Anxiety, Depression & Addictive Behaviors 04/06/2022

Anxiety, depression, and addictive behaviors can be best friends. I'm talking about the kind of "best" friend that can suck you in so deeply that you forget who you are and how it feels to be healthy and thriving.

Yvonne Castaneda is a licensed social worker, adjunct professor of Boston College Graduate School of Social Work, online facilitator of BC School of Theology and Ministry, and author of the new book, Pork Belly Tacos With a Side of Anxiety: My Journey Through Depression, Bulimia, and Addiction.

She's an expert in anxiety, depression, and addictive behaviors. She's also super articulate and a lot of fun!

This thought-provoking, light-hearted conversation touches on a wide range of topics, including cultural identity. Yvonne identifies as Latina, writing that her identity "as a Latina is rooted in the core values we share as a people, in our ability to overcome hardships with tenacity, perseverance, and determination, in the underlying passion and respect for life that I've encountered in all of the [Latinos] who have crossed my path, our cultural differences not strong enough to drive us apart because combined we wrote the book on how to laugh, how to love and how to vivir."

In addition to Latina cultural identity, Yvonne and Dr. Melanie Harth, the show host, talk about how:

anxiety and depression can develop in children and adolescents early signs of the eating disorder bulimia anxiety and depression can lead to disordered eating in adolescents low self-confidence and low self-esteem can contribute to eating disorders shame develops and contributes to anxiety, depression, and addictive behaviors Latino families can unknowingly encourage eating disorders in children and adolescents

As Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, wrote: "There are wounds of the spirit impossible to heal alone. Yvonne Castañeda is a healer healing others by sharing her own story. This book resonated deeply with me, as it will with many who are lost when their DNA contradicts the image of the ideal."

"Anxiety, Depression, & Addictive Behaviors" is a beautiful episode, with Yvonne Castenada and Melanie Harth sharing sensitive experiences with transparency, clinical knowledge, and the wisdom earned through painful personal experiences.

Dr. Melanie Harth, Santa Fe therapist and life coach, helps stressed women struggling with anxiety, sadness and grief, and low self-esteem. Click here for her website.