So when we're talking about, again, cognitive functioning and how to tackle some of these things like cell phone use, social media, it really plays an important part in that, remembering that food is medicine.
But when I think about cognitive functioning, for example, when I'm talking to caregivers, I'll say to them, "I think about two lamps. And if you have one lamp that's got this frayed, brittle, tangled electrical cord, and you go to plug it into the wall, it takes a while for the current to travel through the cord to the bulb. And then once that current gets to the bulb, that light is probably pretty dull. And then you've got this other lamp and it has this new 18 gauge cord. It's strong, it's sturdy, and you go to plug that cord into the wall and it quickly supplies the current to the bulb and the bulb lights up rather brightly."
And so what I want to share out with parents as they continue to support their kiddos and are trying to understand this whole notion of cognitive functioning so they can do a better job of making reasonable choices in their life, the good news is over time, as they get healthier and stronger in treatment, that cord and that connection gets stronger around cognitive functioning, and then they're better able to engage and learn and process information and make choices and decisions that are going to benefit them.
Amy Oberholtzer:
Eating disorders and mental illness in general is an extremely lonely place to live, and I think cell phones only exacerbate that, that our teenagers and our young adults are habitually alone with their phones. And even though they feel as though that connects them with the world, what they're actually reporting is an increased sense of loneliness and isolation rather than connectedness. And I think that is an important piece to discuss, not only in eating disorder recovery, but just in our mental health generally.
Ellie Pike:
I think that is a really important key piece because someone who's really sick and in the throes of their eating disorder is going to be thinking from the lens of their eating disorder, not from a lens of wellness. And so knowing that and being able to identify the strength of the eating disorder or the mental health issue, I think is really important while trying to gauge someone's ability to make good decisions. So thank you for that. We already talked a little bit about self-care and the importance of just finding whatever that recharge button is for you, which might mean boundaries or just 10 minutes for yourself.
But one thing we haven't really talked about is if there's a caregiver listening to this episode where they can feel like they get ongoing support, not just through this episode. And Beth Ayn, you're the guru of parent support and caregiver support, even for loved ones, not necessarily children. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the type of support you offer so that folks can plug into it, and then we'll be sure to link to it in our show notes so folks can register and join in.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
Yeah, sure. So through the Eating Recovery Center, we offer four national virtual caregiver support groups so that we can offer education and ideas and suggestions and support for those who are supporting a child, an adolescent, and then for those who are supporting adult. So you may be a partner, you may be supporting your adult child, may be a colleague or a friend, but those are available on a weekly basis. And also on our second and fourth Saturday of every month, the Eating Recovery Center also offers an eating disorder 101 and 201, where you all might, caregivers might want to gain some additional knowledge around the complexity of this illness and gain some additional practical ideas on how to support someone. And they might also want to share these presentations out with their family and friends so that they can better understand what this journey entails.
Ellie Pike:
Thank you so much. And you've run those four caregiver support groups for folks supporting someone with an eating disorder. And ERC Pathlight also has a caregiver support group specifically for folks supporting an individual without an eating disorder, but with any kind of mood or anxiety disorder. So we'll link to that in our show notes as well. And Amy, if anybody wanted to connect with CATCH and the resources you all provide, could you provide a little information on that?
Amy Oberholtzer:
You can contact CATCH at catchiscommunity.org. And one of the things that we offer is that we run Parents Connect groups, which are all peer led, so no mental health professional, but a parent who has walked in your shoes. We divide those groups by age as much as we can, but we also run one for parents who are parenting young people with eating disorders. And we also have a wide range of resources that are found on our website, past events and blogs and written resources. And for those of you who live in the Chicago land area, we have worked very hard to cull a list of what we believe to be very trusted mental health professionals, so that if you are in the throes of trying to find someone for your family, please reach into us and we would be more than happy to give you a list of people that we think could be helpful.
Ellie Pike:
Well, thank you so much for both of your work with eating disorders, with mental health, with your nonprofits, and just the greater community. It's such a privilege to be here with you today, and thank you so much for your time, and I hope to see you all soon.
Amy Oberholtzer:
Thank you.
Beth Ayn Stansfield:
Thank you.
Ellie Pike:
That's it for today's episode of Mental Note. If you're looking for links to the resources we discussed, like support groups, educational materials, and information on CATCH's in-person events, you'll find them in our show notes. We hope these tools help guide you on your journey. Remember to play the long game and take care of yourself along the way. Thank you for listening to Mental Note podcast. Our show is brought to you by Eating Recovery Center and Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center. If you'd like to talk to a trained therapist to see if in-person or virtual treatment that's right for you, please call them at 877-850-7199. If you need a free support group such as our caregiver support groups, check out eatingrecovery.com/support-groups. If you like our show, sign up for our e-newsletter and learn more about the people we interview at mentalnotepodcast.com. We'd also love it if you left us a review on iTunes. It helps others find our podcast. Mental Note is produced and hosted by me, Ellie Pike, edited by Carrie Daniels and directed by Sam Pike. Until next time.
