My blog posts started fairly autobiographical and grew gradually less so as recovery stopped being so all-consuming and I also grew more interested in tackling questions that went beyond my own experience. Looking back, I can see that about a year after I’d written my first post back in August 2009, I started writing posts about topics rather than incidents. Around this point, the ambition I still have for the blog now began to crystallise: I wanted it to draw together the research and the personal experience, to make better sense of both. The only problem with that (apart from it being hard) is the problem all blogs have when they stop being the old ‘dear diary’ weblog kind of thing and start being ad hoc musings scaffolded by a broad theme: the problem of navigation.

My posts tend (more and more as time goes on) to be fairly extensive attempts to cover a given sub-theme comprehensively, whether it’s sleep and dreaming in anorexia, or just how dangerous ‘clean eating’ really is. But sometimes I circle back to an old topic from a new angle, and of course my choice of topics doesn’t follow any particular grand logic: I write about what occurs to me that month, or what someone asks me a question about, or what I read something about, or what I happen to fancy from an old document called ‘blog ideas’. For you, my reader, this can make finding your way around pretty difficult.

So here they all are, grouped into thematic categories that may help you find what you’re looking for more easily than the reverse-chronological list on Psychology Today. I’ve included some posts in more than one category. Each category begins with the more general thematically structured posts, and ends with the more personal ones.

Some fundamentals

Starting recovery

Continuing recovery

Recovery: physical and practical aspects

Treatment methods

The psychology of control

Recovery: other psychological and social aspects

Work

Sport, exercise, and fun

Culture, the arts, the media, and technology

You and other people: other perspectives (including guest posts)

Life and death

Christmas