Eating Disorders: A Treatment Apart
A Half-Day training workshop

While the number of patients seeking treatment for eating disorders expands, the number of psychotherapists with the skills, confidence and professional vision to treat them does not. These complex disorders of the self and of sensing, of the body and the cognitive mind, of psyche and physicality, of attachment and relationship, are among the most highly misunderstood, under-diagnosed, lethal, and medically and psychologically mishandled of all the mental illnesses. Regrettably, even the most highly trained and competent therapists lack exposure to formal professional education and training in this field.

Though professional "burn-out" and treatment failure is often attributed to patient resistance, treatment outcomes are more frequently attributable to the quality of the therapist's emotional integration and capacity for personal connection, along with a broad and diverse integration of professional skill sets. The good news is that most practitioners have acquired the skills they need to treat the complexities of these disorders. What they lack is guidance about how to use themselves uniquely to apply their skills… when, why, in what manner, and in what context.

This half-day workshop, geared to psychotherapists who seek a better understanding of what sets eating disorder treatment apart from generalist practice, provides a practicable introduction to eating disorder care; it lays the foundation for practitioners to develop the confidence, personal self-awareness, and wherewithal to become action-based self-starters within a demanding treatment process, even while helping their patients to do the same. The workshop will include numerous case examples to illustrate points.
 

Workshop Objectives: Participants will learn to

• Recognize the unique qualities of eating disorders, which set these disorders, their victims, and their treatment apart.
• Develop an integrative approach to treatment that incorporates a versatile use of the therapist's self within the patient/therapist relationship.
• Hone their skills in approaching assessment and diagnosis, and in establishing a treatment alliance with the eating disordered patient and family.
• Engage patients in an action plan, moving forward.
   

Lecture Outline

• An overview of the treatment field
  • Where we have been, and where we are going
• Defining eating disorders… Not about food.
  • Symptoms, signs
  • Defining recovery, complete/sustainable v. partial; critical post-recovery care expands and sustains healing
  • How eating disorders heal; the role of weight
• What sets these disorders apart: unique requirements for care and case management
  • Resistance; attachment issues; lethality; resiliency demise; hidden and ego-syntonic disorders; counterintuitive nature of recovery and healing.
  • Implications for the clinician's use of self in response
• Personal challenges for the treating professional
  • Transference issues
  • Towards a versatile and V.I.A.B.L.E. (acronym) use of self within the treatment relationship

Questions
Break


The pivotal first session

• Establishing the therapeutic alliance
  • What is engagement? How does it happen? With whom?
• Unique aspects of assessment and diagnosis
  • What needs to be assessed?
  • The DSM IV and co-occurring diagnoses, conditions
  • The challenges of navigating the pivotal first session
  • The use of self in diagnosis (case study presentation)
  • Team referral and management and coordination of care

Workshop Short description
The eating disorder treatment field is starving for greater numbers of more competently trained psychotherapists and case managers. Build a foundation for understanding the unique requirements of these disorders, their victims, and their treators. Add to your treatment arsenal, hone your current skills sets, and increase your personal and professional self-awareness and confidence to become more responsive, intentional, integrative, and action-based in your treatment of these disorders.

 

Management of Eating Disorders: A Treatment Apart
Unique Features of Eating Disorders Demand the Clinician's Versatile Use of Self

A Half Day training program

Highly integrative disorders, eating disorders are disorders of the Self, of self-esteem and self-regulation, of the body, the mind, the brain, and of interpersonal function. They require the integrative function of multi-disciplinary team members, each offering a wealth of knowledge combining each others spheres of specialization. For the psychotherapist, required personal and professional skill sets need to be diverse, and the professional's use of self needs to be facile and innovative.

This workshop presents an overview of an integration of treatment approaches and techniques that are required to crack the complex maze of intra- and inter-personal dysfunction that is the benchmark of an eating disorder. In managing a uniquely resistant patient population, these techniques will uncover and resolve problems of eating disorder practice…of elusive diagnoses, of a stagnating change process, and other threats to derail a complete recovery.


On overview of treatment approaches

• CBT/manualized: the "best practice" approach, though rarely practiced by clinicians
• Family therapy: benefits and challenges of this staple of eating disorder practice
• Mindfulness in psychotherapy and the evidence-based science behind the art of the healing relationship
• The psychodynamic process and the use of self (case study presentation)
• Psychopharmacological interventions in the management of co-occurring conditions
• Somatic resources as techniques to facilitate re-integration of the embodied self and the unity of body and mind. (Incorporate two 5 minute experiential Feldenkrais ©/Anat Baniel© Method exercises)
   

Meeting other challenges of a treatment apart

• Managing the impact of co-occurring conditions: which comes first? (Addictions/case study)
• The recurrence of resistance throughout the therapeutic stages of change
• The team approach and the therapist's use of self as case manager
• Intermittent milieu placements and their implications for healing and treatment.
• The unique requirements of aftercare in sustaining recovery
   

Workshop Objectives: Participants will learn to

1. Recognize the unique qualities of eating disorders, setting these disorders, their victims, and their treatment apart.
2. Discover specific solution alternatives to complex problems characteristic of the treatment of eating disorders.
3. Rise to the unique personal challenges required of professionals treating eating disorders in honing skills, and learning effective strategies and nuts-and-bolts practice techniques.
   Understand the significance of the mind/body connection (of connected knowing and embodied mindfulness) in the creation of a healthy self image and body image, utilizing the newly emerging science of brain plasticity to influence the efficacy of clinical practice.