Healthy Life Lessons

It seems that since the Covid-19 pandemic began, people have been joking about binging on food and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Not really that funny, I am afraid. As a registered psychotherapist, I don't find substance abuse or addition funny. I treat many people with binge eating and emotional eating. I do not treat alcohol or drug addiction in my practice, but since I work in mental health, it fascinates me. I think even if you have never struggled with an addiction or know someone who has, you can probably relate to an addict to some extent. Most of us tend to use some sort of behaviour to numb or distract ourselves from emotional pain. Maybe its just being a workoholic, or exercise, or shopping or something else that seems relatively benign. But avoiding processing pain will never make it go away, you have to face it. Recently, Sean McCann , founder of Great Big Sea, published a memoir about his experience of being sexually abused as a teen and his alcoholism th...

I hope none of my future posts involve global health crises...here are a few things making social isolation suck less. All of us have been washing our hands more frequently than usual for the past 6 weeks or so and many people are experiencing irritation because of it. I cannot recommend this cream enough! Eczederm Protectant cream. My eye doctor actually told me about it because my left eye tends to water a lot in cold weather and causes a lot of irritation at the outer corner of my eye. I needed a water resistant moisturizer and this fit the bill. It's been very effective for me whenever I have a skin irritation like that and is perfect for over-washed hands. Just note that in my experience, you won't always find it on pharmacy shelves as it is sometimes kept behind the counter so you may have to ask your pharmacist if they stock it. I have curly hair which is naturally drier than straight hair and as I get older it has gotten drier, so I am always on the lookout f...