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Eating Disorders are a family affair. When Food is Family allows family members to explore and rebuild relationships to each other that were damaged before the eating disorder evolved and continue to be impacted by its existence. The book teaches families, through expository text, experiential reflections, and step-by-step exercises, how to develop an "emotional language." It explains that trust, empathy, and respect are the core methods by which we communicate our love for one another and teaches readers how to experience and convey these concepts toward each other -- especially toward the person with the eating disorder. When Food is Family helps build a relational infrastructure within the family that is critical for dismantling the eating disorder, and it shows how to maintain healthy bonds in the family and in relationships yet to come. The book provides family members a step-by-step approach to understanding what attachment means, why connection to each other is important, how relationship breakdowns can lead to an eating disorder, how food becomes the relationship of choice, and how to go about repairing these relationships so that food (and the eating disorder) is replaced by healthy relationships within the family.
Judy Scheel, Ph.D., LCSW The search for genetic causes of anorexia and bulimia is a serious and necessary endeavor. Some success has been achieved. But even if a definitive genetic cause is found, it is agreed that there are many components necessary to account for the development of an eating disorder. (see below. ) And […]
The article linked below is by Dr. Judith Brisman, an innovator in the field of eating disorders and body image. Children with Eating Disorders: Are Parents to Blame? www.huffingtonpost.com Every family should take a look at itself and see what is working and what isn’t, to allow for growth, independence, intimacy and exchange with all […]
Dysfunctional family dynamics and confusing or inappropriate patterns of communication can easily emerge, which can leave a child, particularly one predisposed to an eating disorder, feeling insecure, doubtful, and deeply mistrustful. These factors contribute to the development of an eating disorder.
Eating disorders affect not just the person who has it, but every member of that person’s family because, more often than not, the disorder lives with the family. Eating disorders are often a family affair.
At the heart of relationships lies the understanding that separation and loss will occur within all relationships. Eating disorder patients bring a litany of wounding experiences and events into therapy, which signals the presence of pathological loss and increases the difficulty faced when it comes to bonding (attachment issues) and separation. Pathological separation and loss […]