Episode 188: Ask Erika Holmes MFTEpisode 188: Ask Erika Holmes MFT
Mental Illness Happy Hour
Comedian host Paul Gilmartin and therapist Erica Holmes answer listener questions on eating disorders, PTSD, neurofeedback and borderline personality, with a focus on practical skills and supportive relationships. The conversation blends dark humour and clear explanations for people dealing with mental health and addiction struggles.
1:51:52•29 Aug 2014
Skills, Safety Nets and Eating Disorders: Erica Holmes Answers Your Questions
Episode Overview
- Therapies like CBT and DBT can help with eating disorders, but the trusting relationship with a therapist is often the most important ingredient.
- Building basic skills such as self-soothing, naming emotions and finding alternative coping strategies is key before tackling deeper issues.
- Support groups and meetings can be a crucial “first life raft”, but it’s okay to leave unhelpful meetings and seek healthier rooms.
- PTSD can respond to several approaches, including EMDR, somatic therapies, mindfulness practices and neurofeedback, especially alongside time and safe support.
- Borderline personality (emotional dysregulation) can improve by learning mindfulness and pause skills so intense emotions don’t automatically lead to exploding or imploding.
“People with eating disorders are pretty genius in that they found something that works. And it works until it doesn't.”
Curious about how others manage eating disorders, PTSD and personality struggles while trying to live a “normal” life? This episode brings together comedian host Paul Gilmartin and Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Erica Holmes for a grounded, no-nonsense Q&A that many people in recovery will relate to. Answering questions from Facebook and Twitter, Erica talks through what actually helps with eating disorders.
She points to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), but keeps stressing that, “it’s the relationship, having a trusting, caring, empathetic relationship… that’s the healing part of it.” She explains why giving up an eating disorder can feel like being told to let go of your only life raft, and why skills like self‑soothing, naming feelings and building safer coping tools are so vital.
The conversation widens out to support groups and 12‑step style meetings, with both Paul and Erica sharing how the right group can feel like a heated parka when you’re “walking naked out of an igloo”, and how the wrong group can still be useful practice for boundaries and acceptance. Listeners who live with PTSD get a run‑through of options such as EMDR, somatic therapy, mindfulness and neurofeedback, with Erica carefully staying within what the research actually supports.
Borderline personality disorder (or emotional dysregulation) is unpacked in plain language, focusing on huge emotions, shame spirals and the slow, unglamorous work of learning to hit an internal “pause button”. There’s also an honest chat about ultra‑rigid religious parenting, everyday invalidation, and how those environments can feed both addiction and emotional chaos. The tone swings between dark humour and real tenderness, making space for people who feel “not sick enough” to deserve help.
If you’ve ever wondered whether your coping tools “work until they don’t”, this conversation might give you a few questions to take to your own therapist or support group. What small skill could you practise this week that makes life feel even a tiny bit safer?
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