Workshops and training
SEMINARS OFFERED for
Professionals
Mental
health agencies and
organizations seeking
speaking services are
invited to combine the
lectures described below
to become half-day or
full-day teaching
workshops that meet the
unique training
requirements of their
professional population.
The Nuts and
Bolts of ED
Treatment - A
10 Lecture Series
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description
Eating Disorders: A
Treatment Apart
ED are clearly of the
most misunderstood,
under-diagnosed,
medically and
psychologically
mishandled disorders;
they are also the most
lethal of all the mental
illnesses. Though there
are few specialties that
challenge the mental
health professional as
deeply as the treatment
of eating disorders,
even the most highly
trained and competent
psychotherapists lack
exposure to formal
professional education
and training in this
field. The good news
about treating eating
disorders is that most
generalist practitioners
have acquired the skills
they need to manage the
complexities of these
disorders. What they
lack is guidance about
how to use themselves to
apply these skills to
meet the unique demands
of these disorders and
their victims… when,
why, and how.
This workshop, geared to
psychotherapists who
seek a better
understanding of what
sets eating disorder
treatment apart from
generalist practice, is
highly appropriate for
novice eating disorder
practitioners, but also
capable of deepening the
level of understanding
and expertise of those
with experience in the
specialty. The workshop
provides a practicable
introduction to eating
disorder care, laying
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. It
offers an overview of
the rigorous
professional and
personal challenges
facing clinicians within
this treatment field, of
the diverse and unique
clinical, physical,
emotional, and social
issues that need to be
addressed, and a
framework for mitigating
these challenges through
treatment tools and
strategies, as well as a
quality, therapeutic
connection and facile
use of the clinician's
self to facilitate
healing.
Workshop Objectives:
Participants will
-
Recognize unique
challenges presented
by eating disorders
which set their
victims, their
diagnosis, treatment
and recovery apart.
-
Learn to mitigate
treatment challenges
through an
integrative and
versatile use of the
therapist's self
within the
patient/therapist
relationship.
-
Learn to recognize
and utilize
significant human
resources in the
family, the team,
and in multi-leveled
milieu care.
Unique Aspects of
Eating Disorder
Diagnosis
As the point of entry
into the ED, the lives
of patients and
families, and the
treatment and recovery
processes, diagnostic
assessment is the first
and most critical
intervention; if not
executed deftly and
effectively, it could
potentially become the
last opportunity for
patient and family to
avail themselves of
professional care. The
cause and effects of
integrative eating
disorders are
biological,
neurological,
physiological,
nutritional, emotional,
psychological and
interpersonal; all need
to be assessed and
addressed. By falling
"between the cracks" of
the specialized
knowledge of physicians,
psychotherapists and
nutritionists, ED all
too frequently remain
under-diagnosed,
misdiagnosed and as a
result, mistreated.
Clinicians need to
prepare themselves to
meet the challenges of
managing the unique
aspects of this
diagnostic process.
As the pivotal entry to
the start of treatment,
the initial diagnostic
session sets the stage
for the clinician's
treatment alliance with
patient and family, the
patient's engagement in
care, and augmenting an
action-based treatment
plan. Assessing this
most lethal of all
mental health disorders
might well be considered
a form of crisis
intervention, in which
keen attention must be
paid to the patient's
physiological risk and
medical concerns, as
well as to the
appropriateness of level
of care. The complete
diagnosis for an ED
typically takes place
over time, to allow for
the observation of the
patient's ego
functioning, and
capacity to accept,
initiate, and tolerate
preliminary behavioral
changes in response to
rudimentary treatment
tasks. Determining Axis
diagnoses and possible
co-occurring conditions
requires therapy
"mileage" as well, along
with the collaborative
input of the
multi-disciplinary team,
including parents and
families.
In light of an
ever-changing emotional
landscape over time,
every treatment session
in some sense becomes
"diagnostic" in
clarifying the current
status of disease, as
well as recovery
progress. The ED
clinician's assessment
includes not only the
extent of the patient's
pathology, but his/her
potential to heal, the
degree and direction of
previous and current
progress, the breadth
and depth of the
patient's strengths,
weaknesses and needs,
and available human
support resources. The
most critical diagnostic
assessment of all
concerns the patient's
capacity to make healthy
attachments, as it is
through the trusting
therapeutic connection
that the patient
discovers self-trust and
self-regulation, the
foundation of healing.
