Background: Hope is consistently identified as both a key component of—and even a prerequisite—for recovery across mental illnesses. A trigger for healing as well as a maintaining factor, hope has important implications for lasting recovery. Using a neuroscientific model, this unique workshop combines research and clinical knowledge with a patient’s perspective to demonstrate how hope is real, tangible, and even required in eating disorder recovery. An informative, interactive as well as entertaining presentation, this workshop provides a practical, neuroscientific explanation of hope as well as concrete tools for helping clients to achieve lasting recovery.
Objectives: Following this presentation, attendees will be able to: 1. Provide research supporting the necessary role of hope in the recovery process from an eating disorder. 2. Describe the neuroscience of eating disorders symptomology as it relates to harnessing the real, tangible power of hope. 3. Understand the importance of hope as a trigger for healing as well as a maintaining factor in one patient’s journey to full recovery.
a. How Can You Tell if Someone is Happy?
i. Duchene Smile Authentic
ii. Pan Am Smile Pseudo
II. Many believe it is impossible to ever be completely cured from and eating disorder.
III. Asked high school students: “What Would make You Happy?”
a. Striatum: Dopamine Circuit
IV. Prefrontal Cortex
a. Left: happiness
b. Right: Fear, Anger, Disgust
c. Neurogenesis
d. Pleasantness circuit
V. What qualities are unique to humans and generated by the neo-cortex?
a. Ability to think and act in the future
b. Herd instinct: relationships
VI. Certain problems for which there are no solutions
a. Worry: Cortisol is neurotoxic
VII. Entropy: Organized to disorganized
VIII. Complete recovery is possible
IX. Belief
X. Assurance of Hope
a. We judge science by whether it agrees with what we believe
b. Hope involves taking action
c. Stories of recovery and hope
XI. Identify your personal strengths and virtues
a. And use them to the betterment of mankind
XII. The Power of forgiveness
a. Not forgiving is like drinking poison and hoping that someone else dies
XIII. Meditation
a. One with the Universe
b. Compassion
XIV. Authentic Gratitude
XV. Altruism
XVI. Relationships
a. Someone you can confide in
b. Social support
XVII. Questions and answers
This presentation explains the symptomology and behaviors of an eating disorder using a neuroscientific model to point out particular circuits, nuclei, and neurotransmitters involved in the disease process. It is a unique approach to break through denial and contribute to a higher level of adherence to treatment by formulating a viable explanation for a complicated condition. Employing a user-friendly visual brain atlas, the patient is provided a sense of empowerment to achieve a greater measure of control over his or her life. Recently published scientific research on serotonin, brain plasticity, nerve cell regeneration and the neocortex provides encouragement and connection—and hope—to the patients and their families who perceive recovery as an extensive, confusing and often helpless ordeal.
New and improved brain imaging techniques (fMRI, SPECT, MRS, CT, PET, and EEG) over the last decade have opened new opportunities to provide insight into what recovery is and how therapy, nutrition and drugs can catalyze the recovery process. The “Healing Brain” helps put treatment into perspective and action because one can visualize an eating disorder as an imbalance of interconnecting circuits that trigger distorted thinking and feelings, which otherwise would be abstract concepts beyond their imagination and reach. Again, this scientific visualization can provide a newfound hope to such a bewildering illness. The illustration provides a backdrop on which tradition treatments (CBT, IPT, trauma resolution, 12-step, and antidepressants) as well as novel techniques (EDMR, positive psychology, meditation) can be explained, supported, and connected. Finally, this concrete neuroscientific explanation enhances long term recovery by incorporating support for why more than abstinence from inappropriate behaviors are necessary to prevent future relapse.
An informative, interactive as well as entertaining presentation, this workshop shares a practical, neuroscientific explanation of an eating disorders as well as and also provides concrete tools for helping clients to achieve lasting recovery.
Ralph Carson, LD, RD, PhD is a nutritionist and exercise physiologist with over 40 years of experience currently Senior Clinical and Scientific Advisor for the Eating Recovery Center and BED Program and a consultant for Pine Grove Behavioral Health and Addiction Center in Hattiesburg, MS. He is an active member on the board of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals (iaedp) and author of The Brain Fix: What’s the Matter with Your Gray Matter, over 20 scientific published articles and several text book chapters.
A National Recovery Advocate of Eating Recovery Center’s Family Institute, Jenni Schaefer is a bestselling author and internationally known speaker. She has appeared on shows like Today and Dr. Oz, as well as in publications ranging from Cosmopolitan to The New York Times. Jenni’s books include Goodbye Ed, Hello Me and her latest with Harvard Medical School, Almost Anorexic: Is My (or My Loved One’s) Relationship with Food a Problem? Her first book, Life Without Ed, which launched her as a leading light in the recovery movement, has been released in a tenth anniversary edition and audiobook. Visit JenniSchaefer.com.
