(This blog was
originally posted on April 11, 2016)
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| Photo by Rick Hustead |
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
increase the person’s self-confidence/self-esteem, support compliance with
recommended treatment regimens, etc., through hypnosis and therapeutic
guided-imagery techniques. 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.
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