Nuts and Bolts of
Treatment Management
Though CBT has been
proven to be the "best
practice" for bulimia
nervosa, over 90% of ED
therapists report
failure to conduct their
ED practice according to
CBT's manualized
requirements. It has
become clinically
apparent and recently
proven through
evidence-based brain
research and
neuropsychological
technology that the most
effective ED solutions
stem from an integrative
group of skill sets
including family systems
theory and practice,
psychodynamic
psychotherapy, and
relationship-based
mindfulness in practice,
in conjunction with and
enhancing
cognitive-behavioral
treatment. In fact, the
quality therapeutic
relationship has come to
be known as the most
critical healing
"intervention." This
workshop presents an
integration of treatment
approaches and
techniques that are
capable of cracking the
complex maze of intra-
and inter-personal
dysfunction that
characterizes these
disorders, of managing a
uniquely resistant
patient population and a
typically stagnating
change/recovery process.
Learn effective
treatment tools, mindful
strategies and
nuts-and-bolts practice
techniques that are
strength-based, outcome
driven, action-focused,
and intentional in
meeting patients' care
requirements.
Treatment challenges for
ED professionals are
profound, both
professionally and
personally.
Professionally, the ED
clinician, functioning
as part of a
multi-disciplinary team,
is faced with managing a
disease that wrecks
havoc on the patient's
internal resources and
emotional resiliency so
necessary to
accomplishing the tasks
of recovery, and leaving
victims bereft of the
very means to muster
them. Personally, ED
challenge practitioners
with emotional tasks and
issues which ironically
parallel those of their
patients, such as
tolerating the same
sense of the "free fall"
in facing the fuzzy
approximations and
unpredictability that
they embolden their
patients to confront
within the healing
process. Maintaining a
healing connection with
the ED patient requires
the professional's
clear, honest, and
healthy connection with
his or her own self
first.
Useful to novice and
experienced
practitioners alike, the
workshop offers
strategies and tips that
have proved particularly
effective and relevant
to the practice of ED,
such as providing
motivational
enhancement, applying
Prochaska and
DeClemente's "stages of
change" model to
resistance management,
joining with the
patient, meeting
resistance with
reflection, reframing
recovery outcomes,
establishing interim
goals, assigning
action-based "small
step" behavioral tasks,
etc. This course will
address issues of
treatment management,
along with the
significance of a
versatile, empathic, and
connected therapeutic
relationship that sets
this treatment specialty
apart.
The Clinician's Unique
Use of Self in Eating
Disorder Treatment
The most lethal of all
the mental health
disorders, eating
disorders are among the
most highly
misunderstood,
under-diagnosed, and
medically and
psychologically
mishandled of all the
mental illnesses. This
workshop highlights the
unique professional
challenges of treating
these complex,
integrative disorders
that become deeply
embedded within family
systems. Compounding
professional challenges,
practitioners treating
eating disorders
typically find
themselves confronting
deep personal challenges
as well, in needing to
tolerate the
ambiguities,
unpredictability and
frustrations of a
treatment process that
are not unlike those
they embolden and
entreat their patients
to face and conquer in
life, and throughout the
recovery process. In
addition, fully one
third of female ED
practitioners have dealt
with their own personal
experience of recovery
from an eating disorder.
Having dealt personally
with an ED or not, all
practitioners find
themselves in continuous
need of facing and
dealing with uniquely
poignant transference
and counter-transference
issues in managing these
cases. Though formally
untrained in this
specialization, be they
novices or veterans,
most therapists already
have the skills and
capacities they need to
treat ED. What they
require is guidance and
direction about which to
use… when…why, and …how,
in applying them to meet
the unique requirements
of this specialty. This
workshop proposes to
offer just that.
In mastering highly
diverse treatment skills
and resources, the
knowledge of modalities
and interventions, the
pacing of treatment
demands, the use of self
within the
multi-disciplinary
treatment team and
within the healing
connection of the
quality therapeutic
relationship, ED
practitioners integrate
the art and the science
of ED practice. In so
doing, the acronym
V.I.A.B.L.E. (versatile,
integrative, and
action-oriented, with an
outcome-bias, loving
nature, and educational
bent) best describes the
practitioner's effective
qualities, intention,
and foci. This workshop
is packed with
interesting case
examples to lend
understanding and
relevance to nuts and
bolts techniques.
Learning objectives:
Practitioners will learn
to
-
Recognize the unique
qualities that set
eating disorder
practice and
practitioners apart.
