Eating disorders arise when unhappiness with our own self combines with an unhealthy approach to food.
I’m sorry if you’re here because you’re suffering from an eating disorder. I’ve used hypnotherapy in Reading, Oxford, London, Wallingford and Thame to help people with such problems and I do understand how difficult they can be to live with.
Body-shape seems to be one of the fastest growing obsessions in the Western world. Women, in particular, often feel pressured into following society’s ideal as to what the perfect shape or size might be.
Anorexia, Bulimia, a combination of both and ednos (an ‘eating disorder not otherwise specified’) are on the rise. If you find that you’re adopting an eating disorder in order to help you to achieve what you see as being an ideal weight then hypnotherapy could help you. It’s also worth noting that eating disorders are very much on the rise in our children. Two years of covid 19 restrictions have seen the mental health of adolescents come to a point of near collapse. If you’re here because your son or daughter is experiencing problems with food then please note that I am also a child and adolescent counsellor. You can find out more about this aspect of my work by visiting www.resolvedcounsellingforchildren.com.
I also offer hypnotherapy online for eating disorders, using vsee, zoom or whatsap. Please get in touch for more details as to how this works.
Give me a call, I’d be glad to help.
How does society’s preference match up to health?
In 1992 a team of Finnish researchers investigated the changing shape of shop mannequins with a view to establishing the health implications for those women who would most closely resemble them. What they found was shocking. The healthiest decade for shop mannequins was the 1950s.
In the 50s the ideal figure was fuller than is the case today. This means that today’s women are aspiring to be thinner than is healthy. This has all kinds of implications and few of them are good.
Hypnotherapy could help you to let go of this fear of straying from such an unrealistic ideal shape.
Hypnotherapy could help you to manage and regulate your emotions more effectively. Hypnotherapy could help you to regulate the urges concerned with bulimia or anorexia nervosa.
Hypnotherapy could help you to bring your life back under control, in order that food isn’t abused as being the one thing you can control. Control is frequently an issue with eating disorders. It soon comes back to bite you, however, when you realise that your habits have become an eating disorder over which you have no control whatsoever.
A happier you, living a happier life and enjoying happier relationships will not see any need for an eating disorder. Resolving anorexia, bulima or an ednos is so much more than just food.
Things have gone downhill since then…
Mannequins from other decades, if they had been real women, would have suffered health problems as a result of their body-mass index (BMI).
If mannequins from the 1990s had been real women they would, in all likelihood, have ceased to menstruate due to their unhealthily low weight. Have mannequins grown healthier since? No.
Shops and department stores are thus encouraging women to damage their health and fertility in the search of a supposedly perfect figure.
Is it any wonder that most women fail to make the grade? Is it any wonder that so many drive themselves into mental health disorders as a consequence of their never-ending quest?
Letting go of an eating disorder doesn’t mean that you have to let go of all restraint. You wont have to accept being ‘fat’. You’ll simply adjust your expectations and learn that the old you didn’t see herself as she truly was.
The image was distorted, grossly so, and drove you to some unhealthy behaviours. The new you can be happy, healthy and comfortable in her (or his) own skin.
Help is at hand
I offer hypnotherapy in Reading, Thame, Oxford, London and Wallingford to help people overcome these issues. It’s not too late to begin to roll back the habits, emotions and thought patterns behind an eating disorder. Don’t let things get worse. Help is at hand.
What of the media?
Magazines such as Heat and OK will shed crocodile tears as news arrives of another celebrity suffering with an eating disorder.
In the same magazine they’ll be perfectly happy to print photographs of a roll here, a bulge there, a patch of cellulite or a double chin. If celebrities were emotionally stable there’d be far less for magazines to publish.
The media thrives on emotionally messy celebrities and celebrities often drive themselves into an emotional mess as a consequence of trying so hard to achieve and maintain their fame and success. It’s a nasty little vicious circle.
What’s more, many women sit on the outside of this chaos and wish they could be like those celebrities who, in any case, are more often airbrushed into perfection than not.
It’s an entirely unrealisable and unsustainable ideal. As I update this page (December 2018) a move is being made to render airbrushing of female images in advertising illegal. It’s rife and does so much damage. If you presently find yourself comparing yourself to ‘slebs then you’re actually probably comparing yourself to an airbrushed image which bears little relation to the real person photographed. Not even celebrities and models are perfect. Why should you be?
It’s no wonder we’re in a mess
Obesity is bad. We hear this more and more. Think about your diet! Take control!
99p burgers. Treat yourself! Chocolate can be sexy, think of those Cadbury Flake adverts from the 1980s. Food is love, feed your family!Bisto gravy shows love. Eat, be merry. Go on, it;s Christmas!
With a society so confused in the messages it sends to its children, is it any wonder we’re so screwed up about food? We should be as thin and as beautiful as an airbrushed super-model. We’d be so much happier then…
Food is love, food is sex, food is a social event
From the day we are born food becomes bound up with affection and love. Later, as we grow, certain foods become
entwined with the concept of reward.
