Eating disorders are complicated. Often caused and sustained by a combination of biological and social factors, they have very real and potentially dangerous consequences for your mental and physical health. At Empower Your Mind Therapy, we work with you to explore your triggers, learn new skills, practice body acceptance, and ultimately help you create a healthy relationship with food.
DBT for Eating Disorders: How will sessions look?
Your DBT therapist will likely spend the first few sessions getting to know you, including exploring your history with food and body image and asking questions about your current life and routine. They will introduce you to biosocial theory and talk about how it applies to eating disorders. They will usually give you a diary card so you can track your eating disorder-related behaviors and emotions throughout the week. This makes it much easier to discuss important things in session – it’s hard to remember things that happened last week!
Sessions may include doing a behavior chain, which involves going through all of the vulnerabilities, events, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that led to engaging in an ED behavior. Often people with eating disorders feel out of control and confused about why they’re struggling so much. Behavior chains can really help break down exactly what caused each behavior. Once it’s complete, your therapist will work with you to make some changes to help prevent recurrences: This could mean checking the facts on some of your thoughts, making changes in your environment to leave you less vulnerable, or talking through feelings that pop up.
Your therapist might recommend that you join a DBT skills group, where you learn skills in four core modules: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness. All of these skills can be really helpful when pursuing recovery. Mindfulness helps you notice your emotions and urges before acting them. For example, if you’re about to skip a meal, a few minutes of mindfulness may help you gain space from that urge, identify the feelings behind it, and perhaps proceed to eat. Distress tolerance helps people cope with negative emotions that so often drive eating disorder behaviors. Emotion regulation skills can teach you how to identify and regulate your emotions, before turning to your eating disorder, which will often leave you less vulnerable. And because eating disorders often thrive in isolation, interpersonal effectiveness skills are important in teaching you how to develop and maintain relationships.
Will it all be about my eating disorder?
No! While recovery is an important goal, we recognize that you are a complete and whole person outside of your eating disorder. In fact, we will work with you to help you separate your “ED self” from your real self. We’ll also help you set goals to create a life worth loving, based on your unique values, and that is about so much more than just eliminating eating disorder symptoms!
We know it can be very challenging to find high-quality care for eating disorders. When you meet your DBT therapist, they will work on helping you feel safe enough to be vulnerable and open up. They’ll work with you to collaboratively set goals for recovery and help you remember why you were motivated to recover in the first place.
