Episode 390: Healing in the Shadows: A Mother’s Journey Through Eating Disorders, Addiction, and Recovery with Janet Whitney

0:00Janet Whitney: All right, everybody, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Wired for Addiction, and honestly, I am so excited about this partnership. You might remember Dr. Evelyn Higgins from when she came on the show to talk about the biomarkers of addiction. That episode landed in such a powerful way for so many of you, and I really believe in the work she's doing. Here's the thing, if you or someone you love has been caught in chronic relapse, addiction switching, or treatment that only works for a while, the issue may not be behavioral. It may be biological, and that changes everything. Dr. Higgins and her team actually measure the underlying biomarkers driving these patterns, dopamine, cortisol, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and then build a personalized plan to bring your biology back into balance.

0:52Janet Whitney: She put together a free guide for you, the Biology of Addiction 10 Core Biomarkers, downloaded at theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. That's theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. There'll also be a link in the show notes. And I want you to know, you are not broken. Sometimes your biology just needs to be understood, and I think that brings a lot of hope. All right, on to this episode.

1:23Janet Whitney: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast. I am excited to launch this podcast off with this next guest. Her name is Janet Whitney. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a practice in Newport Beach. She is also the author of the book, Facing Your Fears, Following Your Dreams and Finding Success, which I highly encourage you guys to check out. She has a great story to share with us today, and I'm really honored to have her be the first guest on this podcast. She and I met approximately 12 years ago when we were working together training to treat sex addiction. And since then, Janet has gone on to build several recovery programs for sex addiction as well as eating disorders.

2:08Janet Whitney: What's great about today is that she's going to share her personal story of helping her daughter, Hannah, overcome an eating disorder and really fight for her daughter's life. I hope you guys enjoy this first episode and I hope it's really helpful. So here you go. So welcome everybody to the Addicted Mind podcast. I'm really excited today to have our guest, Janet Whitney, come on. And she's going to share her story about her and her daughter and their struggle with her eating disorder and how she was able to get recovery and continue to maintain some recovery. So, Janet, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit?

2:50The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Sure. Thanks, Dwayne. I'm a licensed therapist, but more than that, I'm a mother of somebody who has an eating disorder and I'm an author of a book called Facing Your Fears and Following Your Dreams. And I work with young people who have eating disorders. It wasn't something that I chose to do, but I do it now because of my daughter and actually worked for an organization as director of their eating disorder program and as a consultant to a program as an eating disorder specialist.

3:19Janet Whitney: Wow. So let's talk a little bit about how we met each other. We met each other about 12 years ago, right? when we were beginning to work in addiction treatment, but specifically working in sex addiction.

3:31The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: It's so interesting that we connected like we did. And when I started working for the sexual addiction program that I actually was part owner in, it wasn't, again, anything that I had been searching out. It kind of searched for me and I began working with the program and you and I connected with, again, sexual addiction and food addiction are very similar because they just hit all different parts of the brain and they hit our total life where if we have to give up alcohol or drugs or gambling, we can still function. But food and sex are very similar. So it's interesting that I branched out into the food addiction.

4:05Janet Whitney: Yeah, that's definitely so true. And that's why I wanted you so much to come on to the podcast and talk about this because I think there are so many parallels when you look at eating disorders with addiction disorders and behavior addiction disorders that I just thought it would be so valuable for people to kind of hear the story and the story of your daughter and her recovery and how you guys went through that together. Do you mind sharing a little bit about that?

4:31The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Sure, sure. So what happened is that my daughter had a lot of trauma in childhood and it took through legal channels where I was able to get full legal and physical custody of my daughter, but she was 10 years old by the time that happened and the struggles of maybe just the court system and oh I don't know there is a lack of awareness of trying to prove where someone is safe or not safe and so by the time she was 10 years old she was 170 pounds and five feet tall and so her eating disorder at that time was food addiction she escaped into food gaining weight protected her and created her safety in her own way and it was also very difficult for her because people were making fun of her and people were making comments.

