Treating Eating Disorders

Individual counseling is just one way of treating Eating Disorders, but may be used as part of a blended approach in a treatment center.  Individual counseling sessions can focus exactly on your individual issues and so can be a powerful source of change.  They can also identify your root issues and help you to discover new sources of strength.  Part of learning recovery from an eating disorder is to become more confident, learn to be assertive and how to communicate effectively, find ways to validate and process your emotions, gain self-respect, and discover ways to deal with anger, stress, and sadness without relying on your Eating Disorder.

There are several different approaches to counseling.  Most often a therapist will blend together methods from these approaches to best suit the client.  This more flexible approach is one of the hallmarks of a successful counseling intervention.  By employing the methods and understanding from the various schools of thought a therapist can provide a more customized treatment plan for the client.

Counseling Eating Disorders

The psychoanalytic approach is based on the work of Sigmund Freud and employs methods such as dream analysis, free association, interpretation, and analyzing resistance and transferance.  The aim of therapy is to help the client gain access to their subconscious.  Psychoanalysts believe that the conflicts within the subconscious are responsible for driving the emotions and behaviours that lead to an Eating Disorder.  They will focus their attention on identifying these repressed conflicts and view social, cultural, and interpersonal factors as being a consequence of these conflicts.

Jungian therapy places a premium on learning to accept yourself as an individual and to BE an individual.  Jungian therapy includes the concept of spirituality as an important part of discovering who you are.  Treating patient with an Eating Disorder in a Jungian paradigm will place a premium on helping the client to connect with hidden feelings and understanding their motivations.  They believe that by helping to person to find out their true identity in a process of self realization that person can be freed from the destructive behaviours of their Eating Disorder.

Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is based on the idea that helping a Eating Disorder patient to identify faulty thinking and helping them to interrupt it by consciously choosing a new behaviour can help them to choose behaviour.  CBT therapists believe that by challenging the negative self-perceptions of a patient with an Eating Disorder they can help the patient to improve the way they treat themself.  CBT employs an eclectic collection of techniques and will often involve the patient being given extensive homework to complete between sessions.  CBT counseling will use these techniques to challenge shameful feelings and guilt and to promote changes in thinking and behaviour.  It is a forward looking approach that tends to avoid over-analyzing the patients history or deeper emotional issues.