Joanna Malinowska
Professional Hypnotherapist
Sydney Hypnotherapy & Self Hypnosis Centre
Hypnotherapy to Overcome Eating Disorders
Hypnotherapy is the best possibe therapy for eating disorders, because it allows to resolve the underlying emotional issues which lead to eating disorder. And hypnosis is also the best tool to change the unwanted behavior of eating disorders, especially with emotional eating, binge eating, bulimia and anorexia. It allows also to relax and relief the anxiety and obsession about the food and the body even with the most severe eating disorders, like anorexia.
Treating eating disorders requires advanced skills and experience and is much more effective when you feel that you are understood and you can trust your hypnotherapist. The best way to check if the hypnotherapist is capable of helping you is to not only to check if it is a qualified registered professional, but also to meet face to face and to see if you can connect, if you feel comfortable and supported. This is why I offer a free 30 minutes hypnotherapy consultation. You can meet me, discuss your issues, ask your questions and see if we click. No obligations to continue hypnotherapy.
Comfort eating or emotional eating is a very common reason for being overweight. The person is overeating to calm down some other feelings, usually caused by some earlier experiences. The underlying feelings are rarely recognised. They are experienced as illogical and unconscious urge to eat, even when not hungry. Sometimes the urge to eat is accompanied by a feeling of emptiness. Sometimes it just feels like hunger. The emotional eating is usually strengthened by stress or boredom.
Interestingly, emotional eating may be triggered both by some negative feelings, like stress, anxiety, critical remarks, feeling of failure etc. But it can also be triggered by positive feelings, some achievement, felling of love, excitement. So it seems to be used both as the comfort and reward. It may be even triggered by boredom, so it is used to access some good feelings when there are no feelings available.
Emotional eating becomes habit or addiction, affected people feel out of control. They feel great distress over these behaviours and about their weight. Yet, they can't seem to stop what they're doing. They have distorted attitudes about eating, shape, and weight. Very often emotional eating comes in pair with yo-yo dieting, and with each cycle it becomes worse.
The stronger form of emotional eating is called Binge Eating Disorder. The affected person eats rapidly large amounts of food when not physically hungry. Sometimes this is a specific kind of food, like sweets or chocolate, or salty and fatty food. Very often it is just any food, even half cooked pasta or some old bread, anything which can be found (some people even go through the rubbish bin when nothing seems to be available).
The person may be hiding when eating, feeling embarrassed and guilty about how much he or she is eating. The person stops when uncomfortably full, feeling bloated, sometimes even with physical pain from overeating.
Bulimia
People who struggle with bulimia engage in binge eating followed by intentional purging, like vomiting, fasting, laxatives or use of excessive exercise to counteract the effects of the overeating episodes. The purging is used to compensate for the excessive intake of the food and to prevent weight gain. The bulimic person stays usually within the healthy weight range. The behavior is usually accompanied by very strong distress and guilt and extremely low self-image and self-esteem. Very often the behavior is kept as a secret even from the close members of the family, which makes the affected people feel even more lonely and isolated.
There are different levels of bulimia, there are usually very strong emotional issues, but sometimes the behavior is almost automatic and it happens after every meal, with a very dangerous health implications, and sometimes it is only from time to time, even only once a forthright, used as a coping mechanism for some extreme stress.
Anorexia is an eating disorder where people starve themselves. It usually has the emotional background, but it is much more serious then other eating disorders and very often even fatal. Hypnotherapy is the most effective tool in many cases of anorexia, because it helps to shift the mind and to change beliefs in most gentle way. However, this condition may need urgent medical treatment, and I treat it only when client stays under correct medical supervision.
How hypnotherapy can help to stop eating disorder
Here the hypnoanalytical techniques can help to identify and solve the problem. The reasons for eating disorders differ, every person is different and it is very important that the individual therapy is established for each client.
Once the underlying feelings are solved, the awareness techniques may be used in hypnosis to understand the eating behavior and the triggering pattern.
Then the client finds and implements new ways to deal with the triggering situations and emotions. This is much easier done in highly suggestible hypnotic state during hypnotherapy than in any other therapy. The client learns the healthy eating habits, he/she is not obsessed by food and weight any more.
The emotional eating is usually accompanied by anxiety, depression and low confidence, and this is also addressed and solved by hypnotherapy (please see the pages about anxiety, depression and building confidence)
Hypnotherapy is the best at solving the underlying emotional cause which leads to eating disorder.
How many hypnotherapy sessions will you need
People with eating disorders are very responsive to hypnotherapy. Usually only 5 to 10 hypnotherapy sessions are needed. The first hypnotherapy session is used to learn hypnosis and relaxation, the emotions are solved in the next one to two hypnotherapy sessions, and the remaining sessions are used for changing eating habits, for the dealing with the depression, low self-esteem and confidence.
Sometimes, when the person is very overweight, it is good to have an additional hypnotherapy session once a month or two. Anorexic clients usually need more sessions too, because the condition is more serious and the changes need to be on the deepest level.
In some cases 2 or 3 hypnotherapy sessions will be enough, particularly in cases when the person is reasonably confident and not so depressed.
I consider eating disorders to be a serious issue, strongly affecting health and general wellbeing and generating extreme discomfort for the people affected. The hypnotherapy treatment I offer is very effective, one of the best available and therefore I offer a significant discount for the clients who experience real financial difficulties. I asses clients myself, because to qualify for the discount the client needs to be likely to really benefit from the hypnotherapy.
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