5:19The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So she suffered a lot. When she was 15, she met a guy who was older and she got involved with him and it's simulated a lot of the things that happened to her in childhood. He was aggressive, controlling, abusive, and she began losing weight. And once she began losing weight, she got down at one point to 79 pounds. Oh my goodness. I know. Can you imagine? 79 pounds, we had a wheeler on a wheelchair and to get her into treatment because she was so weak by that point. And truly, Dwayne, at that point, I remember looking at the doctor's eyes when I took her into the treatment program and I said, do people live through this?

5:57The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And he said, sometimes, you know, he's shaking his head, but I could see the fear in his eyes. And it's like, oh my gosh, it's a very tough position to be in when it's your child and you can't make somebody eat. You just can't. That's something I've learned.

6:10Janet Whitney: I cannot imagine how painful and scary that must have been. And I think a lot of people don't realize like how dangerous eating disorders are.

6:21The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Right, because it has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness diagnosis. And every 62 minutes, somebody's dying from an eating disorder in the United States. But we're not putting the funding or the education into this. And I'm not sure why not, because if this was a flu epidemic, we'd be on it as a society, as a government. But with eating disorders, it's been overlooked. It wasn't even considered a disability through Social Security until the last few years. So getting help for people has been very difficult with insurance companies, with funding, with awareness, all of that.

6:55Janet Whitney: I think that's almost with a lot of mental health issues, it seems like, even with addiction. You know, when we look at the 30s, alcoholics were just seen as somebody who just had a moral, you know, they lacked morality of some kind. And it was a character defect. And we really, you know, I think we're catching up. Even now with sex addiction, most people think sex addiction is just, oh, well, these people just don't know how to control themselves. And it's a moral issue when it really isn't. This is a brain issue.

7:22The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Yeah. If we could look at the brains and the changes that happen within the brains. And I remember when I was in the sexual addiction program and I would tell people what I did They would laugh because they say sex addiction It was almost like if somebody's addicted to sex, that's a good thing or even you know And eating disorders were like that if you get thin enough, it's a good thing You can never be too rich and too thin Too much sex, I guess it's very similar.

7:46Janet Whitney: It's yeah crazy crazy thinking I experience the same thing when I tell people what I do I get that same reaction and I'm like if you guys kind of come in and see the pain and the agony that people go through because of these issues. It's not fun at all. And it's tragic. So you're there with the doctor, and he's saying, well, some people live. So what did you do?

8:09The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So as a family, we did everything we could. I am so proud of all of us in our family. We ended up, after years of struggling and trying to go through insurance companies, we figured, okay, we're going to get Hannah the very best program that we can get her. So we were paying$20 ,000 a month out of our own pocket to try to get her help.

8:28Janet Whitney: Oh, my gosh.

8:29The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: I know. And doing that, I ended up selling my house, selling my jewelry. Eventually, all of us had to go and rent rooms in different people's homes or live with friends or do what we could do because everything was gone and Hannah was still sick. And I don't know if I would do it any differently because it was a lesson in a different way of how dedicated everybody in my family has been to try to help her. hopefully and she sees and feels the love and the care that went into just that but she didn't get better that's the interesting part this was probably her eighth hospitalization or inpatient at that point and since then we're now up to number 14 that she's been in and we go through insurance most of the time although it always takes a big chunk to get her in as far as the

9:14Janet Whitney: first payment and all can I ask a question when you I mean because I think a lot of people who go into treatment, they go into a treatment center and often, you know, they go to one rehab and it's not successful. You know, what was your thinking around that? And I think being able to share that with people who are going through this is like really important.

