Have you seen today’s letter about Mind, Body, and Soul?
When I read this letter, it made me remember the huge role that therapy played in my own treatment. After 15 years of programming my brain to think “diet, diet, diet”, I recognized that the only way for me to completely heal was to enlist the help of a professional. I needed to learn the tools to cope with my life without the aid of food.
This may be a broad statement, but I believe that anyone who struggles with weight or eating issues could benefit from some type of therapy. The person who overeats, under-eats, binges, purges, and avoids food entirely, could all stand to add some better coping tools to their ‘toolbox’.
Oftentimes, I feel that therapy is overlooked in the case of people who are overweight. For some reason, our society has the belief that if you are overweight, you are on your own. This unfair isolation puts people who are affected with obesity onto their own “island”, and the isolation leaves them to struggle on their own.
If you have never learned how to deal with the thoughts and feelings that are going on inside yours mind, how can you expect to lead a healthy life at a healthy weight?
We are not machines. We can’t just reboot.
Therapy has much less of a stigma than it did just a decade ago, but there is still a long way to go. Personally, I’ve noticed a missing cog in the wheel. Many people do learn about how to eat healthily, they begin an exercise program, and they figure out the nuts and bolts of losing weight. They are very successful in their weight loss, and they keep the weight off and feel great.
This is awesome.
The problem seems to come in the form of displacement. After years of eating to soothe, or eating to procrastinate, or eating to have fun, these coping skills are often displaced into dieting and exercise. After you’ve lost the weight, you never want it to come back. The only way to ensure that it doesn’t come back is to obsess, and count, and weigh, and exhaust yourself with your “diet”.
Right?
Wrong.
I’ve been there and done that. When I started treatment, I quickly came to the realization that all of my calorie counting (memorizing), food diary keeping, workout researching, weighing, measuring, and planning was the new way that I dealt with my feelings. I stopped binging when I was bored, but I started obsessing instead.
I know what you’re saying: “I’d rather be obsessed with my diet or counting calories than be fat!”
Really?
What if you knew without a doubt that you could learn another new way to deal with those feelings, and it wouldn’t involve anything abusive or obsessive? That you could stop worrying about missing that important dinner out with your friends because you can’t find anything on the menu that’s “ok”. Or that you wouldn’t have to keep a food diary anymore. Or that you wouldn’t have to mentally add up the calories in every.single.morsel.
It’s possible.
Just because you’ve lost the weight (binged/purged/starved) does not mean that you’ve solved the problem. Please have the courage to explore the reasons why or how you got to that point in the first place. I’m not saying that therapy works for everyone, but it’s worth a shot.
Cognitive behavioral therapy worked for me. It helped me learn about what was going on in my mind, and why I developed the coping skills that ultimately landed me in treatment. Although this type of therapy does dictate that you keep a food diary, the focus of the diary is not how many calories or how much you eat. The focus is how you felt (hungry/full/sad/happy/bored/etc), and helps to get an idea of the “whys”.
I also did several sessions with my therapist that included EMDR. I must admit that my initial impression of EMDR was that it was hokey. I was ready to walk out of my session, actually. I couldn’t see how a light board and beeping in my ears could change the fact that I was binging/purging/starving. Then, I had the biggest “a ha” moment of my entire life during my second EMDR session. I cried. And cried. And cried.
And reprogrammed.
I highly recommend this combination of CBT and EMDR treatment, but only because it worked for me.
There are several other forms of therapy that are used in the treatment of disordered eating. If you need help finding a therapist licensed to help you, please call the NEDA referral line at 800-921-2237.
Change | Letters to My Body on January 2, 2010
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Sayhealth on January 2, 2010
Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) had made a HUGE difference for me! Wikipedia has a fairly decent quick & dirty description of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy
DBT has helped me to validate seemingly oppositional emotional states/thoughts. For example, “I want to recover AND I’m scared of what it means to do so.” This way, both states get acknowleged, validate, and worked with, rather than dismissing one with “I want to recover, BUT I’m scared of what it means to do so.” This both/and, dialectical thinking REALLY helps combat the black-and-white thinking that feeds my e.d.
The mindfulness skill really helps me stay present, rather than focusing on what I need to do in the future (even if that future is, like, tomorrow!) and becoming overwhelmed with anxiety
I’m still working on non-judgement – in terms of myself. It’s VERY hard for me not to judge my emotional reactions, thoughts, etc. I don’t know how many times in therapy, I’ve said something like, “I know this is going to sound stupid, but . . .” only to be met with my therapist saying, “Let’s not judge it.” Having a treatment center that is able to truly model this non-judgement (every treatment provider, including the dietitians, are trained in DBT) has really helped me to feel validated, and I feel such compassion coming from them. And gradually, I’m learning to validate and show compassion toward myself!