Disordered Eating Behaviors: Identify and Treat the Underlying Trauma – Lori Kucharski

As you perform your typical intake with a new client, you review their eating habits. There are indications of abnormal eating behaviors like yo-yo dieting and restrictive eating. The client guiltily says things like “I know I should eat healthier.”

Your guard is up, but you quickly move along when their problems don’t take the form of a full-blown eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia.

Disordered eating behaviors are frequently hiding something deeper – serving as a coping mechanism for the unresolved trauma that lies beneath. Without addressing the trauma behind the disordered eating your client will fail to find the relief they seek.

In this recording, you’ll learn how to assess and treat disordered eating from a trauma-informed, body positive lens, for improved outcomes!

You’ll get the skills and essential treatment techniques you need for every stage of therapy, including:

• Tools to diagnose and treat non-DSM-5® disordered eating
• Interventions for reducing trauma symptomology related to disordered eating behaviors
• Evidence-based strategies to reframe clients’ damaging relationship with food

Experience the satisfaction of helping your clients to resolve their traumas and release the unhealthy disordered eating behaviors with this powerful non-diet paradigm!

1. Express a thorough understanding of childhood trauma, attachment, dissociation, and the researched, causal link to disordered eating.
2. Utilize evidence-based, assessment tools and interventions for disordered eating, trauma, and dissociation, as well as spouses/partners and families/caregivers.
3. Examine the history of eating disorder treatment, disordered eating in the United States, and the socio-political/cultural factors involved in disordered eating.
4. Identify how to diagnose and treat non-DSM-5® disordered eating.
5. Evaluate personal behaviors or counter-transference that could be impeding treatment efficacy.
6. Apply case studies and conceptualization for incorporating body-positive terminology, awareness and intervention.

Prepare Yourself for Every Stage of the Therapy Process

• Intake Strategies for Successful Therapeutic Intervention
  • Looking beyond anorexia, bulimia and bingeing
  • Conclusive questions for improving your client intake
  • Red flags of disordered eating
  • Address common issues that may not be in DSM-5®: Orthorexia, compulsive overeating, diabulimia
  • Digging for the roots: is the disordered behavior a result of previous trauma?

Implement Comprehensive Clinical Assessments

• How to choose the right assessment for your client
  • Specific assessments for the spectrum of disordered eating and trauma
  • Additional tools for depression, trauma, or other comorbid conditions
• How and when to use assessments for tracking progress
• Frequency considerations – get what you need without client burnout
• Collaboration within the treatment team

Techniques and Interventions to Transform Your Therapy

• Non-diet paradigm to transform your client’s relationship with food
  • Health at Every Size (HAES)
  • Intuitive eating
  • Respect, love and nurturance for self
  • Reframing your approach as the clinician
• Trauma-informed tactics for each stage of counseling
  • Trauma Specific Evaluation of Intake Procedure: what NOT to say/do
  • Process and treat trauma and dissociation
• Determine the appropriate order of interventions
• Avoid re-traumatization
• Therapeutic techniques that assist in stabilization
  • EMDR
  • IFS Mapping: Address the various mindsets of each patient
  • Attachment focused work: Self and others
  • Art and sand tray interventions, journaling/logging
• Therapeutic approaches for stabilization
  • Evaluate the Window of Tolerance
  • Incorporation of Polyvagal Theory to increase client stability
  • Prevent overwhelming trauma symptoms

Put It All into Action: Considerations for Implementation Into Your Practice

• Overcome common blocks in therapy
• Systemic vs. individual: When to include family/partners
• Self of the therapist exercise: Countertransference, bias
• Case discussions and video demonstrations
• Effective documentation for ongoing treatment
• Risks and limitations