According to Dr. John Kepner, a hypnotherapist and expert in treating
eating disorders, anorexia nervosa (self-starvation) and bulimia (bingeing and
purging) tend to be learned behaviors without an obvious organic cause.
However, these syndromes can result in severe physiological consequences,
including death. These individuals can also experience extreme levels of depression
and high levels of emotional suggestibility (somnambulism), he warned.
Children, adolescents and adults who suffer from these diseases have an
uneasy relationship with food, Dr. Kepner observed. On the one hand, food is
often associated with nurturing and being loved or cared for during infancy and
early childhood, because the primary caretaker is fulfilling this basic
survival requirement. On the other hand, the individual may experience
separation anxiety and even suffer generalized anxiety if the parent or primary
caretaker does not love or take care of the person.
Social pressures and expectations to be slim can also influence these
behaviors, such as the frequent emphasis society and the media places on being thin
as the “ideal” physique. The majority of the population does not look the way
people are seen in movies, on television and in fashion advertisements.
However, someone who has one of these eating disorders will tend to process
this message to an extreme degree and is already hyper-suggestible to these
messages. Ultimately, Dr. Kepner warned, the person starts to believe that achieving
this ideal super-skinny shape or low weight is a panacea for all his or her emotional
problems, such as resolving fear of abandonment issues or finding a loving
partner.
In this person’s mind, food becomes an “enemy” whereby the idea of
food/eating leads to getting fat and will result in being unloved. This trans-logic
process would evoke anxiety about food or eating, thus inducing the person to
simply not eat (anorexia) or induce vomiting or use diuretics and laxatives to
get rid of any sustenance (bulimia) that has been ingested. Needless to say, “Anorexics
and bulimics rarely seek hypnosis for fear of being revealed or made to gain
weight,” said Hypnosis Motivation Institute
founder Dr. John Kappas.
If a client does come in for therapy, a good starting point for this
process is to “start moving the client to physical suggestibility, to come
outside herself and get control over her symptoms, said Dr. Kepner. It is
important to get the client to accept suggestions about gaining weight in
hypnosis and in cognitive therapy, Dr. Kappas added.
In order to work with a person who has anorexia nervosa or bulimia in
hypnosis, the hypnotherapist must refer this client to a licensed medical
doctor or mental-health professional for treatment, Dr. Kappas said. With a referral
from an appropriate licensed professional to make this diagnosis and for
treatment, the hypnotherapist may also work with the client to help to boost
the person’s self-confidence/self-esteem and self-image, create a stop-mechanism for the binge-purge cycle, etc. Hypnosis and therapeutic-guided imagery strategies can also facilitate the client's compliance with recommended
treatment regimens, etc., and encourage the client and his or her family to work with the mental-health expert to resolve Family Systems issues.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified
hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors
from the Hypnosis Motivation
Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an
appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2016
