Castlewood Treatment Center hosts Family Week every six weeks for our Residential and PHP clients and their support systems. Family Week is a three day long intensive experience involving group, individual and family therapy. The staff provides psycho-educational groups for families to learn about eating disorders, the process of recovery, and co-morbid disorders such as anxiety & OCD. In addition to didactic and educational sessions, families participate in intensive group therapy sessions which help them to identify and resolve problematic family dynamics. Families also meet with our therapy staff individually and as a family to explore how they can best support their loved one in the recovery process.
Family Week at Castlewood is always a time of intense healing as well as a time to develop a sense of community with other families. During our most recent Family Week, families shared that the openness of the other families facilitated increased insight into the recovery process and allowed them to better understand how to support their loved one. One mother shared “hearing my daughter express how she feels about her body and herself was extremely difficult and emotional for me; but it opened my eyes to what her life has been like.”
Family members often share that during Family Week they are able to identify dynamics that must change in order for the entire family to heal. One father shared that “listening to the experiences of other families and clients has led to a better understanding of the disorder and how it is a family issue.” The combination of group and individual family work facilitates this process of family growth.
Castlewood is proud of our Family Week and the healing that occurs on a regular basis at Castlewood. We feel honored to be a part of this process with the families who come through our doors.
Castlewood nutritionist, Deborah Hinds, has a wonderful marriage, beautiful children and a rewarding career. She is committed to the recovery process with her clients because she has been there. In her late teens and early twenties, Deborah was plagued with anorexia, binging, purging and hoarding food. When Deborah went to treatment her experience was one of medical stabilization, very little therapy, and a lack of compassion and understanding. She left treatment with little insight gained, no sense of what she was eating, and negative body image. Deborah said, “I had no accurate sense of hunger and fullness.” Deborah’s road to recovery lacked the appropriate therapeutic approach to understand and treat what lied beneath the behaviors. This is what Deborah works to understand with her clients; what no one initially tried to understand in her.
Deborah has made it her personal mission to make sure that she never allows a client to feel the hopeless despair that she felt. It is a priority for her to make sure each client knows they have her support and attention. It is because of her past that she has such empathetic understanding, and a solid foundation to the successful treatment of eating disorder. She meets the clients where they are and supports them through the many stages of treatment with encouragement from prior experience.
Deborah is a firm believer that recovery is not a pipe dream, but an attainable reality. She was able to commit to the recovery process and prosper. Deborah will be the first person to not only tell you, but prove to you that it is possible. The recovery process is a true reality, she experienced it herself, and she is motivated to help guide her clients down the same path.
It was eleven years ago when Deborah came to work at Castlewood. Deborah has been a crucial part of the treatment team, due in part, to her experienced perspective. “I know that left to my own devices I wouldn’t be here today, I had to learn to trust other people and my body and to invest in myself and be honest with people about who I am, what I think and be true to that,” said Deborah. She continues to evolve and grow because she has a supportive world around her both personally and professionally.
“I continue to check in with my feelings and I learned I never have to be alone again,” said Deborah. During her eleven years at Castlewood she has gotten married, started a family and guided countless numbers of clients towards their own road to recovery.
Deborah feels that her recovery positively impacts her work with clients, “I am uniquely able to empathize with and relate to my clients journey and challenges because I actually have walked in their shoes. This enables me to have a better understanding of their recovery process, “ stated Deborah. She is able to provide what was lacking in her treatment to her clients at Castlewood. During her nutritional counseling sessions and at the table she works with clients to develop accurate hunger fullness cues, to address all maladaptive and ED behaviors, and to address their negative body image. Her recovery process makes her exclusively qualified to meet the clients where they are, provide motivation and assist in guiding them towards a successful recovery.
Several recent studies on Binge Eating Disorder have found that disordered eating may be linked to attention deficit and a lack of self awareness. Translated this may mean that those that suffer from BED may need to work towards increased self awareness and develop a more cohesive self concept. For those of us that treat eating disorders, the struggle with identity and self awareness is not a new concept but having research to back it can often help with treatment.
In one recent study, psychologists at Geneva University in Switzerland tested the cognitive abilities of three groups—obese individuals with BED, obese individuals without BED and a normal-weight control group. They found that obese participants had difficulties with inhibition and focusing their attention. These cognitive deficits were most severe in the BED group, which points to a “continuum of increasing inhibition and cognitive problems with increasingly disordered eating,” the authors wrote in the journal Appetite last August.
A different study in the August issue of the Western Journal of Nursing Researchfound that low executive function—the cognitive capacity for self-understanding and self-regulation—is correlated with both obesity and symptoms of ADHD. And several other studies have linked distraction with overeating. The study found that focusing on one’s meal was linked to eating less later in the day—although for someone with ADHD, such focus can prove challenging.
Taken together, these results suggest that treatment for binge eating may need to include strengthening mental functions such as attention and self-awareness.
For more information visit full article.
In a recent update from EDReferral, the largest eating Disorder Referral and Information service, a recent study regarding self forgiveness and eating disorders was sited. This study investigated whether low levels of self-forgiveness were associated with eating disorder symptomatology. Participating women (N = 51) had diagnoses of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or no eating disorder diagnosis. They completed 3 measures of self-forgiveness. Women with eating disorders had lower levels of self-forgiveness compared with control participants. Results suggest that incorporating self-forgiveness interventions into current eating disorder treatments should be evaluated in future research as they might enhance clinical outcomes. Source: Eat Disord. 2012 Jan;20(1):31-41. PMID: 22188058 [PubMed - in process].
This research points to an interesting concept in Eating Disorder treatment: looking at the underlying causes of ED symptomatology and incorporating this into treatment. Working through shame, guilt, self-blame, and other factors can significantly help clients stop the shame-guilt cycle that often leads to ED behaviors. Self-forgiveness includes, self compassion and self acceptance. This research is one small step towards researching what those who treat already know: ED treatment is about more than relapse prevention and behavior modification. It is about working through the underlying causes, the self-hate messages, and finding compassion for oneself. We encourage those that are putting research efforts behind comprehensive treatment.
