This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 6:56 am and is filed under Depression, Eating Disorder, How therapy works, therapeutic process, treatment activity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I had a client named Tina come in for a consultation who was having a problem losing weight. She talked about how depressed she was because of the weight. When I begin to look at the pattern, what I found was that in her family to be connected they had meals together where there was lots of food where you were supposed to eat vigorously to show that you cared.
Years later, as an adult, even though she was living in Arizona and her family is all back east she equated the relationship so that food really meant being connected to family and she was kind of feeling the loss of her family every time she deprived herself of food. I really didn’t need to do any therapy. Upon realizing why she overate she said to me at the end that second session “well that’s kind of silly”. And I told her, no that’s just how you constructed it. So she responded, “Oh…well… I don’t want to do that anymore”. She had her moment of realization and she was done. End of therapy.
I got most of the initial groundwork out of the initial consultation and then I looked for patterns in the first session and by the second session she had really clarified what all of this meant to her, looked at it and said “I don’t have to keep doing that. That’s not helping me”. She was a successful case after that.
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If you relate to Tina’s story, if you suffer from depression due being overweight, if you have an eating disorder or if you are afflicted by the symptoms of trauma we encourage you to call our office or schedule a complementary thirty minute consultation with one of our therapists at Psychological Health and Wellness, meet with one of our dedicated practitioners and learn how our trauma counselors can help you live a life free from the suffering effects of anxiety, depression and trauma. We are located in Mesa, AZ.

January 20th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Thank you! That is a fine article. I find this info useful. I have read a couple of your other articles and they are all newsworthy and informative – preserve the great work. Again thanks for the useful ideas.
I am a working mom in my mid 20-ties from the Southwest, and as a hobby, I run. Thus, I have to experience back pain quite often. After I did run my last marathon I had to stop for a while. It was aching awfully.
Thank you again and keep up your authentic work and much success!
January 20th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Thank you Leslie for your kind words. Chronic pain is frequently related to major, ongoing depression.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Thank you for the intelligent critique. Me and my neighbor were just setting up to do some research about this. I am very glad to see such great info being shared freely out there.
January 21st, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Sunni, I am glad that you found the information useful. We will be posting an entire series on managing depression in audio slidecasts sometime in the next month, come back and check us out. Meanwhile, thank you for your continuing interest.
February 9th, 2010 at 5:31 am
Awesome site. Gives me the invcentive for my fitness goals this year. I hate being called fatty!!