Using EMDR in Therapy and Coaching to Address Negative Body Image

What is EMDR?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy model created by Dr. Francine Shapiro to help clients reduce anxiety, reprocess traumatic memories, and manage difficult life situations. Studies have concluded that the outcomes of successful EMDR therapy include positive cognitive restructuring, desensitization to disturbing memories, and increased self-insight (King, W 2015, EMDR therapy basic training course). Basically, wherever there is a compelling thought about yourself, or distortion, EMDR can potentially help.

For more information please watch this video:

https://www.emdria.org/blog/new-what-is-emdr-therapy-video/

The Problem

Regarding body image, there are two places we go in our mind when stuck in the diet/restriction mindset. One is harkening back to a body we once had and the other is fantasizing about a future body we will achieve. Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, CEDS and author of Anti-Diet and The Wellness Trap, calls this predicament “the life thief” because it keeps you stuck in the past or future rather than living in the present moment. As Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” applies even when we are comparing our present body to a past or future body. I like to introduce clients to the concept of the here and now body, the body you actually live in now. Clients often are initially very resistant to this concept, but over time find it to be an anchor and portal into self-acceptance, compassion, embodiment and peace.

The problem is that this process can sometimes take months or years with talk therapy or coaching to turn around body loathing. Talk therapy works with the right person guiding you. There are many ways to reframe negative body thinking and experiments to try (homework). Unfortunately, some clients are so flooded with emotions regarding their bodies that it’s hard to break through.

One Solution

There is an EMDR technique that I use with clients that when applied can begin to resolve the discrepancies in the mind between chasing the thin ideal and living in the here and now body. This technique can reduce the emotions attached to negative thinking and has been shown to move people out of a comparison mindset on the deep level where the life thief lives in your brain. I can’t guarantee that you’ll suddenly love every picture of yourself, since after all very few of us have the camera crew and lighting that models have to get that seemingly perfect shot. But you will likely not be as impacted by negative thoughts about yourself. And you will then probably focus more on what a great time you had in that picture with family, friends or a partner, rather than be hyper focused on how your body looks.

If you’d like to know more:

As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, I offer Body Image and Intuitive Eating therapy and/or coaching to people who need support with accepting their bodies and learning how to incorporate intuitive eating principles into daily living. I use EMDR with my coaching and therapy clients as I am certified in both EMDR and Intuitive Eating counseling. For a free 20 minute consultation, please text or call me at 408-637-7502.

How Eating Your Forbidden Foods may be the Key to Peace with Food

By Kathleen Bishop, LCSW

Therapist and Intuitive Eating Coach

Many people believe that certain foods make them binge. What if I told you that it's not actually the food, but the restriction of that food that leads to feeling out of control and eating past full? 

It's like a rubber band. 

Each time you deny yourself a forbidden food that band gets stretched 

 until finally you snap and eat way more than intended to the point of being uncomfortably full. You end up vowing never to do that again, only to wind up doing the same thing over and over.

I have worked with and talked to hundreds of people who were convinced it was the food that caused them to be out of control, rather than the restriction of said food. Once they allowed forbidden foods to be fully unrestricted, they became less out of control with that food. This is a part of Intuitive Eating (IE) and why intuitive eating is set apart from Mindful Eating.

Unconditional permission to at is one of the essential tenets of IE. When you have physical (don’t keep it in the house) and/or mental (it’s a bad food) restrictions around food, it keeps those restricted foods in a heightened state in your brain. So, your brain perceives them as more rewarding than they actually are.

So, what do you do,

Try an experiment with one food. For example, if you like cookies, pick your favorite. Then stock some boxes of those cookies in your home. Allow yourself to eat them whenever you really want them. For most people, after roughly four to six days, the magic happens. They no longer feel that out of control feeling. The goal is not to make of yourself sick of your  favorite cookies, rather it is to habituate your brain to not feel out of control when they are in the house. 

The reason for choosing your favorite of a particular food (cookies, ice cream, chips), and doing this with one restricted food at a time, is because it would likely overwhelm you to experiment with a variety of food in each category you usually feel out of control with.

***Do not try this experiment if you have an active eating disorder.  Please seek treatment.

With body, peace and liberation,

Kathleen Bishop, LCSW

Power of 3

I trained with Evelyn Tribole, co-author of Intuitive Eating, to become a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and she gave me a great tool to use with clients. It’s called the Power of 3. Whenever you have a negative thought about food or your body, write it down and come up with 3 alternative positive thoughts. Sounds easy, right? Well, not so easy at first. Most people have a difficult time coming up with three alternatives.