-
Discover the unique
personal challenges
required of treating
professionals in the
face of the unique
demands of these
patients, developing
an awareness of
one's own self and
counter-transference.
-
Learn effective
treatment tools,
strategies and
nuts-and-bolts
practice techniques
to use in the face
of resistance, and
in moving a stalled
healing process
forward.
-
Understand the
findings of brain
research which have
proved the quality
of the therapeutic
relationship to be
the most important
healing
intervention.
The Role of the
Mindful Therapeutic
Relationship in Healing
the Eating Disordered
Patient
A
look ahead into the
twenty-first century
reveals the increasing
potential for
neuroscience, with its
evidence-based
revelations about brain
plasticity, to impact
and define the future of
eating disorder
treatment. Particularly
significant in the
treatment of disorders
that disrupt the
patient's relationships
with self and others,
new brain research has
shown that the quality
of the therapeutic
relationship and the
therapist's use of self
can become the single
most significant
intervention in
achieving successful
eating disorder healing
outcomes, even within
the context of
manualized (CBT)
practice. Brain scans
before and after
psychotherapy show that
the more successful the
treatment interventions,
the greater the brain
changes.
Paralleling the findings
of Allan Schore, quality
treatment relationships
based on mindfulness in
practice hold the
potential to create
therapist/patient
"right-brain to
right-brain" connections
or the 'meeting of the
minds,' capable of
enhancing the growth and
development of new
neuronal pathways that
produce feelings of
well-being and the
return of
self-regulation. It is
within and through the
empathic, mindful
therapeutic connection
between patient and
therapist that the
eating disordered
patient becomes capable
of enduring and
sustaining positive
changes that lead to the
re-integration of the
self; it is through the
mindful connection and
the trust that it
inspires in the
patient's self and the
treatment process that
the therapist
successfully navigates
the rigors of the
interpersonal challenges
that are the benchmark
of eating disorder
practice. This workshop
describes the impact of
the quality treatment
relationship and the
practitioner's versatile
use of self in eating
disorder treatment and
offers specific
strategies, techniques
and approaches to
enhance healing through
the poignancy of the
interpersonal dynamic
between therapist and
patient.
Learning objectives:
1. Participants will
understand how the unity
of the body (brain to
brain) and mind
connections contribute
to eating disorder
healing, both
intra-personally and
interpersonally.
2. Participants will
understand the role of
the neuro-plastic brain
in creating,
integrating, and
ultimately sustaining a
complete and sustainable
eating disorder
recovery.
3. The therapist will
learn specific
tried-and-true
interactional techniques
based on the therapist's
versatile use of self
that will foster and
sustain the patient's
personal growth in
eating disorder
recovery.
Eating disorders and
Addiction: Connections
and Implications
Practitioners who treat
eating disorders, as
well as those who treat
substance abuse, need to
understand the
implications of these
co-occurring conditions
on each other. An
awareness of the highly
significant relationship
between eating disorders
and substance abuse
calls for the
therapist's mindful
appreciation of the need
for diagnostic savvy,
for concomitant
attention in treatment
of these frequently
co-occurring disorders,
and for understanding
the implications for the
recovery of one, or
both, conditions.
Learning Objectives:
1. To discuss the
significant rate of
co-occurrence of these
addictions and eating
disorders.
2. To educate addiction
counselors about what to
look for in assessing
for a typically hidden
or hard to discern
diagnosis of an eating
disorder.
3. To prepare addiction
counselors to manage the
complexities of the dual
diagnosis.
Go to article
Reconnecting
body, brain, mind
and self through
movement: Treating
Body Image, Eating
Disorders and
Self-Harm
Disturbances through
the Work of Dr.
Moshe Feldenkrais.
The innovative work
of Dr. Daniel
Siegel, in
conjunction with
recent brain
research, provides
evidence of the
unity of the mind,
body and brain in
healing. This is
hardly a new
concept, as for 2500
years, this unity
has been a benchmark
of the Buddhist
practice and
meditation. Dr.
Moshe Feldenkrais
applied this concept
of mind/body unity
to learning and to
the therapeutic
healing of the body
and brain in his
work during the
early 1970's, before
technology had
developed the
capacity to measure
it. Today, the field
of neurobiology as
it relates to
psychology measures
consciousness and
the state of the
mind in addition to
behavior, allowing a
greater
understanding about
of the integrity and
reintegration of a
fragmented sense of
self. It's
implications for the
treatment and
healing of eating
disorders and body
image disturbances
are immense.
