Eating disorders are unfortunately common, especial;y amongst young people. Around one third of Australian adolescents demonstrate disordered eating behaviours each year. That is massive! Hypnotherapy can help with Bulimia and anorexia and other eating disorders, where the cause is psychologically based.
Bulimia and anorexia are typically symptoms of low self-worth. Sometimes that involves a history of abuse and other times it is simply a lack of support, or love, that the young person experiences. Eating disorders often accompany other mental health issues, such as mood disorders, self harm, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, substance abuse, to name a few.
Bulimia and anorexia can also be medically caused. In this instance, hypnotherapy may also be of assistance where the condition may involve irritable bowel syndrome or sleep disorders, for example, but medical conditions require a medical investigation as a priority.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help with Bulimia and Anorexia?
There are many techniques I use to address the underlying cause of that low self-worth, whether it stems from a traumatic incident or may constitute post traumatic stress disorder, or otherwise anxiety, bullying, social phobia and more. The key logic here is to clear the limiting beliefs underlying the condition, and replace that lack with positive resources, to enable the client to envisage a promising future. We provide resources such as safety, support and acceptance so that the client may understand, on an unconscious level, that they are no longer stuck in a negative cycle – we break the cycle.
When working with clients experiencing bulimia and anorexia, a high level of sensitivity is required because vulnerability sits at the core of these conditions, along with a need for control in an otherwise out of control reality.
Melanie’s Anorexia
Melanie’s story was one of loneliness from never experiencing that love that we expect to experience as children. There was a heavy level of judgement in Melanie’s life since she was born. You could say that she was conditioned to feel unworthy because she never met her parents’ ideal of what they wanted their children to be. Melanie’s sister experienced the same, but reacted in a very different way, through manipulation and bullying, as a strategy to receive the attention that she craved. In Melanie’s case, she simply shrunk into invisibility.
After Melanie entered young adulthood, she became anorexic through her first relationship break up which served to support that already existing belief that she was never going to be good enough. Controlling her food intake was an effective way to feel in control, when everyone, it seemed, had rejected her. Melanie’s unconscious mind was in fact trying to help Melanie to get that control back into her life, by ‘doing’ anorexia, except of course that it was only making her unwell.
Melanie had become so obsessed with her food intake that she had little energy for living. Such severe limitation is both a punishment and a reward for someone in that state, as it starves the body but at the same time, provides that control. What was the answer for Melanie? Love. Love is the antithesis of self hatred, self limitation and self condemnation. We worked on Melanie’s confidence, self esteem and self love. It was perhaps the first time in years that Melanie was able to actually see a new possibility for herself, a healthy, whole person.
If you need help with eating disorders of a psychologically based nature, make a booking. Hypnotherapy Sunshine Coast, hypnotherapy Noosa