Working with Food-Related Problems

When people talk about “food-related problems”, terms like anorexia and bulimia are often used to describe a wide range of behavioural patterns. One of the downsides of the internet age is that, increasingly, people self-diagnose symptoms and tend to emulate many of the classic symptoms associated with the formal terms for these issues. Many clients that I see have seen other therapists without success. Typical attempted treatments include keeping food diaries, counselling and various forms of psychotherapy. The challenge for therapists in helping clients is to avoid encouraging them to think even more about food, which has already, in most cases, become the client’s main preoccupation in life.

This means treating every client as a unique individual and exploring and identifying the triggers for the behaviour. These triggers for the unhelpful eating disorder behaviours vary from person to person. Sometimes the trigger for an eating disorder can be a specific set of circumstances that regularly occurs in a person’s life; other times, there seems (to the person involved) to be no determinable pattern. In these instances, hypnotherapy and behavioural therapy can work very effectively, as the client gains a new perspective in this more relaxed state.

Many clients plan their eating behaviours in intricate detail for each day and week ahead. It’s important to remember that such behaviours are “learned behaviours,” and by using Provocative Change Works, it’s quite possible to change these unhelpful eating disorder patterns to create a life that is no longer centred on food and eating. I generally advise several sessions for such conditions. Hence, each client can see the differences in their changing eating disorder behaviours and gradually discover that they have a wider range of choices about how they feel about food. I have had excellent success to date with a wide range of food-related problems. Before you arrange a session, I always receive a completed set of client notes to make sure you use the session time effectively.

Testimonials

“Thank you so much!! I can’t tell you how much you have changed my life, and I can’t describe to her how much you have changed my life. would like to say I am totally free of bulimia and thought I never would be, and that is all thanks to you!! I can’t thank you enough!”

Lorraine