Here’s How Psychotherapists Can Help Anorexics To Deal With Fear Foods Anorexia nervosa or anorexia is one of the most widespread eating disorders which forces people to lose weight in order to become thin by minimizing the consumption of a wide range of food items which they feel contribute to weight gain. In other words, it’s a kind of medical condition or mental illness wherein a person starts following a weird food habit just because he/she is afraid of gaining weight. Basically, the problem starts with a person’s yearning to become thin as he/she finds himself/herself too fat.
Today all most every city in the world offer anorexia eating disorder treatments to people suffering from this problem considering the fact that it’s a life-threatening mental illness. Even after having really low weight, Anorexics feel that they are overweight and they never say that they face a problem because of their underweight. They keep measuring their weight repeatedly, do heavy exercise and eat only limited food items. The problems faced by people due to eating disorder include kidney failure, high blood pressure, heart failure, infertility, and osteoporosis etc. In addition to that, if you talk particularly about women their menstrual periods come to a halt.
Anorexics find it really difficult to recover from their condition just because they have to go through a situation wherein they eventually have to face fear foods. Anorexics have a long list of food items which increases their tension and as a psychotherapist, it’s your responsibility to destroy their fear against those food items. Tips For Psychotherapists To Assist Anorexics To Confront Fear Food Refer A Well-known Dietitian To Anorexics Since eating disorder is an extremely serious mental illness, it’s better you allow the patients to meet a reliable dietitian, who can effectively understand the technicalities of a person’s abnormal eating habits. That means it’s important for you to treat an Anorexic with the support of a registered dietitian. There are huge advantages of meeting a dietitian for Anorexics as they can get a significant amount of guidance on what to eat and what not when it comes to regaining weight and restoring their fitness. Weight restoration is a highly important part of the recovery process and the involvement of a dietitian in it remains absolutely important. That means Psychotherapists alone cannot treat Anorexics effectively as the support of a dietitian is equally important in this process. Ask Anorexics To Create A List Of Fear Foods Once you start treating an anorexic, the first thing that you should be asking the patient is to make a list of fear foods which he/she never eats. Sit with your patients and make them jot down each and every food item that creates fear of gaining weight in them. In addition to that, patients should also make a list of those foods which they love to eat without any problem. Once the list is ready, then allow the patients to confront each food item that develops fear in them. You can pick the foods one by one from the list and convince the patients that they do not do contribute to weight gain if taken in right quantities. In other words, during the treatment process, you can ask your patients to eat a fear food multiple times in order to fight the fear that its consumption helps in increasing their weight. In this way, after a couple of sessions, an Anorexic will begin to eat a fear food that once used to create anxiety in him/her.
ďƒź Motivate Anorexics To Exercise Self-Compassion Motivate the patients to exercise self-compassion as it helps a lot when it comes to recovering from any sort of mental illness. In layman’s terms self-compassion is nothing but offering compassion to ourselves at a time when we are suffering from a problem deeply. As a Psychotherapist, all you have to do is allow your patients to discover new ways of facing fear foods. If a patient is unable to face the fear foods, help him/her to cope up with the situation. If you effectively follow all these tips, you will end up treating Anorexics effectively. About the Author: David is an avid medical researcher. He likes to share his views on Drug Addiction, Eating Disorders and Alcohol Addiction.
Note: The article is originally published here.