“Authentic, brave, and deeply giving of herself.”

“Nicole is an inspiration.”

“A gentle, warm, compassionate, and welcoming trainer”

The post Working with Eating Disorders first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

Featuring three talks and a Q&A

Professor Julia Buckroyd: “Disordered eating in families and relationships: a wordless communication”

This presentation looks at some of the issues in families and relationships when one person has an eating disorder.

An eating disorder is a communication, wordless and hard to interpret, usually aimed at someone in the household. It is an indication of distress and needs to be put into words that can then be discussed, processed and worked on.

This process is made difficult because even if the target can be identified, the disordered eater rarely knows what it is about. The therapeutic task is therefore to make conscious the purposes of the disordered eating and enable the management of them within the couple or family by other and less destructive means.

The presentation will enable participants to recognise the significance of the disordered eating as communication; facilitate the understanding of the meaning of the eating behaviour, help the couple/family to discuss/communicate previously unmanaged issues in the relationship(s) and explore other means of managing the issues that arise from this process.

Yeva Feldman: “Anorexia Nervosa: Moving from disconnection to connection, an embodied relational approach”

Anorexia Nervosa has more recently been described as a ‘disease of disconnection’: disconnection from one’s authentic self (thoughts, feelings and needs), from one’s body (bodily cues and sensations) and from one’s close others (Tantillo, Sanftner & Hauenstein, 2013).

Yeva works from the premise that the disordered eating was a response to something that happened to the individual. Often there isn’t just one traumatic event; there may be layers of attachment trauma, neglect, loss, and invalidating experiences from childhood. The disordered eating is what the individual did to cope and survive.

When the disordered eating is viewed as protector, there is an opening for the more vulnerable self to emerge. Anorexia is a highly effective protective resource. Developing and strengthening somatic and relational resources are essential in order for the individual to feel they have other means of protecting and coping with overwhelming feelings.

In this presentation, Yeva will highlight the key elements she has found essential in helping individuals living with Anorexia Nervosa move from disconnection to connection illustrated by case examples.

Linda Cundy: “The Last Supper: Attachment, Loss – and Food”

“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.” E. M. Forster.

Food and attachment are intimately connected; from the start of life our feeding experiences involve relationships. How we are held and fed is influenced by our caregiver’s capacity for sensitive attunement, related to her or his own attachment history.

Cultural factors also play their part in our relationship with food and influence how we come to nourish ourselves (or deny ourselves) later on.

Cooking and eating together is part of couple bonding and family life. So, when an attachment figure dies, our relationship to the world – including food – is shaken up. Separation anxiety, bereavement and unresolved loss all impact on appetite, eating habits and our sense of self. This talk will explore the grieving process through the relationship with food.

Testimonials:

“Hands down one of the best CPD days I have seen. Hugely informative and relatable to.”

“It was refreshing to look at disordered eating through a lens wider than one which just sees the ‘patient’ – and which often feels very shaming and perpetuating of the problem.”

“A good breadth of material across the 3 speakers, all of whom covered their specific subject area thoroughly.”

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Disordered Eating Conference first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

In this video Linda explains that food is a hugely neglected area in psychotherapy, and the available literature tends to be focused on disordered eating and eating disorders. This book aims to fill the gap in the psychotherapeutic literature.

In this video we will learn the various and expansive way that food mediates all of our relationships, from the very beginning of life.

Please note  that any mention in the videos about “handouts” or “printouts” by trainers, are in reference to printouts of the PowerPoint slides, which were made available to delegates who attended the LIVE workshop. These slides are included within the videos and are the property of the trainers. They are not available for download or redistribution with any video rental purchase.

The post Attachment, Relationships and Food first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

This presentation looks at some of the issues in families and relationships when one person has an eating disorder.

An eating disorder is a communication, wordless and hard to interpret, usually aimed at someone in the household. It is an indication of distress and needs to be put into words that can then be discussed, processed and worked on.

This process is made difficult because even if the target can be identified, the disordered eater rarely knows what it is about. The therapeutic task is therefore to make conscious the purposes of the disordered eating and enable the management of them within the couple or family by other and less destructive means.

The presentation will enable participants to recognise the significance of the disordered eating as communication; facilitate the understanding of the meaning of the eating behaviour, help the couple/family to discuss/communicate previously unmanaged issues in the relationship(s) and explore other means of managing the issues that arise from this process.

Testimonials:

“Julia Buckroyd is so easy to listen to and learn from and has such a wealth of knowledge – amazing speaker!!”

 

The post Disordered Eating in Families and Relationships first appeared on Therapy Education Online.

From the start of life, feeding is a relational experience. The bond between caregiver and infant is brokered in the intimacy of feeding, and our attachment to food is an expression of the relationships we form with other people and ourselves. Our relationship with food expresses something of our attachment histories, secure or insecure: safety and security may be sought in eating or in refusal to eat.

This training video will help you to explore how our relationships with food are shaped in early life in the context of our first attachments, and how food mediates our relationships throughout life.

Throughout the video there will be opportunities for you to consider the place of food and eating in your own life and in the lives of your clients from an attachment perspective.

This Training Video also contains discussion summaries from the live workshop, and case studies which you can pause and reflect on.

The two videos you are recommended to watch are:

Food or Security

“Attachment Theory – Harlow’s Monkeys: Food or Security” which can be found on YouTube here https://youtu.be/-Qi7txH1KzY?feature=shared. Please be aware that some people may find this video distressing to watch as it contains audio-visual excerpts from a 1950s experiment where baby monkeys were separated from their mothers and subject to isolation and maternal deprivation.

Bringing Up Baby

“Bringing Up Baby” was a TV documentary series which has now been removed from YouTube by the copyright owners and unfortunately is no longer available to view. You can see the placemarker on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeE6SEu5P6djSxwh6Ax1SrectZ_HuN969

Comment added February 2025

This talk for Brighton Therapy Partnership was later expanded and developed into the book Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen (Routledge, 2021).

Special Offer

If you purchase this video, you can claim a 50% discount code for the recording of the key points from Linda Cundy’s new book on the same subject called Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen, which can be found HERE

Get both recordings for £56.50 down from £74!

Testimonials:

The post Attachment & Food first appeared on Therapy Education Online.