Why is it so hard? 

Because automatic negative thoughts (lets think of them as pesky ants) have a way of infesting your thoughts and draws you back to them time and time again. And because their automatic, it’s hard to shut them up. But there is an “ant” killer that helps you create a new grove in your brain.

The almighty Lizzo once said, “I don’t think that loving yourself is a choice. I think that it’s a decision that has to be made for survival; it was in my case.” Let’s take the first step to deciding to love ourselves by learning how to overcome negative thoughts with the Power of 3:

Using the Power of 3

Let’s say your negative thought is, “I can’t wear a bathing suit because my body is too big.” 

Power of 3 says, “think of 3 alternative positive thoughts”:

1. There is no wrong size body: bodies come in all shapes and sizes.

2. I don’t need to change my body to enjoy a season and go swimming. 

3. Anyone who judges the way I look, is superficial and their opinion is not important to me. 

Let’s say your negative thought is, “Eating fatty food is bad for me.”

Power of 3 says:

1. Fat makes food taste good and one of food’s functions is to taste yummy! 

2. Fat in food keeps helps my brain function better.

3. When I restrict foods with fat, I wind up bingeing later. 

You May Get Stuck on Finding 3 Positive Alternatives

You will likely get stuck if you’ve been telling yourself negative things about your body and food for a long time. Your subconscious will take a beat to get online with the new program. Be patient and don’t give up. It took a long time to learn all the dieting and body image ‘rules and regulations’ so it makes sense that the unlearning curve will be steep as well. If you stick with it, and challenge those pesky ants with three counter thoughts, your hard work will pay off. Over time the Power of 3 game gets easier and easier.

Two Stuckbusters

1. Ask yourself if the negative statement is 100% true, 100% of the time, and scale it. Often our negative thoughts feel 100% true in our heads, but when written down in the light of day, they lose their power. Let’s say you decide that your negative thought is 60% true, ask yourself why not 100%, and that’s where you will find your counter thoughts: in the 40% that’s not true. This scaling tool helps combat the distorted “all or nothing” thinking that all of us do . 

2. Pretend you’re talking to a friend. What would you say to a friend who was berating their body or food choices. Often we find that we would never talk to a friend the way we speak to ourselves. This is important because the longest relationship you’re ever going to have is with yourself! So developing more self-compassion is fundamental to living your best life.

The holidays are upon us and you need to know: Intuitive Eating is a radical alternative to diet talk and body bashing

How do you not engage in diet talk, healthism and body bashing over the holidays?

It seems to be the topic of discussion in many families. Many of us come from families where there is intergenerational dieting trauma, so family gatherings can bring up feelings of vulnerability. There is a tendency to commiserate over the disdain we have for various body parts: arms, belly, butt, thighs. “If I could just lose those last ## pounds, I’d be happy,” is a common refrain. Another insidious variation of this is gossiping about how someone has gained weight and, ‘let themselves go.’ And for some reason people will engage in this kind of talk in front of actual fat people! 

When you’ve made the decision to stop dieting and accept the body you have, the holidays can sometimes feel like a minefield. 

This is especially true if you are new to Intuitive Eating and body acceptance. Those comments that used to feel normal (even if they stung a bit) can now feel like an assault during the first diet free holiday season. 

What can you do? 

I recommend simple direct statements when people try to engage you in diet talk, healthism and body bashing of themselves, you or others:

I don’t diet, I listen to my body. 

My body came with an instruction kit for how to eat: hunger, fullness and satiety cues. It’s amazing!

I’m comfortable eating a variety of foods. 

All foods fit for me.

I don’t restrict food. 

Look at all this amazing food. Let’s enjoy ourselves. 

I don’t associate guilt with food. 

I don’t need to trick my cravings. 

It hurts my heart when you bash your body. 

Please don’t comment on my body. 

Bodies come in all shapes and sizes

You can’t tell a person’s health status by their weight. 

Pursuing health is not a moral obligation. 

My weight and health status are not up for discussion. 

Bottom line is you don’t have to go into an in-depth explanation to defend what’s working for you. 

Over time you will find what works for you. You don’t have to win people over. If you can set a boundary that you’re not going to engage, that’s enough. I always recommend to regularly inoculate yourself from diet culture by listening to a non diet podcast, or reading a book (like Body Respect), and following non diet and size accepting people on social media. This is especially important during the holiday season, and equally important during peak dieting season in January. 

