Bias Clarity and the Therapeutic Alliance 

Bias in psychotherapy needs to be on the table. This is critical for a cooperative alliance between client and psychotherapist.

With or without an eating disorder, we all live our lives based on our agendas with our values and perceived survival needs leading the way. If we balance our emotions and stress levels with overeating we will get short term benefits. If we let overeating continue to balance our tolerance for stress we move into isolation, self-criticism and loneliness break our own hearts and can't save ourselves from our pain.

Guarantee? My informed consent form that clients sign before working with me states that no guarantee comes with psychotherapy. Yet psychotherapists and clients strive together for healing and recovery. Five phases of the work create the strongest possibility for success.

Despite the lack of a guarantee, clients have hope and willingness to work as do psychotherapists. The client puts energy and commitment into her work because she wants health, freedom and happiness. The psychotherapist puts energy into the work because she’s seen healing and recovery in others and has a growing framework of what makes recovery possible.

When the psychotherapist sees the commitment of the client's energy, the psychotherapist’s commitment and energy for the client’s well-being grows and vice versa. Therapy is a partnership on the healing journey.

A bell alone can still ring.

Binge Eating for Christmas Companionship

People who binge eat often isolate themselves. Was that you this Christmas? Were you alone? Did you go into a cave and wait for Christmas to pass by? Did you hope for phone calls and invitations that didn’t come? Did you binge-eat and watch TV?

It was worse this year because of Covid. You couldn't go to a movie by yourself. You couldn’t go to an in-person OA meeting or a 12-step marathon to be with people, even if you didn’t know them.

Going to a seminar or workshop so you could be with people celebrating in a way that blended with the workshop theme was too risky this year. Some of you got sick and stayed in bed under the quilt with hot tea. Some of you wrote letters or wrote in your journal.

One woman made a fire, sat with her animals in the living room and read a book of Christmas stories and legends from around the world. It was nice and the best she could do.

A letter came in today that may speak to many people this holiday season. The writer, I'll call her Kendra, had an eating disorder slip last night.

Eating Disorder Slip

Kendra spent successful time in a residential eating disorder treatment center. She continued her recovery work on an outpatient basis at home with a private psychotherapist and a support group. This sounds good to me. Then she had an eating disorder slip.

Danger Signals

She stopped seeing her therapist and stopped going to the weekly support groups because they became triggering for her. These are red flags for me.

Self care wards off an eating disorder crash

The beginning of a new year is often a time of hope for the end of eating disorder symptoms. You want to start the new year fresh. Without considering needed self care you promise yourself that you won’t binge or purge or restrict in this bright new year. This will be your new beginning. Without regular self care to back up your promises to yourself you are in danger of a crash.

Stress can trigger anxiety. Anxiety can trigger a binge or period of restricting. An eating disorder gives you an immediate action  with an immediate consequence. When you step into recovery, patience and enduring commitment are necessary. Living with an active eating disorder is different from living within recovery mode. You learn to tolerate your discomfort. This is new. This requires a self care practice you can rely on.

The Blush of the NewYear Fades

In the first few weeks of the new year you discover promises don't insure instant Fast changes for the better

Coping with feelings as holidays end

If you have or had an eating disorder, January can be difficult emotional territory. The promises of the new year and  the activities of the holidays fade. Coping with feelings can be difficult when days are the usual Monday through Friday with a week-end attached, just like before.

The hope for sudden and lasting change fragments. If you were happy during the holidays you hoped it would set a new trend for your everyday life. If you were sad and lonely during the holidays you hoped that you would start a new way of living that would bring in more friendship and community.

Meaning of "Fully Recovered" from an eating disorder


A thirty-three year old man wrote to me saying he had been a binge eater most of his life and now was fully recovered. Food has been a non issue for two years.

Of course, I am glad he is happy with the strides he has made in his life. But his post got me to thinking about what recovery means.

I have been working since 1980 with people who have and who have had eating disorders.  People have many different attitudes and definitions of being fully recovered.

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Reality of eating disorder in-patient treatment

A wonderful, honest, detailed and accurate description of what it's like to go through an eating disorder in-patient experience is a gift to anyone with an eating disorder.
 
Molly Freedenberg shared her eating disorder recovery viewpoint.Her post dispels myths and fantasies about early recovery. I'm especially glad that her vivid examples make clear that in-patient or residential treatment is the beginning, not the end of recovery work.