Dates
In-room dates will be held at Psychotherapy Institute, Bolton. The course will run
Introduction
Working with clients who present with disordered eating, eating disorders, body and weight related issues is complex and challenging. Obesity and Eating disorders are also considered difficult to treat and yet weight and eating are more prevalent in counselling and psychotherapy practice than before. Working with conditions like anorexia or bulimia can be very challenging intrapsychically and anxiety provoking for the psychotherapist. This exciting eight day course will be delivered in a hybrid delivery, partly in person and partly online and provides specialist training and supervision in working with eating, body and weight related issues to support you in your private practice.
Day 1
Introducing and contextualising working with eating and weight
An introduction to a range of disordered eating, eating disorders and weight and eating and issues you might come across as a psychotherapist and their typical symptoms. This will include guidance on assessment of these conditions in terms of safety and what is possible in working in a private practice and clinic or multi-disciplinary settings and teams. Primary and secondary presentations will be considered too as they might arise in client work. The course will also introduce and consider how eating and weight issues might be described using transactional analysis, attachment and relational perspectives.
Day 2
Eating, shape and weight is political
Judgements are made on the shape, size and body of people by Western society. Prejudice and discrimination are frequently experienced. Oppression and alienation are commonly associated with shape, body size and eating and weight. Blame is associated with both fatness and thinness. Often body weight and size are over simplified and little consideration given to the psychological issues and medical contributory factors behind weight and body size. Prejudice and attitudes need to be explored including the attitudes and opinions of the therapist. Losing weight is a money making opportunity, so often focusing on behaviour rather than psychological contributions and underlying issues. The focus is often on shape and size of the body as a definition of identity and okness. Commercialism and money making applies to slimming groups, diet foods, weight loss surgery and recently weight loss medication. Food production and how food impacts weight is another area for consideration. This part of the course will look closely at a variety of aspects of the politics of eating, body and weight and resulting impact of being on the receiving end of microaggressions, discrimination and alienation.
Day 3
Shame, eating, weight and the body
Shame is always present in the therapy room and so often felt silently. An appreciation of shame and how and why it might be triggered and how to navigate it when it arises is paramount. We face a challenge in our work as therapists – how can we talk about the elephant in the room and build bridges to the shame our clients might experience? There will be an exploration of the development of a relational approach to embrace shame in our clients and in ourselves. It is interesting to consider the stigma, alienation and marginalisation that exists around weight and body shape and size. There is an opportunity to consider how your clients are impacted in their lives and develop more sensitivity and awareness around these kinds of issues and consider our own approach.
Day 4
Script, Eating, Weight, Culture and Intersectionality
It is fascinating to consider the links between script has influences the relationship with eating, body and food. How food and eating can be used unconsciously to supress, avoid or dissociate from emotions. We can consider food and eating socially and culturally. An opportunity to explore in depth various aspects of script including cultural scripting, transgenerational scripting and food script. It is possible to unravel what food and eating means and consider the kinds of relationship established with food and appreciate how various aspects of scripting influence the relationship with food, eating and body.
Historically, issues around weight such as overeating and undereating were considered to be gender specific and women’s issues. However, the reality is that eating, body and weight issues don’t discriminate are experienced by individuals of all genders. With neurodiversity in mind, food and eating brings additional complexities and challenges for our exploration. Neurodivergent individuals with disordered eating and eating disorders present differently to neurotypical and assessment must be through a neurodiverse lens. Attitudes, values and beliefs about what weight, shape and size means varies across western and developing societies and differing cultures. What can we learn from the differing attitudes and approaches to eating and weight in different races and cultures? How does gender influence eating and weight ? What differences are there in eating and weight issues by gender and how connected are these to identity? What differences are there in engagement in treatment by gender?
Day 5
Food, Eating, Love and Attachment
How does your client attach and relate in relationship? What do you understand about your client’s relationship with food and eating? Does your client undereat, overeat, binge? How are emotions expressed? What does food mean Is for your client? There are opportunities to carry out detailed analysis and exploration of these themes through the lens of attachment theory to make meaning of close connections between how an individual attaches in relationship and their relationship with food and eating. When attachment goes wrong, food can be the place where the misaligned and unspoken are expressed. What meaning can we make of what is communicated through food and eating? Psychological and physical hungers are explored a history of repeating relationships analysis plus and an opportunity to discover what can be understood about intimacy in relationship. There is an opportunity to consider how in the absence of a secure attachment for our client how to invite more intimacy in the therapeutic relationship.
Day 6
Nourish: a framework for working with the complexity of eating and weight
Working therapeutically with eating and weight might resonate with looking through a kaleidoscope in that is very complex and multi-faceted. Drawing on aspects of that complexity that have been introduced throughout the course, and empirical research, Mandy will introduce her framework as published in the Transactional Analysis Journal (Atkinson, 2023) for working with eating and weight through a relational lens. the During this part of the course, there will be the opportunity to consider symptoms, behaviour, script and/ or pathology and the trauma that presents. With this complexity a framework for working with eating and weight is introduced an appropriate approach to working with weight and eating issues. The challenges of working with countertransference that emerges will be discussed and explored through case examples. There is an opportunity throughout the course to apply the framework to use it with your own client material and receive live relational supervision and to work on various case study vignettes.
Day 7 and 8: Research , Special Interest and Assessment
As part of your assessment on completion of the course, there will be an opportunity to undertake a piece of secondary research on an aspect of eating, body and weight of your own special interest. This will combine your research and your reflective enquiry , building on your learning of the course content. It will involve building on the taught content introduced during the course and involve independent reading and research supported by guidance from the course tutor at intervals throughout the length of the course and then presented to the course group and tutor at the end of the course. There is an expectation that you will listen and reflect on the presentations of your peers and reflect and provide feedback on peer presentations. A certificate will be provided on completion of the course.
In completion of the course, you will:
A 20% deposit option is available for all courses. You may choose to pay the remaining balance at your convenience, either in smaller instalments or as a single lump sum. To access this option, please proceed to the final payment page during the booking process, where the deposit option will be made available to you.
