I have a lot of student loan debt. In my process of decision-making about how much to pay off, when, and what the consequences of all of my options might be, I noticed a familiar grief, a flavor I hadn't felt since the first time I got serious about committing to eating disorder recovery. I realized that in both scenarios, Present Me was paying the price for decisions that were adaptive to Past Me, for the benefit of Future Me. Past Me didn't accumulate debt or engage with an

At my cousin's funeral the week before I turned 16, I was fixated on my anger about the people approaching his casket, decked out in Christian regalia, saying prayers that reflected a religion he didn't believe in. I was aware that it wasn't socially acceptable to confront these fellow mourners on what I felt was selfishness, so I looked at his corpse and rolled my eyes as if to say "Do you believe these people?" in order to have an outlet to express my disdain. No one else s

The idea that relationships should not be "transactional" is in line with the anti-capitalist values around which I live my life and practice therapy. It is true that healthy relationships are built on more than give-and-take exchanges of favors, but the key word is "more than." Those exchanges are still there, and they are still crucial. While it's romantic and Hallmark card-esque to believe that love and friendship should be unconditional and that care is best when it's giv

For many people, recovery from an eating disorder is a long and winding road, full of self-discovery and unlearning harmful beliefs. But what happens when, after years of work, you realize that the recovery you fought so hard for was actually another form of masking? When the version of healing you were praised for was, in reality, compliance-based and centered around neurotypical norms? The Realization: Unmasking Recovery Many late-identified autistic individuals come to und