Session: Money, Empowerment and Recovery: How Beliefs about Money Impact the Therapeutic Process and Our Clients Recovery (2009 Symposium: Reclaiming the Body: Attachment, Somatics, and Image (March 4-8, 2009))

Thursday, March 5, 2009: 9:00 AM-12:00 PM

Casablanca (Westin Long Beach)

Our relationship with money, just like food, starts early in life and shapes our decision making process daily. This area, while given some attention in mental health literature, is often overlooked in the treatment of eating disorders. This workshop will address how you can assess your client’s relationship with money, how finances impact treatment choices and how to work with these issues to improve and strengthen the therapeutic relationship. Participants will be asked to explore their own financial history as a way of discussing and exploring the issues of wealth, abundance and living fully in recovery with our clients.

A. Workshop Goals:
   1. How can you start the dialogue about money?
   2. How the clinician’s money beliefs impact treatment?
   3. How to intervene re: money in your therapy?
B. Money & Eating Disorders
   1. Cost of Care
   2.   Impact: Client/Family and Clinician
C. Compulsive Shopping & E.D.
   1. 5.8% of population Compulsive Buying Disorder (CBD)
   2. High correlation with bulimia, BED, & CBD
   3. Bipolar Disorders
D. Signs of Compulsive Shopping
E. Affect Regulation
   1. Binge Purge
   2. Restrictive Eating
   3. Overeating
   4. Over or under spending
F. Common Ground between ED Recovery and Financial Recovery
G. What is healthy spending?
H. Money Scripts Defined
I. What are your money scripts?
J. The Money-O-Gram
K. Personal Money Experiences
L. Good Girls Don’t… The culture, women and money
M. Money and The Therapist
   1. Late Cancellations
   2. Sliding Fees
   3. Insurance
N. The Meaning of Money
O. Clinical Implications
   1. Dependency
   2. Power & Control
   3. Self-Worth
   4. Limit setting
P. The Tools of Money Coaching
Q. Summary and Q/A

Over the past two years, I have been researching and conducting workshops on women and their relationship with money. I am writing a book on the topic and want to help clinicians, clients and families talk about an issue that impacts all aspects of eating disorders treatment but is often considered taboo to discuss. While many workshops focus on the clinician’s thoughts and feelings about food and body image, the beliefs clinicians hold about money, charging for sessions, finding affordable treatment options and asking families to go into debt to treat their children are often overlooked. I believe these greatly impact the therapeutic relationship, what is modeled to the client in terms of self care and limit setting and treatment outcomes.

This workshop will explore these issues in depth to help clinicians understand how their "money scripts" (thougths and beliefs) impact their own health, burnout and their clients. Specific techniques for helping clients work on their relationship with money and how it relates to self care, self worth and full recovery will be provided. Participants will leave the session with tools that they can use immediately upon returning to their practices. Furthermore, they will be more conscious of how their financial behaviors and decision making are influenced by their beliefs about wealth and abundance. The implications for the field of facilitating this discussion are wide spread from the individual practitioner to the culture at large.

Primary Presenter:

Kathleen Burns Kingsbury, LMHC, CPCC

Kathleen Burns Kingsbury is a licensed mental health counselor, certified professional co-active coach, national speaker and an internationally published co-author of the book Weight Wisdom. She is the founder of the South Shore Eating Disorders Collaborative, adjunct professor at Plymouth State University for the Eating Disorders Institute and Northeastern University School of Profesional Studies Nutrition Program. She is the past Co-Chairperson of the National Eating Disorders Awareness Week for NEDA. Currently, she is the President of KBK Connections, Inc.; a professional coaching company dedicated to helping women in leadership positions make a BIG difference in the world. She also maintains a private clinical practice specializing in eating disorders in Quincy, MA.

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