Binge Eating Disorder-Clinical Interventions to Treat Underlying Trauma, Body Shame, and the Diet/Binge Cycle – Amy Pershing

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Body shaming comments. Lengthy dieting history. Shame associated with food choices. Black and white rules around eating. Talking frequently about weight loss/gain – or evading the issues completely. Does your client have disordered eating or binge eating disorder?

Three times more common than all other eating disorders combined, Binge Eating Disorder is pervasive across gender, race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status throughout the United States. And given that 80% of clients with BED also have a history of trauma, you need to know how to assess and treat this disorder regardless of your clinical specialty.

If you’re doing trauma work, you may already have clients with BED. Are you prepared?

In this recording, join Amy Pershing, LMSW, ACSW, author, psychotherapist and expert on BED, as she introduces a comprehensive, evidence-based toolkit of successful interventions that:

• Transform your client’s relationship with food, weight, and body image
• Incorporate the critical connection between early trauma and binge eating disorders
• Help process trauma narratives and somatic activations that fuel binge eating
• Integrate the crucial strategies of “Attuned Eating and Movement”
• Connect your client with weight-neutral nutritionists and medical providers

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to help your clients make peace with food and their bodies!

1. Articulate the critical role of traumatic experiences in the development of Binge Eating Disorder (BED).
2. Teach clients about the neurological impact of binge eating on “fight/flight/freeze” activation.
3. Identify the critical steps and strategies of “Attuned Eating and Movement” in BED recovery.
4. Provide psychoeducation to help clients understand the role of binge eating from a strengths-based perspective.
5. Implement strategies to help clients identify and challenge internalized weight stigma and challenge external body shaming cultural milieu using advocacy and community building.
6. Implement clinical strategies for processing entrenched body shame narratives in clients, family systems and in the cultural milieu.

Get to Know Binge Eating Disorder (BED)

• 5 damaging myths about BED and the recovery process
• What makes treatment of BED unique from other eating disorders
• Why treatment often fails
• Current research: Gains, limitations, risks
• Why weight has nothing to do with it
• Is BED an addiction?
• Key tenets of weight-neutral recovery

Complex Trauma and Binge Eating

• The neurobiological legacy of trauma in binge eating
• Fragmentation of the self: the role of dissociation in BED
• How trauma activates the binge/diet cycle
• Saving “Self”: the role of binge eating in managing danger
• Attachment ruptures, social anxiety and the binge cycle
• A body-shaming culture’s impact on trauma narratives

Assessment & Treatment Planning

• 5 must-ask intake questions
• What to look/listen for to identify BED
• DSM-5® criteria
• How to gather food history information
• Ruling out co-occurring medical issues
• Common co-morbidities: depression, anxiety, personality disorders
• Screening for trauma 100% of the time
• Why the initial goal is not to stop bingeing

Clinical Strategies for Processing Trauma and Stopping the Binge Cycle

• Why a “do-no-harm, strengths-based” approach is critical with BED clients
• Psychoeducation – initially and throughout treatment
• P.O.W.R. process for trauma activation, finding the “window of tolerance”
• The nuanced parallel process of each treatment piece

IFS-Informed Recovery Strategies

• Stepping into Self
• Identify fragmented “parts”
• Develop compassionate curiosity toward the “parts”
• Build affect tolerance

Attuned Eating and Movement: Stepping into the Body

• What the data tells us about behavioral weight loss/dieting
• 5 steps of attuned eating to teach your clients
• The body as a wise ally, not broken or wrong
• Using the body as the best source of information
• Teaching clients to know when the trauma narrative has been triggered
• Attuned movement v. “exercise”

Reinventing Body Image: Help Clients Feel at Home in their Bodies

• The truth about weight and health
• Cultural narrative about weight and worthiness
• The healing power of Health at Every Size (HAES)
• Help clients shift from “body as billboard” to “body as home”
• How the clinician’s body image impacts treatment

Building Resiliency to Relapse

• 4 A’s: Awareness, analysis, action, accountability
• Finding community that aligns with your recovery
• Resources for weight-neutral medical/nutritional care
• Collaborative care with prescribers

Clinical Considerations

• Doing your own work: Modeling body acceptance
• Navigating countertransference/bias
• Multicultural considerations – Gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation