If your brain treats every email, text, project, workout, meal, and life choice like it’s being graded, you’re not alone. That kind of pressure can look “high functioning” from the outside, but inside it’s exhausting. The tricky thing about perfectionism is that it often starts as a way to feel safe, loved, prepared, or in control. Then, slowly, it becomes a cage. You can’t rest unless everything is done. You can’t try unless you know you’ll be good. You can’t enjoy the win b

When someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, the question is rarely simple. They may be eating “enough” one day and barely eating the next. They may insist everything is fine, while their body, mood, or daily life tells a different story. Loved ones often find themselves asking the same painful question: What kind of help is enough right now? Eating disorder care is organized into different levels of support. These levels range from weekly outpatient therapy t

Mind-blown moment of this week: Listening to this episode of I Hate You. What's for Dinner? The way Casey Erlich broke down PDA (Persistent Drive for Autonomy or Pathological Demand Avoidance) entirely shifted my perspective on how this concept intersects with my work in the eating disorder field. As a neurodivergent-affirming clinician, I was familiar with the idea of PDA. However, I had always considered triggers for this pattern of response as external (e.g., requests to d