About the Book
A groundbreaking workbook to help you develop healthy coping strategies, build a solid support network, and stay on the path to recovery.
If you've been in therapy for an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, your past treatment may have focused on helping you control your emotions and contain your behaviors. However, research now shows that many people with eating disorders actually suffer from emotional overcontrol. Based on more than twenty years of research, this breakthrough workbook offers skills based in radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT), a proven-effective, transdiagnostic approach for treating disorders of overcontrol (OC).
With this compassionate workbook, you'll learn how to move beyond the unhealthy coping strategies that keep you feeling isolated and lonely, find tips for building a solid support network and enriching social connections, and develop your own personalized plan for staying on the path to recovery. You'll also find assessments to help you determine the root cause of your OC disorder, exercises for increasing social engagement, and skills for improving social flexibility, trust, and intimacy.
Having an eating disorder can make you feel like you're alone in the world. Even if you're in recovery, you may have days when feelings of isolation are too much, and you may feel tempted to fall back into unhealthy patterns of eating or restrictive eating. This workbook will help you build your own "treatment tribe," a group of people that help lift you up and support you as you find your way to a full recovery and a rich, meaningful life.
About the Author :
Karyn D. Hall, PhD, is the director of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy Center in Houston and a DBT Trainer/Consultant with Treatment Implementation Collaborative. She is the coauthor of The Power of Validation and is on the Board of Directors for National Education Alliance Borderline Personality Disorder (NEA.BPD). She has a doctorate with a specialty in clinical child psychology, and is a member of the Association of Behavior and Cognitive Therapy and is on the education advisory committee for Houston NAMI. Author of SAVVY, Mindfulness Exercises, and The Emotionally Sensitive Person. She is the founder of the Healing Hearts of Families conference in Houston. She blogs for Psychology Today and PsychCentral and recently was filmed by The Learning Channel as the expert therapist on a documentary about overeating. She also has a podcast called The Emotionally Sensitive Person, available on iTunes.Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher, PhD, is founder and director of the eating disorders clinic at the University of Illinois Medical Center, where she is also an associate professor. She has over ten years of clinical experience as a licensed clinical psychologist, specializing in eating disorders and women's mental health issues. She is a member of the American Psychological Association and the Academy for Eating Disorders.Thomas R. Lynch, PhD, FBPsS, is professor emeritus of clinical psychology at the University of Southampton school of psychology. Previously, he was director of the Duke Cognitive-Behavioral Research and Treatment Program at Duke University from 1998-2007. He relocated to Exeter University in the UK in 2007. Lynch's primary research interests include understanding and developing novel treatments for mood and personality disorders using a translational line of inquiry that combines basic neurobiobehavioral science with the most recent technological advances in intervention research. He is founder of radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT). Lynch has received numerous awards and special recognitions from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health-US (NIMH, NIDA), Medical Research Council-UK (MRC-EME), and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). His research has been recognized in the Science and Advances Section of the National Institutes of Health Congressional Justification Report; and he is a recipient of the John M. Rhoades Psychotherapy Research Endowment, and a Beck Institute Scholar.
Review :
"I highly recommend this workbook for those struggling with eating disorders, and for all clinicians in the field. This book provides new insights into the development and treatment of eating disorders, offering what will undoubtably be a missing piece for many. The reader is invited to explore emotional overcontrol; social signaling; the role of playfulness and connection; and feelings such as envy, bitterness, and shame. This is an exceptional contribution to the field and there is simply nothing like it available to our clients. Engaging, relatable, and refreshing, this is a book you are going to want to read and share!"
--Anita Federici, PhD, CPsych, FAED, owner of the Centre for Psychology and Emotion Regulation; and adjunct faculty at York University in Toronto, ON, Canada--Anita Federici, PhD, CPsych, FAED
"Therapy workbooks are seldom 'good reads, ' usually only coming alive once they become part of treatment. However, this is a great deal more than a workbook, weaving together a range of perspectives that together provide an informative, insightful, and thought-provoking book. I strongly recommend the book to anyone wishing to gain new insights into how emotions and the way we handle them--both individually and in social situations--get tangled up in eating disorders."
--Ivan Eisler, OBE, PhD, emeritus professor at King's College London, and joint head of the Maudsley Centre for Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders--Ivan Eisler, OBE, PhD
"This book is such an important contribution! I've worked with countless people with eating disorders who have told me that radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT) is the treatment that resonates best for them. This book is the first of its kind to make RO DBT accessible to anyone. I can't wait to recommend this book to my own patients!"
--Leslie Anderson, PhD, FAED, associate clinical professor at the UC San Diego Eating Disorders Center, and coeditor of Clinical Handbook of Complex and Atypical Eating Disorders--Leslie Anderson, PhD, FAED
"This workbook is an important contribution to the tools available for treating eating disorders. It offers a novel and evidence-based approach for those suffering from any eating disorder diagnosis to augment multidisciplinary treatment with RO DBT. The style is simple and clear, yet comprehensive and engaging. The skills and worksheets make this workbook dynamic and interactive. I commend the authors for this contribution and hope that many will find recovery through it."
--Ovidio Bermudez, MD, physician specializing in the treatment of eating disorders--Ovidio Bermudez, MD
"With a sharp and inquisitive mind, scientific rigor, and deep respect for our patients, Hall, Astrachan-Fletcher, and Simic took all this information developed for therapists and created a very easy-to-read and excellent research-based self-help book that targets the emotional loneliness that typically underlies many mental health conditions, emphasizing social signaling as the primary mechanism of change. This book tackles complex problems and makes solutions available to everyone."
--Eva Ma. Trujillo Chi Vacuan, MD, FAED, CEDS, Fiaedp, FAAP, CEO and cofounder of Comenzar de Nuevo Eating Disorders Treatment Center; clinical professor at Escuela de Medicina y Ciencias de la Salud, Tecnologico de Monterrey; and past president of the Academy for Eating Disorders--Eva Ma. Trujillo Chi Vacuan, MD, FAED, CEDS, Fiaedp, FAAP