9:37The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So many times I was driving Hannah to treatment saying, this is the one that's going to work, Hannah. And she goes, mom, do you know how many times you've said that? And people did warn me that, oh my gosh, it doesn't always take effect with the first one or second or third treatment. And yes, I want to encourage people that this disease and this process is going to take as long as it takes. And sometimes it's the maturity of the mind. Sometimes it's just the love of people around them, a new relationship, or something that helps a person just have the strength to face this, because it's difficult with any addiction to face it and say, okay, this is my enemy.

10:15The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: It isn't my friend. It's my enemy. and I'm going to do something about it. And what's felt like the best coping mechanism out there turns out to be the thing that's going to destroy them.

10:25Janet Whitney: Yeah, I see that over and over again. What about, you know, one of the things you said earlier too, I think with a lot of people is there's a lot of trauma. So people who are struggling with addiction almost in some ways want to get treatment and in some ways don't want to get treatment because you take away their very coping mechanism that they have to deal with all the difficulty in life.

10:47The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Right. So there's so much pain. There's so much pain in life. And we learn from these challenges, but they also create permanent scars. And so it's like asking somebody with an addiction that would be similar to having a broken leg and saying, now go run. And they're saying, but my leg is broken. And with a broken leg, you know what it is. It's stopping you. With something that's an emotional pain, a trauma that's happened, oftentimes they don't even know what it is. They just know that something hurts so much that they want to stop the pain. And whether it's sex or food or depriving themselves of food, it seems like a way to stop that pain.

11:22The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So, yes, most of the people with eating disorders, the majority have been molested, abused, or been in such a rigid, controlling atmosphere that food and body image was everything that was important in the family. And it becomes such a huge obstacle to be perfect in physical form that it just takes over their whole being.

11:44Janet Whitney: And in a strange way, pursuing these things that harm them actually make them feel good.

11:50The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Yes.

11:50Janet Whitney: It takes away the pain in that moment. Right.

11:53The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: I don't know if anybody, you know, in the audience or anybody's experience, once you get through hunger and you can say, I don't even feel it anymore, there's a high that comes from that. There's actually a high from throwing up. and it just sounds so crazy, but it does happen. And they've been able to measure their brain changes now that happened, kind of like the whole endorphin thing that happens with anything, running or drugs or sex or food.

12:19Janet Whitney: Right. So on the other side, by depriving themselves, they actually stimulate their brain to release chemicals that take away that pain.

12:28The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Exactly. So the women I work with that have eating disorders, they're not in touch with their bodies because they're used to either starving or doing something like throwing up, which is most of us hate to throw up. It's just such a horrible feeling. The fact they can do that several times a day, every time they eat, whatever they're doing, they have detached from their body to such a point that even with my daughter, she would have a urinary infection that would turn into a kidney infection because she wouldn't feel it. She would be able to detach that much. So when she's in pain, I know it's a lot of pain with her body.

13:00The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Wow. Wow.

13:01Janet Whitney: So tell me a little bit like about, you know, one of the things you had talked about earlier, we had talked about was a lot of these studies that have come out, especially you had mentioned a World War Two study about how anorexia and bulimia can kind of develop in people. And I was wondering if you can kind of comment on that.

13:18The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I would like to because 60 % of anorexics will turn into bulimics, but it's because our bodies are programmed for this. And the way that we discovered it was in World War II, they took conscientious objectors and said, if you're willing to go on a starvation plan for six months so that we can see what happens to the body, you won't have to go to war. So many of these men agreed to do this, although a lot of them dropped out during the study because it was just so difficult. and they were getting 1 ,600 calories a day, which 1 ,600 calories is really a substantial amount in our society today because if you go on these programs that now say 1 ,000 calories a day, 1 ,600 might feel like a lot.

14:01Janet Whitney: Yeah, definitely. I mean 1 ,600, that's what you hear all the time. If you're going to lose weight, eat 1 ,600 calories. And they're putting them on a starvation diet with that many calories. That's crazy.

