 I struggled with an eating disorder and I learned to love myself through brain education. My name is Erin McDonough. I'm from Native Massachusetts. Brain education changed me by supporting me with my self-care. I found brain education while I was a grad student for a mental health counseling degree and I was really looking for something to help me go through my own layers, my own stuff that I was holding inside, so that when I went out into the world and was meeting with clients I could really meet with them from an authentic place. So I was really looking for self-care. I was also looking for some practice to help prevent burnout and very naturally I found brain education. What I didn't expect was for brain education to also support healing from past struggles in my life. When I was in middle school and high school I really struggled with an eating disorder. Throughout college I had been considered recovered and was able to maintain a fairly stable, steady life. It did really well in school. On the outside it looked like I was doing really really well. However what I was still struggling with was all of the mental issues that come along with an eating disorder that aren't usually addressed right away. Sometimes they are, but once you hit a certain weight they're often ignored. So what I didn't realize until I really started brain education was how much I was holding on deeper inside. How many of those thought patterns I was still holding on to and how much they really controlled my life. When I felt those strong emotions I finally had tools to help me make the choices that I wanted to to be able to move towards who I wanted to be and the future that I wanted to live for myself. My favorite brain education exercise is dancing. I danced for about 12 years while I was younger, three years in college and it used to be something or another thing to be perfect at and I was never perfect at dancing. I was never as good as I wanted to be but I still enjoyed it. I still did it for over a decade and it wasn't until through the context of brain education that I was really able to use dancing as a way to express myself and really share kind of that inner emotion and that inner joy that I feel and now I can't help but to move and dance whenever a good song comes on and I know that when I feel any feelings of depression or anxiety or stress even if I don't want to even if there's resistance to it dancing is a sure way that I can move through those emotions and allow myself to feel a little bit of joy so I'm very grateful for that. Knowing what I know now what I would have to say to my old self is you're much stronger than you think you are or than you know you are not just physically but mentally and emotionally I would also share with you that you have this brightness inside a brightness that I think a lot of other people saw but it wasn't in or it's not going to be until you are able to see it for yourself that it will really help to open you up allow you to develop that confidence and allow you to really step into the person that I know that you want to be and that you're really struggling to find right now so keep it up and also the last thing that I would say to you is stop walking by the body and brain center and go in and get that free horror reading it will make a difference. I struggled with an eating disorder and I learned to love myself through brain education