Eating Disorder Recovery and Mountain Climbing: 5 Steps to Help Your Clients Reach their Eating Disorder Recovery Summit! Eating disorder recovery is like climbing a mountain – I was reflecting about this as I reached the summit of Bergen Peak in Evergreen, Colorado (see video below)! It was a long and sometimes difficult journey, but …
EDIT™ Principle #3 – Express Your Self The third EDIT™ Principle involves emotional awareness, being curious about the messages of emotions, and learning healthy coping skills – instead of engaging in eating disorder behaviors due to the inability to regulate emotions or to tolerate intense emotions. We need to guide clients to stop “putting on a happy …
Eating Disorder Recovery Tips for Food Holidays From Halloween to Thanksgiving to Holiday Parties into the New Year – food seems to be everywhere. Here are a few strategies to help your clients (or yourself) to find balance with emotions and eating. This can help overcome the temptation to binge (and then possibly purge), or …
Eating Disorders: Complete Recovery Is Possible! Eating Disorder Intuitive Therapy (EDIT)™ can lead to complete recovery from eating disorders – which means having a healthy body image; a clear sense of values and identity beyond one’s body; the ability to intuitively and mindfully enjoy all foods without restricting, binge eating, or purging; effective ways of …
What are some core issues in eating disorders? Are there themes that almost always show up in eating disorder recovery? Why is art therapy so effective to explore these core issues in eating disorders?
When considering eating disorders and art therapy, how can clients enhance their recovery through the separation from “ED” (what they might call their eating disorder)? Common with clients suffering from disordered eating, is the assumption that the internal dilemma is truly about calories, weight and food…
Journaling can offer a cathartic release from issues you are going through in life and also what you are experiencing in therapy – whether it is for eating disorders and trauma, or something else. During therapy sessions with me, clients often bring a notebook or ask for a notepad to write down key points or homework. I also encourage clients to be open to journaling outside of the therapy office…
Eating in the Light of the Moon, by Dr. Anita Johnston, is a book that speaks to one’s relationship with food, particularly naming what may feel true about food, eating, and weight for those who identify as women. Dr. Johnston offers wisdom here that may apply to those who experience disordered eating, as well as to anyone who has wondered about the concepts of true nourishment or food as a metaphor.
What happens for you when I tell you this: You should lose weight. You should gain weight. You should eat more green vegetables and less carbs. You should exercise more. In other words… You are not OK as you are. How does that feel? As a therapist, I don’t believe that clients should be different than they are – I look at the deeper wisdom in the eating disorder…