The onset of an
eating disorder
signifies the loss
of the integrity of
the core self and of
the capacity to
accurately perceive
and sense the body
and self. The
development of the
self, and
self-sensing, is
grounded in
kinesthetic
experience; the
Feldenkrais Method©
and the Anat Baniel
Method© provide
gentle and
pleasurable body
movement techniques,
which, when used in
conjunction with
more traditional
therapies, are
particularly
effective for
patients suffering
from eating
disorders, post
trauma, and
self-mutilation. By
facilitating
awareness, access,
sensing and
integration of the
"embodied self"
through embodied
mindfulness, they
provide an ideal
vehicle to stimulate
a remediated
sensation and
reintegration of the
core self within
real time. These
techniques create
new options for
"moving forward in
life" by affecting a
more versatile use
of self in
discerning options
for choice-making
and problem-solving;
by teaching patients
to learn how to
learn. By creating
growth in neuronal
pathways and
upgrading the
structure and
function of the
brain and nervous
system, these
methods increase a
sense of wholeness,
well-being and
empowerment,
returning
individuals in
"emotional exile"
back to themselves.
This workshop offers
participants the
opportunity to
experience a
Feldenkrais "lesson"
and to understand
personally its
effects on the
sensing of the self.
Learning Objectives:
-
This workshop
demonstrates the
power of the
Feldenkrais Method
(Awareness through
Movement©) to
reorganize the
central nervous
system by creating a
novel of sense of
self and well-being
in participants who
struggle with eating
disorders, mood
disorders, and body
image
disturbances…or, who
are simply fatigued
after a long day of
learning and would
enjoy the
opportunity to
become refreshed and
renewed through a
Feldenkrais
"lesson."
-
Participants gain an
experiential
understanding of the
method's capacity to
provide an in-depth
awareness of self,
creating new options
for thinking,
behaving and healing
through its unique
capacity to access
parts of the brain
through channels
beyond cognition and
language.
Empowering parents to
Become Eating Disorder
Recovery Advocates
Through Healing
Connections
By partnering with
parents, professionals
create healing alliances
that enhance and support
the recoveries of eating
disordered children.
This workshop will
discuss the
professional’s role in
mentoring parents of
eating disordered
children to become a
proactive and
integrative part of a
multi-disciplinary
treatment effort,
healing and supporting
their child through a
timely and lasting
recovery.
The most timely and
sustained recovery
outcomes occur when
parents and families are
encouraged to optimize
healing connections with
self, spouse, their
recovering child, and
the child's treatment
team. This workshop will
provide strategies for
professionals to use to
access and integrate the
power of parents,
assisting parents to
access their own
potential to mentor the
healing process as
advocates for child and
treatment team.
Educating and empowering
parents enhances and
streamlines the work of
health professionals,
cutting the recovery
time and the cost of
treatment services to
eating disordered
children. Visit
www.empoweredparents.com
and click on the link,
http://www.empoweredparents.com/pages/Article11.htm
to learn more about the
role of parents in a
child’s eating disorder
recovery.
Learning Objectives:
Professionals learn to
provide parents the
empowering assistance
they require in their
efforts to:
Empowering Mothers
Through the Child’s
Recovery:
When disempowered
mothers have the
opportunity to create a
constructive alliance
with their child through
appropriate involvement
in the child’s eating
disorder treatment and
recovery efforts, they
typically parallel their
child’s emotional
growth. This workshop
explores the proposition
that promoting
appropriate, empowered
and proactive parenting
during a child’s eating
disorder recovery
empowers mother, child,
the recovery process,
and the parent/child
relationship, while
preventing relapse.
For more information or
to request a workshop,
contact Abbie
Psychotherapist,
Author, Nationally
Recognized Speaker and
Group Facilitator,
eating disorder
specialist Abigail H.
Natenshon, MA, LCSW,
GCFP is a
psychotherapist
specializing in the
treatment of eating
disorders, who for the
past 40 years, has
immersed herself in
helping parents help
their children recover
from these deadly
disorders. As a renowned
expert in the field of
eating disorders, child
rearing, and parenting,
she has made guest
appearances on the Oprah
Winfrey Show and The
John Walsh Show. The
author of When Your
Child Has an Eating
Disorder: A Step-by-Step
Workbook for Parents and
Other Caregivers, she
hosts three informative
and reader-friendly web
sites,