Bulimia Therapist Explains: Your Complete Guide to Bulimia Therapy Top 10 FAQs
Bulimia Therapy FAQs answered by a Bulimia Therapist
Welcome to your complete guide to Bulimia therapy, brought to you by an experienced Bulimia therapist. In this post, we’ll address the most frequently asked questions about Bulimia therapy, offering you valuable insights and practical information. Whether you're considering therapy for yourself or a loved one, understanding the process is crucial for effective treatment and recovery. The goal of this post is to provide clarity and support as you navigate the path towards healing from Bulimia. Let's dive into the essential FAQs and explore how professional Bulimia therapy can make a significant difference in overcoming this eating disorder.
Top 10 FAQs About Bulimia Therapy
What types of therapy are effective for treating bulimia?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) are both evidence-based therapies and are very effective in treating Bulimia. With that being said, as a Bulimia therapist, I approach all of my clients as individuals, not as a diagnosis. This means that I develop an individualized treatment plan for each and every one of my clients. Through my experience with different modes of therapy, ability to foster a positive & therapeutic relationship with my clients and my priority of making sure that my clients feel safe, I am able to be effective in treating them. Most people with Bulimia also struggle with other issues or diagnoses. This makes treating Bulimia a bit different than treating other types of diagnoses. For example, if you are struggling with depression, we must address that as well and I may bring in other therapeutic modalities or tools to help treat that alongside the bulimia diagnosis. I can list off every tool and modality that I may use in your treatment, but that wouldn’t be too helpful. What is most important for you to know is that your treatment plan will be customized to you and your individual struggles and diagnoses in order to optimize your treatment, and therefore, your recovery.
2. How long does bulimia therapy typically last?
This is a common question, however, one that is impossible to give a straight answer for. Many factors affect how long bulimia therapy will take including:
How long you’ve been struggling
Your motivation to get better
How severe your thoughts and behaviors are
Your support system
Other diagnoses/struggles co-occurring in your life.
Medical complications that may have arose during your disorder
We know that the earlier bulimia is caught and treated, the better the prognosis. I have seen clients make tremendous progress within months and this usually is when they caught it early on or are incredibly motivated for recovery. Some people who suffer with bulimia may take longer depending on all of these factors. Even though you may need longer or more intense therapy, you can still make significant progress early on in therapy. Depending on your motivation and your commitment to the work of therapy and provided that you are in the right level of care (more on that later) we can relieve a lot of the intense suffering pretty early on in treatment
3. What are the goals of bulimia therapy?
Since bulimia can show up differently in different people, your bulimia therapist should work with you to set goals for therapy that are tailored to you as an individual, your bulimia symptoms as well as your other co-occurring mental health issues. Overall, in bulimia therapy, our goals are to:
Minimize your bulimia behaviors including any binging behaviors, compensatory behaviors and especially purging behaviors
Develop coping skills to help you through recovery
Develop a new and healthier relationship with food and your body
While these are generally the over-arching goals in bulimia therapy, the pathway may look very different for different people and there likely will be additional goals for each individual that will be optimal for their recovery journey.
4. Can therapy alone treat bulimia, or are other interventions necessary?
This is a great question and the answer is that it depends. Whether or not you’ll need other forms of treatment in addition to bulimia therapy depends on your specific circumstances. Factors such as how long you’ve struggled for, potential medical issues, your beliefs around food and your progress in therapy are all taken into consideration. Getting therapy for bulimia can already be an overwhelming process, so let me help to take some of the overwhelm out of it for you. I would recommend by starting out seeking out a bulimia therapist to begin treatment. An experienced bulimia therapist will make the proper recommendations for you and will also have referral sources for experienced professionals who also work with bulimia, so that you don’t have to sort that all out on your own. An experienced bulimia therapist will also highly urge you to get a physical from your medical doctor at the start of therapy since bulimia can, and often will, have physical consequences that is imperative for a medical doctor to tend to. I will always make any recommendations I believe may be necessary for my clients and I do not take those recommendations lightly. Depending on your specific needs, other professionals that may be involved include physicians, dietitians, psychiatrists and gastroenterologists to name a few. This is not to say that you will need all of these professionals on your treatment team, but rather for you to not be concerned or caught off guard if a recommendation is made to one of these professionals.
