“Ta Da”: The Transcendent Moments in the Treatment of Eating Disorders

Maine, Margo

Thursday, March 22, 2012: 8:30 AM-10:30 AM

Blue Topaz (The Charleston Marriott)

This experiential workshop explores those unique transcendent moments in the treatment process of eating disorders, the life-changing “Ta-Das” experienced by both client and clinician. Although we cannot insert transcendence into a session or a treatment plan, clinicians can help to create situations that deliver “pregnant possibilities” and spiritual transformation.

Overview of workshop

- Importance of topic and brief descriptions by each presenter of special transcendent moments they have experienced as clinicians and what may have shaped these.

- The presenters will identify the key “cornerstones” that foster or nurture a place and space for transcendence to occur. These include: 1) Belief, 2) Self awareness, 3) Presence, and 4) The baseline intervention of Example.

Experiential exercise

Participants will write about transcendent experiences they have had personally to explore how these occurred and how we can create therapeutic moments that may result in similar transcendence.

Participants will write about transcendent experiences they have had professionally and identify what these felt like and what occurred for client as result

Open discussion of these in small groups

Identification of common themes

Discussion by whole audience

Here’s Looking at Us!

Discussion led by presenters on what interferes with our own ability to stay present in sessions with clients and to listen to our hearts (e.g.: the stressors in our personal lives, our ability to balance work with life, the stress imposed by the health care system and need to justify treatment plans and quantify results) ; how to foster in ourselves “presence”, self care, and a higher level of “truly listening”.

Experiential exercises

Small group discussion

Discussion by whole audience

This experiential workshop explores those unique transcendent moments in the treatment process of eating disorders, the “Ta-Das” experienced by both client and clinician. It is these “Ta-Da” moments that keep us “hooked” as clinicians. “Ta-da” translates to “ ka-ching,” as we experience hitting the therapeutic jackpot when a patient shifts before our very eyes and hearts to a stance of openness, motivation, and willingness to take risks and to change. Both clinician and client need to have the self-awareness and breathing room necessary to recognize these moments as they begin to take shape and the confidence and trust to proceed. These are intimate and deeply spiritual experiences, often difficult to verbalize, and not described in treatment manuals or textbooks. Just as patients dissociate, however, so may clinicians, in order to defend against the pain and sadness they confront each day. The workshop enables clinicians do to identify and break that defensive pattern, and to re-engage in the therapeutic process. Research in neuroscience now confirms that the heart functions like a second brain, processing experiences and sending messages to the brain. “Listening to our hearts” is an important skill for both clinicians and clients and a central focus of the workshop. Blending nonverbal, right brain, experiential modes of treatment may help us to hear and follow the heart. Presenters and participants will discuss how significant, life-altering change happens and what clinicians can do to create and contain these moments, these “pregnant possibilities.” The workshop explores questions such as these:

As clinicians do we have to perfectly grounded , aligned, and centered in order to create these moments or to notice them as they occur for the patient?

Can we be less than perfect, the “good-enough therapist;”

What is our margin of error of attunement as clinicians?

How do crises or life-events of our own affect the possibilities of these transcendent moments?

How does our self -care affect the potential for transcendent moments?

Although we cannot insert transcendence into a session or a treatment plan, clinicians can help to create situations that foster it.

Primary Presenter:

Margo Maine, PhD, FAED, CEDS

Co-founder of Maine & Weinstein Specialty Group and an expert in eating disorders, Dr. Maine is author of : Treatment of Eating Disorders: Bridging the Research- Practice Gap with McGilley & Bunnell; Effective Clinical Practice in the Treatment of Eating Disorders, with Davis & Shure; The Body Myth with Kelly; Father Hunger; and Body Wars. She is: senior editor of Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention; vice president of the Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy, and Action; Founding Member and Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders; and a Founder of the National Eating Disorders Association.

Co-presenters:

Beth McGilley, PhD, FAED

Beth Hartman McGilley PhD, FAED, is a psychologist in private practice in Wichita, Kansas, specializing in the treatment of eating and related disorders, body image, athletes and sports performance, trauma, and grief. A Fellow of the Academy for Eating Disorders, Dr. McGilley has practiced psychotherapy for twenty-five years in addition to writing, lecturing, supervising, and directing an inpatient eating-disorders program. She is an editor for Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, and co-editor of Treatment of Eating Disorders: Bridging the Research-Practice Gap with Margo Maine and Doug Bunnell.

, Michael Berrett, PhD

Michael Berrett, PhD, is the cofounder, corporate president and coclinical director of Center for Change, a treatment program in Salt Lake City dedicated to eating disorders. He has published extensively on spirituality, including the seminal book, Spiritual Approaches in theTreatment of Women with Eating Disorders, with colleagues P.Scott Richards and Randy K Hardman.

and Adrienne Ressler, LMSW, CEDS

Adrienne Ressler, an eating disorders and body image specialist, serves as National Training Director for The Renfrew Center Foundation and immediate past-president/Fellow of iaedp. She has extensive training in gestalt therapy, psychodrama, bio-energetic analysis and Alexander Technique. Published in The International Journal of Fertility and Women’s Medicine and Social Work Today, she has contributed the chapters BodyMind Treatment in Effective Clinical Practice in Treatment of EDs, Holistic Interventions to Heal the Shattered Self in Bridging the Research/Practice Gap and Experiential and Somatopsychic Approaches to Body Image Change in the first Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance.

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