Living With Food: The Science Supporting Eating Disorder Treatment

By, Dr. Mark Warren

A central tenant of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (“DBT”) is a goal is work towards having a life worth living. When we apply DBT to eating disorder treatment we take a strong position that re-feeding and the decrease or cessation of behaviors has to occur before we can focus our attention to our long-term goals. Because eating disorders may make us feel miserable and unhappy with ourselves, our lives, and our bodies, it is easy to hope that after behaviors are gone and re-feeding is complete, that a lot of this misery will cease. Certainly we hope for the greatest reduction in unhappiness that is possible, but stopping behaviors does not mean in and of itself that pain and misery will end. As you move through the stages of treatment and become medically and behaviorally stable, your therapist will begin to help you work on building a life outside of treatment that you feel is satisfying. Building a life worth living involves feeling accomplished, effective, competent, and on a path to a life that will be satisfying to you. It’s a life in which you get up in the morning and the activities of that life lead you in a direction that will give you the satisfaction and goals you desire. As eating disorder behaviors decrease, its imperative to add activities, people, and goals back into the space that the eating disorder used to fill. Achieving happiness is an elusive goal, worth pursuing in many ways throughout our lives. A life worth living encompasses happiness, but can be a more straightforward goal where we truly understand what we want to accomplish in our lives and set ourselves on a path to try to reach those goals.

For more information on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy check out the following link:

http://www.behavioraltech.com/downloads/dbtFaq_Cons.pdf

Should you have questions or comments regarding this post, please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.

Contributions by Dr. Lucene Wisniewski and Sarah Emerman