Theta Psychology

27/02/2023

How do you feel when scrolling through your Insta feed?

Social media can pressure us to meet unrealistic beauty ideals. We must teach our children, teenagers, friends, family, and selves what is real.

The photoshopped, air-brushed, and cosmetically-enhanced “perfect beauty standard” we see on our social media newsfeeds isn’t real.

Why should our self worth depend on whether we can achieve this?

This ‘Reverse Selfie’ video by Dove really highlights the damaging impact of not being able to see beyond the mirage of artificially enhanced beauty standards.

By age 13, 80% of girls distort the way they look online.* Let’s change that.Social media is a big part of young people’s lives -- but retouching apps and th...

06/10/2022

Clinical Psychologist from Theta Psychology, Rashelle Smith, is a Credentialed Eating Disorder Clinician.

Credential Issued by:
Australia New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders, ANZAED

If you are seeking information on treatment for yourself or a loved one, please don’t hesitate to contact the clinic on 07 4130 5496 or email admin@thetapsychology.com.au

22/09/2021

Genetics are likely to play a role in who develops an eating disorder. Genetic factors form the switch that when flicked by a significant life event may trigger an eating disorder. But disarming our genetic switch, or ensuring an environment where we do not activate it is challenging. Modern society, with its airbrushed Insta influencers and subliminal messages about ideal body size, conditions us from a young age. One study found young children to equate higher weight with being lazy, stupid, and dirty.

Alarmingly, internalisation of socially prescribed body ideals contributes to eating disorders and can be central to their maintenance.

We can provide youth with the ability to critically think, and not take idealised pictures of beauty at face value. We can educate them about Hollywood's unrealistic expectations of body image, and how use of objectified parts of humans in glossy magazines deny us the bigger picture processing of real life experience.

When we properly educate our youth about healthy body image, we show them that there is no such thing as an “ideal” body to compare themselves against. This offers them the opportunity to celebrate their uniqueness and not feel ashamed for not meeting society’s “ideal”. This in turn will reduce the number of children and adolescents who are numbing themselves through starvation, hiding behind a protective mental wall of all-consuming obsession with calories and measuring of body parts.
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Whether you need support for yourself or your child, contact Theta Psychology to see how psychology may help on 4130 5496 or via http://thetapsychology.com.au/ or email admin@thetapsychology.com.au. You can seek help from the Butterfly Foundation Helpline or talk with your doctor too.

11/09/2021

We all have times when our “emotional thermostat” malfunctions, but there are simple things we can do to help us regulate our emotions. Here are some tips from Rashelle on how to stay at a comfortable temperature 😊

https://medium.com/curious/how-to-remain-calm-and-collected-in-the-face-of-chaos-3f62c300732c?sk=c73e5f0d00ecaca695cf79f27aac9198

Tips to keep your “emotional thermostat” in check no matter what the world throws at you

23/06/2021

Perfection in our society is often rewarded, in a financial sense, academically, and in relationships. But for the clinical perfectionist, it often causes far more problems than it solves. Because they are unable to accept their work as anything less than perfect, they procrastinate, miss deadlines, and forgo opportunities. When they do manage to achieve their relentlessly high standard, rather than giving themselves a break, it only reinforces an ongoing pattern of perfectionistic behaviour.

Perfectionists tend to judge their self-worth on what they do and not who they are. But when they learn to be less than perfect, they may start to see their real value. Their efficiency improves, as they are now liberated from the need to be perfect.

22/06/2021

Eating disorders come in varied sizes. We know that people in non-underweight bodies can become very ill with restrictive eating. Symptoms of starvation - which are both psychological and physical - also occur in people who are not underweight. Many times you may hear "but I'm too big" or "I'm not sick enough". These beliefs can get in the way of receiving proper treatment.

We know that early diagnosis is associated with improved outcomes: better brain recovery, lower mortality rate, reversal of medical complications, and resuming the normal course of puberty. The best chance of recovery is by receiving treatment as early as possible.

Some people say it's made harder when they hear "atypical anorexia", as this suggests they’re not conforming, are unusual, or are of less concern. People in bodies that are average or higher in weight can experience the same degree of body distress and severity of malnutrition as those in bodies that are very low weight.

Don't delay diagnosis or seeking help because you don’t think it's severe enough. Everybody should be free from body shame, and has the right to eat flexibly and freely so they can get on with living.

03/06/2021