Do you acknowledge the choices you have?  You may not always have the choices that you wish you had, but you always have a choice.  Today Cinthia discussed what it means to take ownership of your life and the choices you have.  Acknowledging your own choices means giving up the option to blame others for the entire direction of your life (although it does not mean accepting blame for things that were not your fault -- In fact, sometimes one of the choices you have is whether to accept and affirm that someone else’s choice was not your fault, however deeply it may have impacted you.).  Even people in very tragic situations (e.g., POWs) have choices within their situations, though those choices may be more limited.  Victor Frankl wrote about his experiences in German concentration camps; he observed that prisoners who chose to accept their situations but also find meaning in their suffering were more likely to survive the experience.  They chose not to accept full victimhood by owning the choices that were theirs; they did not fully surrender their internal freedoms, even when their outward freedoms were horribly taken away and their mental states were affected. When you choose to abdicate your own choices to others, this is also a choice.  For example, do you abdicate your mood to others, to society, etc.?  Think of all the choices you have in one day.  How many do you abdicate? Cinthia discussed the “Wise Choice Process” which involves using a template for the decision-making process.  What is your decision-making process?  How do you choose?  One example has the following steps, which Cinthia illustrated with an example from her own life (i.e., deciding what to do about her anorexia when she was younger): Define the problem. (This step impacts all the others.  It includes owning the problem and can sometimes be very uncomfortable. It requires acknowledging reality honestly, as well as separating the symptom from the underlying problem.  For example, Cinthia had to recognize that she needed to gain weight in order to stay alive and become healthy.  She also had to recognize that this was problem was actually a symptom of a much deeper problem, which was the hostile relationship she had with herself.  She did not feel good about herself and was very angry at her own body.  She was using food/weight loss to try to mimic feelings of self-worth, gain a sense of power over her own life, get accolades from some others, and manage family dynamics.) Identify limiting factors. (For Cinthia, these include her intense fear of gaining weight, the impossibility of being objective about her own body at that time, difficulty trusting others to help her, not liking various aspects of reality and wanting to create her own, reliance on anorexia nervosa as a kind of empowering friend, enjoyment of the positive social rewards she got from continued weight loss, her own self-talk, aversion to eating around others, etc.; on the other hand, the possibility of death from anorexia represented a much more permanent limitation, one she would encounter if she did not overcome the other limitations.) Develop potential alternatives. (This can involve brainstorming and may sometimes involve others. The proposed solutions may not be perfect but have some kind of potential to move you toward health, though it must also be acknowledge that quick solutions may not ultimately solve the real problem.  The discussion must focus on potential solutions to the specific problem, the real problem as identified in step 1.  For Cinthia, options included trying to fix the problem on her own, beginning to eat with trusted others, and going into treatment.) Analyze the alternatives. (This may involve getting more information about costs and benefits. It is also a good time to notice any resistance within yourself and what this may tell you about your attachment to the problem; as much as you may hate the problem, it may also be providing you with some benefit or