14:11The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Exactly. Exactly. So what happened with these men is they did look like the people of the concentration camps. They lost a significant amount of their body weight, their strength. But more so than that, it was their emotional makeup of they became obsessed with cookbooks. They became obsessed with food. They lost interest in anything pleasurable. They had mood swings that were unpredictable. And they were angry. And then they would go through times of euphoria. And so they're watching this over the six-month study and realizing what starvation does But I think the surprising part was at the end of it These men became binge eaters the majority of them became binge eaters to the point where many of them ended up in the hospital even years later from Binging at such a rate that their bodies would need medical attention from the amount of food they'd eat

15:01Janet Whitney: So once they exited this study then they still had problems with eating

15:08The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Right. Eating then became more of a permanent problem.

15:10Janet Whitney: Wow.

15:11The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And the long-term effects, yeah.

15:13Janet Whitney: And you also said something that I find very interesting in eating disorders too, is that even though they're restricting their food, they're obsessed about food. Yes.

15:22The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So most of them will play these video games about cooking food, about growing food, about harvesting food, about recipes. And then it's just so hard when food, we want to eat to live, not live to eat, And they're living to starve, actually. And they're starving even when they're binging and throwing up because they're not getting, they're malnourished. They may not look like it on the outside, but because they're not getting the right kind of combination of electrolytes and the things we need and they're dehydrated, they're hurting themselves. And people don't even know it by looking at them.

15:55Janet Whitney: So were you watching your daughter do this? I mean, were you seeing this as she was going through all of this?

16:01The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Yeah. So there were times we had chains around our refrigerator door so that she couldn't get in to get the food because I had two other children that needed food. And it was impossible to keep food out of the house. But she would eat a jar of mayonnaise in one sitting. Anybody who's witnessed this, it almost sounds unbelievable. And she was so thin that even with the locks on the refrigerator, she could get her little thin hands in and grab a bottle of ketchup or whatever it was. So nothing really worked.

16:28Janet Whitney: She would eat that and then she would purge it?

16:30The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Yes.

16:31Janet Whitney: Oh, wow. Okay.

16:33The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And when I was director of the eating disorder program, if we had like containers of peanut butter, the next day they'd be gone because somebody would sit down and just eat the whole jar of peanut butter and throw it up. And so food, it has to be so supervised in these eating disorder programs where that all night it's filled food is being watched because the tendency to get up and sneak food or hide food is there.

16:56Janet Whitney: And you can really compare this. I mean, I'm sure there are different things in the brain and different ways all these behavior addictions and chemical addictions work. But you can really compare it to that addictive process because you see people who are addicted and they're doing the most horrible things to themselves and others to get their drug, whatever that is, whether it's a behavior, whether it's food, whether it's gambling. And you just watch it. And I think sometimes the people know that it's crazy, if that makes sense. They know this doesn't make sense, isn't good for them, but they can't stop.

17:30The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Exactly. And how horrible to have something that controls you instead of feeling like, okay, I can handle this. They can't at that point handle life and they can't handle their addiction. So everything's out of control. It's very painful.

17:43Janet Whitney: I have another question. As a parent, how did you cope? I mean, I'm sure that there might be people who are listening to this podcast and really wondering how to cope with all this. Right.

17:53The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So I wish, looking back, the one thing I wish somebody had helped me with was my own anxiety. And with any addiction or something that's life-threatening, and as a parent, I think the most frightening thing is to lose our child or to think we could lose our child. Definitely. And so, yeah, so that takes over our being. And I began just, it consumed me. I'm going to lose my daughter. What can I do? and my anxiety then made her problem worse because I needed to stay calm and be a safe place for her in spite of what she was doing and I think now after these years I've learned how to do that but if somebody had been my coach at that time and I'll tell you what happens in it you may happen in some of the addictive programs you've worked into is that a lot of blame was put on to me like what kind of mother are you or even what kind of therapist are you that you'd have a daughter who has this problem.

