How does a professional help patients with eating disorders?
Turning to the professional, I want to underline the most important aspect of your time with the patient. You must go slowly and you must realize that they have no language for their feelings. If you ask them how they feel, no matter if they are severely anorectic or bulimic, you most likely will get “I feel fat.” You won’t get a genuine feeling because they have had to tune out (or have never learned how to feel from the start).
Before you accept a patient, though, you must be sure you have the credentials to deal with this kind of issue. So many say they have dealt with people that are overweight so they know what to do - they don’t and can often miss extremely necessary information and clues along the way. It is a very challenging situation to be in a session with a person who has an eating disorder, so you need to be trained in the various levels, stages, things that must be paid attention to, etc. I do trainings all the time for therapists so I know what kinds of questions they/you may have and what the answers are, after being known as “the expert” since the eighties.
Anyway, if you know that you are well-skilled in this area, the first thing you must do is insist on their having a physical and that you will need a copy of the results - a blood work-up being one of the things you will want to see. They also must agree to tell the physician that they have an eating disorder. Often, they just go in and say they need to have some blood tests but not say how come.
The most important part of any psychotherapy with these patients is building trust, more than anything else that happens, the relationship you develop with the patient who has this disorder can either facilitate or limit your ability to assist them.
Since I will be talking about several things in the columns ahead, I won’t go into any more detail about the process. This particular segment is for you to get information on the first step when you know someone has an eating disorder.
If you don’t feel qualified, once you have heard their admitting to the disorder, it is certainly critical, and you know this, that you refer them to someone you trust who does know a lot about how to treat them and has shown you, over the time of your knowing them, that they do have the background and experience to handle the patient.
Reading articles and looking up information on the internet are not sufficient, in the least, to feel that you (or someone you refer them to) can or should begin the process with these patients.
This group of patients is very complex and has learned, in order to survive, an extremely embedded way of coping with horrid childhoods, very painful experiences. I always, in fact, talk to them, from the start, about how much they are to appreciate, rather than abhore, the eating disorder because it did provide a way for them to survive whatever they had to go through as they were growing up.
I must have faith that both you as a patient and you as a psychologist who is taking on the responsibility to treat them will be authentic - meaning will be honest with yourself and the other, supportive of yourself, and open to going through the journey, whatever that means and however long it takes, to have the healing occur.
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Before you accept a patient, though, you must be sure you have the credentials to deal with this kind of issue. So many say they have dealt with people that are overweight so they know what to do - they don’t and can often miss extremely necessary information and clues along the way. It is a very challenging situation to be in a session with a person who has an eating disorder, so you need to be trained in the various levels, stages, things that must be paid attention to, etc. I do trainings all the time for therapists so I know what kinds of questions they/you may have and what the answers are, after being known as “the expert” since the eighties.
Anyway, if you know that you are well-skilled in this area, the first thing you must do is insist on their having a physical and that you will need a copy of the results - a blood work-up being one of the things you will want to see. They also must agree to tell the physician that they have an eating disorder. Often, they just go in and say they need to have some blood tests but not say how come.
The most important part of any psychotherapy with these patients is building trust, more than anything else that happens, the relationship you develop with the patient who has this disorder can either facilitate or limit your ability to assist them.
Since I will be talking about several things in the columns ahead, I won’t go into any more detail about the process. This particular segment is for you to get information on the first step when you know someone has an eating disorder.
If you don’t feel qualified, once you have heard their admitting to the disorder, it is certainly critical, and you know this, that you refer them to someone you trust who does know a lot about how to treat them and has shown you, over the time of your knowing them, that they do have the background and experience to handle the patient.
Reading articles and looking up information on the internet are not sufficient, in the least, to feel that you (or someone you refer them to) can or should begin the process with these patients.
This group of patients is very complex and has learned, in order to survive, an extremely embedded way of coping with horrid childhoods, very painful experiences. I always, in fact, talk to them, from the start, about how much they are to appreciate, rather than abhore, the eating disorder because it did provide a way for them to survive whatever they had to go through as they were growing up.
I must have faith that both you as a patient and you as a psychologist who is taking on the responsibility to treat them will be authentic - meaning will be honest with yourself and the other, supportive of yourself, and open to going through the journey, whatever that means and however long it takes, to have the healing occur.
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