As a multifaceted issue, your binging or purging episodes need a multifaceted treatment approach. Recognizing the deeper issues at play with your eating disorder will help you develop the skills to become more self-aware of your urges, emotions, and actions in treatment. Using DBT, you will not only develop an understanding of how to manage your emotions but also gain a community of like-minded people who are sensitive to the challenges you face.
Using the four modules of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, your therapist will assist you in cultivating the skills to not only locate your urges (and what triggers them) but also how not to act on them. By achieving mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and emotional regulation, you will be positioned for success the next time you feel the need to use food in order to cope.
At Suffolk DBT, we begin the process of therapy for your eating disorder by ensuring commitment to the treatment, using a dialectical model that requires six months of both individual and group sessions. Once established, you will begin practicing writing diary cards to help you explore the emotions, stressors, and triggers you feel on a daily basis. Over time, you will be oriented to a group session (in conjunction with weekly individual treatment) that will help with the process of defining and verbalizing your feelings and the behaviors associated with them.
Throughout the treatment, you will begin to feel less vulnerable to episodes of disordered eating as you uncover the urges behind those episodes. You will also have the opportunity to achieve more mindfulness in your daily eating habits and notice mindful practices occurring beyond the context of eating. In fact, as a skills-based treatment, DBT can help you to regulate the emotions and behaviors in your life that extend beyond your eating disorder. In the process, you will engage in the practice of radical acceptance by understanding that even if there are missteps along the way, every action is an opportunity from which you can learn.
At Suffolk DBT, our therapists are sensitive to the struggles you face and the emotions that come with them. As dialectical thinkers, we are empathetic and understanding counselors who are expertly trained in a therapy approach that has proven highly effective for eating disorders.
Your life does not have to be enveloped by your suffering. Through treatment, a life of reconnect ion to your body and freedom from your eating disorder is possible. And in fact, all of the goals you set out for yourself are yours to achieve.