5. How do I find a therapist who specializes in treating bulimia?
Finding a therapist can be difficult as it is and then finding a bulimia therapist is even harder. I have resources all over my website to help you to know what to look for and how to seek out a therapist experienced in treating bulimia. It can be tricky because most therapists will say that they treat eating disorders, however, most therapists do not have the proper experience to treat eating disorders properly. It is crucial to get help from a therapist who has experience working with bulimia. I have had clients with bulimia who have gotten therapy from other therapists, prior to me, who didn’t have experience treating bulimia, and they had some setbacks as a result of the treatment attempt. This is the fault of our education since, even when getting educated to become a counselor, shockingly, eating disorders are not really talked about so much. To be able to properly treat eating disorders, it requires experience in working with them under eating disorder specialists as well as education through other means which we have to seek out on our own. If a therapist specializes in bulimia, you can get a good idea from their website about how knowledgable and experienced they are. From there, most therapists will have an initial consultation call with you and this is a great opportunity to ask them some questions about their experience working with clients who have bulimia and if they believe they are competent to help you.
6. Are there support groups or online resources for individuals with bulimia?
There are many resources available online, but as with anything, there may be many good resources, but there are generally even more not-so-good resources to weed out. There is so much misinformation out there around bulimia and other eating disorders along with many people who claim to be in recovery, but still perpetuate bulimia and other eating disorder behaviors. Here’s what I would recommend for finding valuable and correct online resources for bulimia:
National Eating Disorder Association’s (NEDA) website: This website is so valuable in finding correct resources and support for someone struggling with bulimia.
I would encourage you to read my blog about finding the right therapist and once you sort through, you’ll find other therapists who also specialize in treating bulimia and their websites are great resources as well
This website here! As a bulimia therapist, I will continue getting as much information as I can out there to provide resources and help for those suffering with bulimia.
Above all else, I would highly urge you to get a bulimia therapist today who can be there for your individual support and point you in the direction of other valuable resources that are helpful for you. If you are struggling with bulimia, reach out to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation call to learn more about how I can help you.
7. How can therapy help with the underlying emotional issues contributing to bulimia?
This is a great question and let me start off by saying that it seems to me that a lot of people get confused about the role of an eating disorder therapist and what we are able to help with. We don’t simply use up our session time only talking about food and your bulimia behaviors. You are a person, an individual with individual needs and circumstances. I am a therapist first and work with many issues including depression, anxiety, trauma, etc. With that, my specialty is with eating disorders, including bulimia. I am trained as any other therapist in being able to explore your emotions and thoughts as well as how they influence each other and manifest in behaviors. Early on in our work together, we will explore how your bulimia started and who you are as an individual. I find that this is such a complicated question to answer because it’s not so straight forward and it’s highly individualized. In working with a good therapist, it’s almost like all of the puzzle pieces come out and flow together and in our work together, the puzzle gets larger, but relatively seamlessly gets put together. A good therapeutic relationship is crucial for this process because it’s a team. As the client, your expertise on yourself and your honesty in your experiences are critical so that I can help us navigate it through my experience working with bulimia and we are then able to put those puzzle pieces together to get a better picture.