18:46The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And I accepted it for a while. But now when I work with parents, I'll say, when you get into these treatment programs, they may point a finger at you, protect yourself, don't feel it, deal with what you have to deal with, you know, make sure you're dealing with your own things. But don't let added anxiety, stress, guilt get in the way. And then just figure out how you stay healthy as a parent. That's what I had to learn. And that was a long hall and then how then to be that safety zone for my daughter in spite of watching what she was doing so that she could come to me and talk to me and we could work it out together.

19:19Janet Whitney: Oh my gosh, that just sounds like that. It would be so difficult to do as you're watching, you know, you're watching your child possibly die and being there trying to cope with it all. I don't know how you would not be filled with angst and anxiety and fear. And oh, my gosh, that just sounds so incredibly difficult.

19:41The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Oh, and thanks for your compassion. I appreciate that. There were times I'd get up in the night and go see if she was breathing because in these treatment programs, I hear about the women who would die in their sleep because their heart gave out. And so knowing and hearing these stories, it would be like, oh, my goodness. And so I don't do that anymore. And I think one of the things that really helped me, it was my older son and daughter who got together and said, Mom, we're watching you go down with Hannah, and we can't let this happen. And they were trying to encourage me. What do you need? What would help you?

20:11The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And I had heard about this 500-mile walk across Spain called the Camino. And I said, you know, if I could just get away and try to get my strength back, I think I could do a better job. So Hannah actually made a stone that said daughter on the front of the stone, and on the back it said of strength. And doing the Camino, One of the things they say is bring a stone from your home place and put it at the end. There's a big pile of rocks that you can climb up and put your stone there symbolically saying this is where I came from.

20:40Janet Whitney: Wow.

20:40The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: I know. So I carried the stone with my backpack walking the 500 miles by myself. And walking 500 miles sounds tough, but it's more the emotional part that's tough because I didn't take my cell phone. There were only a few times where I could communicate with my family. There were definitely times I didn't know if Hannah was alive or not. my son said hey I will get her in the hospital if I can and if I need to so I was leaving it in his hands and he was very young too at the time maybe in his early 20s and so I'm walking across Spain carrying this rock and then when I need to put the rock down I'm just sobbing thinking oh my gosh I'm gonna leave this here I don't know what I'm walking home to but when I came home and Hannah was in tough shape and I got her back into treatment, we survived.

21:26The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And now years have gone by and I know my strength and which then helps me to help her to feel her strength. So it was a really positive experience.

21:36Janet Whitney: Wow. I mean, it sounds like for you as a parent, you actually had to go on your own journey of letting go. I mean, oh my gosh.

21:44The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Yeah. So now I was telling you about that. I started a new book. I started it on that journey where it was called a pathway to courage. And I'd write a chapter from my point of view of what it felt like to be the mom and maybe the things that contributed to the pain she was in. And then I would write from her point of view of her struggles. And then I would go back and forth in the chapters. And I haven't finished the book yet. Now Hannah is doing much better. She said, Oh, you know, let me write my part. She's an incredible writer. And so we're going to combine it and do it together.

22:13Janet Whitney: So okay, so as you're saying, Hannah's doing a lot better. Can you jump back a little bit and tell us a little bit about how that happened and how you saw that transition?

22:25The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Partially it was Hannah had so much treatment that she would get into these treatment programs and they would say Hannah could be the therapist because she just knows everything that we're saying so intellectually she got it. I think what happened is not only her brain but the breaks that treatment provided of not binging and purging helped her to physically get stronger and you know the brain doesn't stop developing until it's 25 So here she's 23 right now. She, the last six months has been out of treatment. She's finished 15 units in college and been able to get straight A's and work part-time.

23:01The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: But I think more so than that, I was able to get a really cool house where my son, because he wants to still help, and my daughter and her best friend and her boyfriend, we all live in this house where she's surrounded by people who love her. And at times it makes it difficult because there's times where she wants to binge and purge. And she does. I can't say that the habits haven't gone totally away, but we don't judge her. We let her go. And then we're there to also be with her and make more of life than food. There's more out here that we're, you know, let's go for a hike. Let's go shopping.