Perhaps the supply of chocolate and sweets is strictly controlled, their availability becoming part of a family’s power struggle, or is so lax that we lose all concept of self-control. As all parents know, getting the balance right can be difficult.
Never have calories been so cheap
Food is fashion. Food is sex. Eating is a social event – with all the potential anxiety that can bring. We’re bombarded, every day, with a thousand adverts and a dozen health warnings. “Eat this, avoid that, count the calories, treat yourself! Be slim, not too slim! Naughty but nice! You, too, can look like her!”
Too many, however, can’t.
And this can be a difficult thing to come to terms with.
How does all this lead to anorexia or bulimia?
When someone is caused to think badly of themselves, food can be the means by which they work to make things better. Diets become extreme and the girl discovers that hunger has a nicely numbing effect on negative emotions.
Bingeing is lovely but the fear of weight gain leads the girl to discover that vomiting both avoids that problem and is curiously cathartic at the same time. Some girls simply binge and some will swing between anorexia and bulimia over the course of their lives. Whichever method is chosen, the goal is the same: food becomes the vehicle by which negative emotions are managed.
You can learn to resolve that complex relationship with food
We have a complex relationship with food. We can also have a complex relationship with our own selves. When our attitudes towards food blend with negative beliefs about ourselves, the results can be disastrous.
Food can become a means of establishing control over our lives, our feelings, our bodies. Food can become a desperately needed friend or a terrible enemy to be controlled and defeated.
We can focus on food as a pleasure with which to ward off other unwanted emotions. We can use hunger as a means of feeling unwanted emotions less acutely.
An eating disorder is a means of managing and controlling our emotions. Until we learn a different way of doing this, until we unlearn those old ways of managing emotional pain, the abuse of food and our own bodies is the only way we know.
I have used psychotherapy and hypnotherapy for a decade now, helping others to establish a better relationship with themselves, with their emotions and so helping them to learn that they can leave their habits behind them.
Others have done it before you. You could too.
How can hypnotherapy help eradicate eating disorders?
Of course, the price of this coping mechanism becomes too high. We all know what happens if we journey down the path towards an eating disorder. Anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders ruin lives, relationships and health.
Together with your GP, the use of counselling, psychotherapy and hypnotherapy can begin to tease out the different
strands of your eating disorder. As a UKCP accredited hypno-psychotherapist I’m trained to offer a combination of all three.
A skilled hypnotherapist can help you to ditch these coping strategies in order to build new and healthier alternatives. You can learn to make peace with yourself and establish a healthier attitude towards food.
Hypnotherapy could help you to build a better relationship with yourself. Confidence and self-esteem can be raised.
Any traumas from the past can be resolved. Body dysmorphia can be challenged and defeated. Habits surrounding food, old and destructive ways of thinking can be modified and eradicated where necessary.
You deserve better than a life filled with so much pain and misery. I would be glad to help you to let go of these habits, disorders and negative ways of seeing yourself.
Don’t skimp when dealing with issues like this. Eating disorders are heavy duty problems and anorexia can be fatal. You or your child needs professional help and that means seeing someone with a firm grounding in psychotherapy, particularly when a child’s health is in question.
Give me a call and we’ll discuss how hypnotherapy could be of help. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
I can help you to leave it all behind you
New ways of relating to yourself, to your past and to food itself can be nurtured and strengthened. Anorexia, binge eating and bulimia don’t exist within happy people who view themselves truly. I’ll help you to see yourself in a kinder, more compassionate and more accurate manner – helping you to leave your eating disorder behind. It isn’t a one session job, to be certain, but you can learn to make changes happen and I’ll be glad to help you.
If, however, you’re here because your child has developed an eating disorder then I have an additional comfort to offer. As well as being a UKCP registered psychotherapist / hypnotherapist I am also very close to completing my Masters Degree in child and adolescent psychotherapy. Taking this course has left me with a far deeper understanding of how adolescents grow and develop and of how they sometimes experience difficulties in this period of transition between childhood and adulthood.
Hypnotherapy and hypno-psychotherapy, in the hands of a skilled and ethical hypnotherapist, can help those suffering from eating disorders. I have used hypnotherapy for eating disorders in Reading, Thame, Oxford, London and Wallingford to overcome their problems with bulimia, anorexia nervosa*, binge eating and EDNOS. You could be next. If you’d like to learn more about how I could help you then you could call me on 07786 123736 / 01183 280284 /01865 600970, email me at paul@resolvedhypnotherapy.co.uk or use the contact form below.
Best wishes
- being that anorexia nervosa is a life-threatening condition, I can only work with those people who are presently undergoing a treatment program or who are in constant and regular contact with their GP. I will need to inform your GP of our work together.