In this month's issue of Glamour, Ashley Judd did her duty as a B-list celebrity and revealed potentially embarassing details about her personal life. She said that she underwent in-patient treatment for depression after succumbing to pressure from employees at the facility that was treating her sister, country star Winona Judd, for a food addiction:
"I needed help," the 38-year-old actress tells the magazine in its August issue. "I was in so much pain."
Judd, the daughter of country music star Naomi Judd, says she entered the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap in February for "codependence in my relationships; depression, blaming, raging, numbing, denying and minimizing my feelings."
"But because my addictions were behavioral, not chemical, I wouldn't have known to seek treatment. At Shades of Hope, my behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag."
Judd says she was visiting her sister, singer Wynonna Judd, who was being treated for food addictions.
"When (the counselors) approached me about treatment, they said, `No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good; you're too smart and together. But you (and Wynonna) come from the same family so you come from the same wound.' No one had ever validated my pain before. It was so profound," she says.
We all have issues that could benefit from therapy, and I enjoyed nice outpatient visits with a kind woman who usually took my side when I told stories about my lousy ex-boyfriend. It sounds like Judd was brainwashed, though. Listen to how she explains "therapy:"
"My behaviors were treated like addictions. And those behaviors were killing me spiritually, the same as someone who is sitting on a corner with a bottle in a brown paper bag."
This sounds like a bullshit, oversimplified way to view one's issues. There are lots of different schools of thought and accompanying therapies that can be effective, but treating everything like an addiction is not something I learned about in grad school. It's based on the Alcoholics Anonymous model of dependency, which may be a semi-effective, albeit controversial, way to treat addictions, but is not a really constructive way to work through one's emotional issues.
If it worked for Judd that's great, but treating one's emotional problems under the umbrella of addiction can be woefully inadequate and ineffective.
I attended a few years of graduate school for psychology before ending up in IT just before the Internet boom, so I sort of know what I'm talking about. My preferred form of therapy is cognitive behavioral, which helps change your outlook by systematically changing your behaviors. The most famous cognitive therapist is Albert Ellis, and the most practical book I've read on the subject is "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns, which I would highly recommend if you're a bit depressed or having trouble getting out of a slump. (If you're depressed, get help from a therapist and/or go on medication. There's no shame in it.)
It sounds like Ashley Judd got convinced by the staff at her sister's facility that it would be great if she checked in. They probably realized how good it would be for their PR if they were able to "treat" two of the sort-of-famous Judd sisters.
Here is Ashley Judd at a Cartier party in early June with Selma Hayek, and at the Indianapolis 500 celebration in late May with her husband, Scottish racecar driver Dario Franchitti. Judd, 38, has been married to Franchitti, 33, since 1999. The couple divides their time between Tennessee and Scotland.
Written by Celebitchy
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