Background: I will share how I use creative art and the five competencies of the Be Body Positive Model as a powerful resource to help clients shift their focus away from efforts to modify their bodies and towards joyful, sustainable self-care.
Course Objectives:
1. Learn skills to assist your clients to explore their beliefs about eating and weight and exercise and develop a weight-neutral, health-centered approach to self-care.
2. Acquire tools to guide your client to trust their innate wisdom to guide their self-care.
3. Identify practices you can share with your clients to help them cultivate an improved sense of worthiness.
4. Learn about the Body Positive’s This is Beauty Campaign and how it can help your clients develop a more assertive and creative relationship to their own beauty.
5. Familiarize yourself with the resources available to help your clients build Body Positive Community.
Body Positive Psychotherapy
How do we hold the dialectic of deeply respecting the dignity of our clients while at the same time pushing them to give up their destructive behaviors and belief systems so they can get well? How do we help them relate to their bodies with mercy and understanding? I believe it is important to make treatment decisions and recommendations very openly with clients and work hard to avoid coercing them in ways that are destructive to their autonomy and confidence. I believe that the greatest gift I can give my clients is to help them claim ownership of their bodies by consistently empowering them to listen to and trust their own internal wisdom.
In this workshop I will share the resources developed through 25 years of treatment and prevention as a psychotherapist and co-director of The Body Positive, an eating disorders prevention nonprofit organization that I co-founded with Connie Sobczak. Body Positive Psychotherapy is an intuitive, whole-person approach to treating eating and body image problems that improves the health of people of all sizes through the development of positive, sustainable self-care behaviors motivated by self-love. This model is rooted in the philosophy that people inherently possess the wisdom necessary to make healthy choices and to live in balance. We give all people permission to love and care for their genetically-inherited bodies as they change throughout life.
As the psychotherapist and client explore the five competencies of this model together, the client learns more about the body’s physiology, pays closer attention to eating behaviors, explores different types of movement for health instead of weight loss, becomes aware of negative self-talk, uses creative arts to think more imaginatively about beauty, and notices the types of people and situations that offer support—or not. Through these efforts, clients have a lived experience of discovering what makes them feel healthy and alive in their bodies. Ultimately, this fosters a belief in oneself that is central to all therapeutic endeavors.
Elizabeth has been practicing psychotherapy in Marin County California for twenty-five years, specializing in eating disorders treatment. She co-founded The Body Positive, an eating disorders prevention organization in 1996. Elizabeth has trained thousands of students and staff from middle school through college to lead Body Positive programs on their campuses. The college prevention model is currently being researched at Stanford University. Elizabeth trains eating disorders treatment professionals in all levels of care. Her experiences as a Body Positive psychotherapist are featured in The Body Positive’s recently released book, Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and quiet that critical voice!).