8. What should I expect during a therapy session for bulimia?
I know this is starting to sound like a broken record, but again, this is so dependent on the individual. My sessions with different clients who also struggle with bulimia can look so different from each other as well as different sessions with the same client may look so different. This depends on many factors including what works for you which is something I work very hard to understand how you work and what works best for you in order to individualize your treatment. This also can vary based on how far along in your treatment we are and what goals we are specifically working on. In the first session or so, we’ll take some time to talk about what you hope your life will look like in 3 months, 6 months, a year, etc. This helps us to make sure we stay on track and are always clear on our goals in therapy and are able to check in on your progress. This also helps to guide us session to session. Some of the things we may talk about during session include what goals we are working on, where we are with them, what struggles we’re facing and how we can approach it differently. If there was something major that happened from the last session to the next one, sometimes we have to spend time focused on whatever that is. Something that is pretty consistent no matter who the client is or where we are in therapy is making sure that you have a clear picture of what it is that you need to be working on between this and the next session. There are 168 hours in a week and we probably would only be seeing each other for 45 or 90 minutes of those a week. This means that work needs to be done outside of therapy not only to get better, but also so that we can work on being able to become recovered and stay recovered even when you no longer are in therapy.
9. Is inpatient or outpatient therapy more appropriate for me?
When I begin seeing a client for bulimia therapy on an outpatient basis, I let them know that there is always the chance that I may make a recommendation for a different level of care. I never take that recommendation lightly and it will never come as a surprise to my client. We will always maintain open communication about the possibility of a different level of care being more appropriate. If you are just starting out in your search for bulimia therapy, I would say to start with an outpatient bulimia therapist. This does not mean that outpatient therapy is the most appropriate level of care for you at this time, but a bulimia therapist can help you to figure that out as well as make recommendations for inpatient treatment centers if necessary. If you have a few sessions with an outpatient therapist before they give the recommendation to get a higher level of care, you now have a relationship with this therapist that you will be able to step-down from the higher level of care and into their care. This makes for a much more seamless transition of care. If you are having imminent health issues as a result of your bulimia, please let your primary care doctor know or go to a hospital. You will need to get medically stabilized and possibly need a higher level of care as well in order to be able to have outpatient therapy.
10. What can I do to support someone I know who is in bulimia therapy?
It is so difficult to watch a loved one suffer and feel completely helpless to help them. In addition, it can be very hard to know what the right things to do or say are. It can feel like everything you do is wrong and your loved one may seem to get upset every time you try to help. Here are some tips to help you to support someone in bulimia therapy:
Do your research: Part of why it is so difficult to be supportive with someone with bulimia is because most people don’t understand much about bulimia. There is a lot of misinformation out there and some negligent and harmful assumptions about what bulimia is or what it looks like. The more you know, the better. Make sure to get your information from credible sources. Feel free to use this website as a resource and NEDA’s website is also a good resource.
Ask them what they need: Sometimes, this may not seem to get you anywhere, but simply asking as opposed to trying to understand or trying to fix things can be really powerful for someone who is struggling with bulimia even if they don’t seem to show you that. It can be hard for them to even know what it is that they need, especially if they just began therapy, so be patient with them if they aren’t sure. It still is helpful to them that you are asking and trying in this way.
Ask to be in a therapy session: If you are a close loved one, it can be incredibly helpful to sit in on a therapy session so that you can ask the therapist questions and the therapist can help to foster communication with your loved one in a way that you can become part of their team in their recovery.
Get your own support: During this, make sure to not neglect yourself. Being a loved one of someone who is struggling with bulimia is difficult. Consider attending support groups or getting therapy for yourself as well as making sure that you continue to take care of yourself and your needs. Not only will this be helpful in the long run with your loved one, but it’s also so important that your mental health doesn’t suffer. It may be beneficial to also get help from a bulimia therapist so that they are able to better understand what it is that you’re struggling with.
Ready to get help from a Bulimia Therapist?
Getting bulimia therapy is a big decision and one that you won’t regret when you get help from a bulimia therapist. The earlier on that bulimia is caught and treated, the much better the outcomes. If you are or believe you are struggling with bulimia, it’s time to reach out to a bulimia therapist for help. Start by submitting a contact form here to request your free 15-minute phone consultation call with me so that I can let you know how I can help you recover from bulimia.
*Disclaimer* - I am not a medical doctor and this post does not constitute as medical advice. This post is derived from my experience working with clients who struggle with Bulimia, research and collaborating with medical professionals.