23:33The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Let's go do something different to get her out of that mindset.

23:36Janet Whitney: So there's kind of some real hope here that she's able to have this love in your family and make some of those changes. And I think that's so true with any addiction. You know, we fall back and we get back up and then we go forward again. You know, working in this field for a long time, I rarely ever see anybody just stop and change and not fall back and struggle. And I mean, that's what recovery is all about. It's an ongoing process.

24:05The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Right. And I'm thinking about for anybody that's a parent of an eating disorder, but even more so right now with you with spouses of sex addicts where you have to say there will be slip ups and things and the spouse is just panic going like I don't know if I can do this and so it the effect all these addictions have on the whole family it becomes a family disease for sure

24:26Janet Whitney: oh definitely everybody in it is struggling so much and it impacts so many people I think addiction is one of our major social crises in this country and in the world probably.

24:39The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: I don't even know people that don't have, like I'm thinking of with eating, when I do presentations about eating disorders, we get into a subject called disordered eating. So you may not have the symptoms that eating disorder people have, like the weight loss, the electrolyte problems, the losing their hair, the heart issues, the organ issues. but we may sit in front of the TV and eat three bowls of ice cream or be an exercise fanatic that feels like if they don't do six miles a day they're not going to be okay and so that's in the realm of disordered eating because it's a preoccupation with something that also affects our lives but we can function okay and when I talk to groups everybody goes oh I have that I have that you know it's like they seem to have it on some level I think that's so true I think you

25:28Janet Whitney: Our diets have changed. Our food that we get has changed. I think there's a lot of things going on that we're starting to discover about food and how the brain works and all the struggles.

25:39The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So if we even talk about the whole marketing and what's happening with what we hear on TV or radio or Internet or whatever. So dieting has now become one of the number one sales places to work because you sell diet programs. And then what we're doing is recreating what happened in World War II, that we're starving people. and most of these people, I think it's like 95%, are going to gain back the weight but even more at the end of the diet program. But there's so much money in it. So the people that are selling the diet program, they may heart and soul believe that the people will get better, but we know that most of them are not going to keep that weight off.

26:16And so we're selling this to people in a dream that isn't reality,

26:20The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: then the people are suffering. So now we have binge eating becoming even bigger than anorexia or bulimia. Binge eating in the United States is epidemic. And we have conferences now just based on binge eating and how ashamed people are and how out of control they feel. But it's the commercial aspect that's kind of supporting that.

26:40Janet Whitney: Yeah, definitely. I agree with that. And we're seeing that all over. Even when we treat addiction, food, when someone's giving up like a sex addiction or we're going to get better on that or another addiction, food often becomes the alternative. And a lot of binge eating starts to happen as well. where it didn't happen before. And yeah, it's definitely a struggle. And I think our whole society is struggling with this. I mean, I think this is going to be an issue that we're going to have to really look at as a culture.

27:07The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So if we get to the bottom of it, I was just doing a meditation about lobsters that they have to outgrow their shell, and it's very painful. And then they go through this time where they live in darkness, and they're very vulnerable. And then they can grow a bigger shell so they can expand. And so we in our country, or maybe in developed countries, we feel something that feels painful, we go and get a painkiller, aspirin or valium or something like that. And we don't feel the pain and we don't get to grow. So if the whole journey is, all right, there are going to be things that are painful, we just have to experience it.

27:42The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: If we can start teaching that and role modeling that, it would be a whole different society.

27:48Janet Whitney: I think so. I definitely think so. And I do, you know, I have a lot of hope. I think there's a lot of research going into all sorts of things around mental health. We're discovering a lot. So I think we're at a very exciting time. But I think we have a long way to go as well.

28:03The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So I like your optimism.