With body, peace, & liberation,

Kathleen Bishop

When you Need to Track Something, but You've Given Up Dieting

Even though many of my clients completely understand that dieting does not work, when learning about Intuitive Eating for the first time, they want to track something. 

I don’t know if it’s just a habit, or the sense of order and control it gave them, but they miss tracking from their dieting days. When starting the Intuitive Eating lifestyle, monitoring hunger, fullness and satisfaction can fulfill that need to track something.  In the future, the goal is to track what's happening internally when you eat, not what you are eating.  

A colleague of mine, Ellyn Herb, PhD gave me a great idea -- track hunger, fullness and satisfaction of meals on a scale from 1-5 for a little while (I’ll explain in detail later).  By tracking these 3 factors after meals for a brief period of time, you will gain valuable insights about your eating. Now this doesn’t have to be done at every meal or every day. Just like everything else with Intuitive Eating, you get to decide what works for you. The goal is to learn more about your relationship with your body, food, eating and the thoughts that come up for you in the process.

Lets Get Started

3 of the 10 Intuitive Eating Principles used in This Exercise

Honoring Your Hunger, Respecting Your Body and The Satisfaction Factor are three of the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating. To read more about the other 7 principles click here.

“2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence–the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you’ve had “enough”.”

These three principles work together in a synchronistic way to tell us when we are hungry and what to eat with the goal of being satisfied. These are all internal mind and body functions that get lost when we are used to following external rules around food and eating. When tracking comes to mind it is usually associated with calories, carbs, macros etc... I am in no way shape or form suggesting that you track any of these things. The tracking I’m suggesting is to help you get in touch with these three principles in an experiential way.

How to Track

Tracking Hunger

Tracking hunger starts with a hunger scale. For this I use a 5 point hunger scale.

1. Not hungry at all

2. A little bit hungry, and thinking about food, this is a great time to think about what you want

3. Feeling like you want to eat something: food thoughts more compelling, maybe time to eat

4. Really hungry and maybe feeling light headed, empty, rumblings in stomach etc…

5. Ravenous (It is biologically correct to overeat at this juncture and to eat fast)

Note: Eating between 3 and 4 is when food tastes most amazing

Tracking Fullness

1. Empty stomach

2. What you feel like after a light snack, like a piece of fruit

3. May feel satisfied in terms of hunger

4. Comfortably full

5. Stuffed

Note: The difference between comfortably full and stuffed is often just a couple of bites

Tracking Satisfaction

1. Not satisfied at all

2. A tiny bit satisfied

3. It was OK

4. That was pretty good

5. Wow that tasted amazing

Note:You might want to take note of the foods you are discovering to be amazing. They may be very different than what you previously thought

Now that you have the basics in terms of what you’re tracking, there are many ways to put it into practice. You can write it down in a notebook, on your phone, on a pad of paper, or track it on your phone in Moment diary or other APP. 

Putting it all together

The important thing is to think about whether the food you’re about to eat is really what you want, and if you are actually hungry for it. However, sometimes we can’t always get exactly what we want when we want it in terms of food and hunger. Always try to make the best match you can in terms of choosing food that truly satisfies you.

Track your meals, or some of your meals for a week or so and then look for patterns to help you discover how your body and mind work when it comes to food. If you have some old restrictive thoughts about food and when you are supposed to eat, they often become illuminated during this practice.

Intuitive Eating is about matching your hunger to what you really want. If you get confused about what you really want, start with the easiest choice: ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ and move to ‘sweet,’ ‘savory’ or ‘salty’ and then to texture, ‘crunchy,’ ‘creamy,’ etc… Another question to ask is, "Am I meal hungry or snack hungry?" You get the idea. After a while this becomes a natural part of life.  

The results might surprise you. You may find that you are waiting too long to eat and then have a lower satisfaction rating, and/or eating to the point of uncomfortably stuffed. Or you may find with low satisfaction ratings, that you’re eating things that you think you should rather than what you really want to eat. Be flexible with yourself and discover the joy of eating again.

Kathleen Bishop, LCSW and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor

Please note that if you have been diagnosed with an eating disorder, there is certain criteria that needs to be met before starting Intuitive Eating. Working with a mental health professional is recommended before starting Intuitive Eating.