Cognitive Hypnotherapy For Eating Disorders
including Anorexia, Bulimia and Binge Eating
The subconscious mind plays a significant role in our day-to-day lives, and depending to a certain degree on what we are consciously doing, our unconscious mind can typically be in charge of our actions and behaviours for approaching 90% of our day (so most people most of the time aren't consciously aware of what they are doing !).
The subconscious operates very differently to our conscious thought processes. Trance is not some sort of special state - we drop into and out of it all the time every day, such as when we daydream during a boring meeting or lesson, watch an involving tv programme, or drift off for a while when we are driving or otherwise travelling down a route that is familiar to us.
Eating disorders are no different. The subconscious triggers off trance states that, over time, manifest themselves as the diagnosable "boxes" of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and other related eating disorder conditions. These produce changes in a person's eating patterns, exercise levels, mood etc because somewhere along the line the subconscious is attempting to protect the sufferer in some way.
Eating disorders are a special interest area for me (and one or two other Cognitive Hypnotherapists). I find working with ED patients both challenging and highly rewarding and I've worked with many clients with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disoder over the years. Often (but not always) eating disoders are connected to control issues, either being excessively controlling (sometimes appearing with either classic OCD involving repeated checking / washing of hands etc, or a solely mental form of intrusive thoughts known as Pure-O) or feeling unable to control (or have controlled in the past) a situation, area of life, other people, your own emotions etc.
Cognitive Hypnotherapy has a whole range of tools and techniques to help people with eating disorders at a subconscious level, working through and utilising the patient's own model of the world to understand how they uniquely relate to the problem in their own minds, and helping them to resolve the underlying patterns and stressors.
Some previous clients have cracked the ED they have had for many years with just QCH in 5 or 6 sessions. Others have needed considerably longer and involved the help of other health professionals for medication, nutritional therapy, CBT or counselling (which can be used without problems alongside QCH), and periods of inpatient stay to recover weight, plus carer re-education via the excellent courses run by Jenny Langley (Kent) or Veronica Kamerling (London) based on Janet Treasure's New Maudsley Method.
For more information about Cognitive Hypnotherapy and its growing involvement in the treatment of eating disorders, you might like to take a look at the main Cognitive Hypnotherapy For Eating Disorders site.