28:07Janet Whitney: We do have a long way to go. But I have hope we've gotten better. You know, I mean, if you look back, I think we keep progressing and we keep finding new things. So I have some hope, though we have a lot of problems to face, too. I have another question. What would you tell parents who are struggling with this what would be the thing that you'd want to tell

28:27The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: them if they're listening to this i wish i had known the earlier you get somebody into treatment and the longer they're in treatment the better off they are and until they're 18 we as parents have the authority to put somebody in treatment even if they don't want to go whereas after they're 18 it's such a struggle because they have to agree to go and somebody with any kind of an addiction It's so difficult to get them to agree. So for parents right now, if your child is under 18, please get them into treatment. If you suspect it, if you know they have an eating problem, get to a therapist. Talk to somebody who's in a treatment program to see if they can help you get your child in.

29:06The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: And then if they're over 18, we now have interventionists. We have people that therapists who do specialize in convincing somebody. You know, I think sometimes outside the family has more impact than somebody in the family that listens to that better. The getting them there is the most important thing. I have driven Hannah probably there three or four times where she won't go in and I take the suitcase out and I put her on the street and leave her, which is so hard to do. This doesn't happen these days, but in the past. And they will 5150 her to get her into the program. But if that's what it takes, 5150 is a three-day hold that she has no place to go and is a threat to herself.

29:45The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: It is that point where you get to tough love to save their lives, and it's okay to do that.

29:51Janet Whitney: Yeah, that would be, oh, my gosh. I just can't imagine that as a parent and how excruciating that is and fighting for your daughter's very survival in life. Wow, Janet, that's amazing. I really want to thank you for sharing your story. and I think this can help a lot of people who are going through this.

30:11The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Thank you. Thank you, Dwayne. Thank you for what you're doing. I mean, you've worked in this field a long time and the people who continue to say, I'm going to keep going out there and work for the betterment of people, it's a great opportunity and I'm sure you feel the same way that I do. I'm just honored to have the means to do this right now.

30:29Janet Whitney: Yeah, I feel very blessed to be able to work in this field and I love seeing people get healthy and thrive in their life And, you know, sometimes just with some loving support and some new tools, people can make big changes in their life. So it's very exciting. So if people want to know more information about you or contact you, how can they find you?

30:52The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So I'm on the Internet. I have a website under Janet Whitney MFT. That's marriagefamilytherapist.com. And they can find me there. My phone number is 949-677-9280. And so from the website, which has my address, phone number, email, contact, please feel free. If you have questions, need help, I'm here. I would love to help anybody who is struggling in any way with any of this.

31:20Janet Whitney: Yeah, definitely. You also had a book.

31:23The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: So the book I've written that's on Amazon is called Facing Your Fears and Following Your Dreams. And it's basically, I didn't know it was like this, but it's a recovery from life program. So it's a recovery from any kind of addiction where you're working towards your goals, your dreams, your uniqueness, your gifts. That's the emphasis that I think helps anybody in recovery is let's get past this to your real purpose here. You were given amazing things that if you could just concentrate on the positives that your life will move forward in some way, whatever that's going to look like. So that's what my book is based on.

31:57Janet Whitney: Oh, that's awesome. And I'm really excited to hear about your new book when it comes out. And what I would say is when it does, we'll help promote it and get people to read it. So thank you so much, Janet, for being here and telling your story.

32:13The Addicted Mind Podcast Hosts: Thank you, Dwayne. Good luck to you. Best wishes. And we'll connect again, I'm sure.

32:17Janet Whitney: I know we will. So thank you for listening to this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast. And I hope you enjoyed it. For all the show notes about this episode, go to theaddictedmind.com forward slash one. If you'd like to support the Addicted Mind podcast, please rate us and review us in iTunes. It really does help us a lot. If you'd like to support us directly, please go to our Patreon page at patreon.com forward slash theaddictedmind. If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please reach out for help. You can call the National Eating Disorders Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

33:03Janet Whitney: See you next week.