March Is National Endometriosis Awareness Month 2011

If you are someone who struggles with endometriosis feel free to visit my website www.ilissabanhazlmft.com to learn more about this invisible disease. I offer counseling and support groups for Endometriosis. 626-335-0903 (Glendora and surrounding cities).  It’s a very misunderstood disease!

Ilissa Banhazl, Marriage and Family Therapy

 Endometriosis can be a painful, chronic disease that results when the tissue that is normally inside the uterus (endometrial tissue) grows outside of the uterine cavity. Although it is estimated to affect over one million women in the U.S., the exact number is unknown, since many women with the condition have no symptoms.

The incidence of endometriosis is approximately 48 percent in infertile women and 5 percent in fertile women. Since the development and extent of the disease depends on the female hormone estrogen, endometriosis usually affects women in their reproductive years and is rarely found in postmenopausal women. It can affect any woman of reproductive age, regardless of race, ethnicity, or pregnancy and childbearing history.

Courtesy of http://www.fertilityauthority.com/articles/march-national-endometriosis-awareness-month

How Much Time Do You Waste Obsessing About Your Body?

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Photo: Chris Bartlett

How much time each day do YOU spend obsessing about your body? If you’re feeling badly about your body image then you may stay back from social activities or career opportunities and you may be suffering from low self-esteem. The body is just the outer shell. Use that time to grow in other more important ways. If you’re eating healthily and exercising moderately than you shouldn’t need to obsess at all. Your healthy habits should keep your body healthy and toned.
Ilissa

She’s healthy, a size 8, and involved in a nice relationship. So why does she spend so much time obsessing over her belly? And how much time is she spending? Valerie Frankel clocks her central preoccupation.

Surely you’ve heard the statistic that men think about sex 200 times a day. (Amazingly, there are no empirical or scientific studies to back up the claim.) Women, I’ve long believed, spend just as much time contemplating female bodies and what they’d like to do with them. Read More>>>

How to Talk About Money with Your Family

Many families are struggling since the economy took a bad turn. Things are slowly improving. Read this article to get some good advice on how to discuss finances with your family.

Ilissa

How to Talk About Money with Your Family

By Suze Orman

Photo: Robert Trachtenberg

In her new book, Suze teaches readers how to transform their thinking and reimagine the American dream. Here, she shares lesson number one: A bright financial future begins with those you love most.

Our families are the heart of our lives. We want our children to have endless opportunity, to be able to achieve and create and flourish. We want our parents to reap the benefits of a lifetime of hard work and live out their golden years free of worry. But too often these hopes lead us astray. We fall prey to our good intentions. We sacrifice the wrong things for the right reasons, putting our financial security at risk to make someone we love happy.Read More>>> http://www.oprah.com/money/The-Money-Class-Excerpt-Suze-Orman-Money-and-Family

How Men Really Feel About Their Bodies

We read and talk so much about women and their bodies. What about men??

 Ilissa

 

We know they obsess over our bodies. But have you heard them obsess about theirs? Ted Spiker breaks the code of silence and takes you where no woman has gone before.

Dressed only in my underwear, I’m eight years old and sitting on the pediatrician’s exam table, waiting for my checkup. My mother points to the two mounds of fatty flesh between my chest and belly. She asks the doctor, “Could they be tumors?”

“No,” he says, “it’s just fat.”

Since that day, my fat has absorbed more darts than the back wall of a bar. Read More>>>

Eating Disorders Speaking Engagement

Ilissa Banhazl, Marriage and Family Therapist is speaking on Eating Disorders at UWest (University of the West) (Wellness center) in Rosemead on Thursday March 10, 2011 from 1-2pm. Please contact Ilissa for more information (626)335-0903

Beauty and Body Image in the Media

How many of us are feeling pressure from the media to look a certain way? We can reject the media’s message of thinness! Beauty comes in all different forms. Let’s not forget that true beauty builds from the inside out. People think that if they achieve the perfect body that they will be completely happy. It’s not true. Yes, you’ll be skinny, but you’ll still have the same problems!

Ilissa

“We don’t need Afghan-style burquas to disappear as women. We disappear in reverse—by revamping and revealing our bodies to meet externally imposed visions of female beauty.”

Images of female bodies are everywhere. Women—and their body parts—sell everything from food to cars. Popular film and television actresses are becoming younger, taller and thinner. Some have even been known to faint on the set from lack of food. Women’s magazines are full of articles urging that if they can just lose those last twenty pounds, they’ll have it all—the perfect marriage, loving children, great sex, and a rewarding career. Read More>>>

Are Parents to Blame for their Children’s Eating Disorder – Part 2

I am a psychotherapist and I work with people who have eating disorders. Parents don’t intentionally hurt their children but I want to ask parents to do something. Please don’t label your child as the “sick one”. Eating disorders is a family system problem. Sometimes the eating disordered person is actually the healthiest because they are silently screaming that something is wrong here. Please come with your child to counseling. No one wants to blame you. But owning what you’ve done (unintentionally) is very validating and healing for the eating disordered person. This is the way to recovery for your child and your family. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. Please visit my Eating Disorders website.

Author: Ilissa Banhazl, Marriage and Family Therapy in Glendora

Main website: www.ilissabanhazlmft.com