Break the Bulimia Cycle with Mindfulness and Acceptance If you have bulimia, you know what it's like to be locked in a battle with your body-and you know that whether you're trying to lose weight or struggling to end the bingeing and purging cycle, the same old fears and self-doubts keep coming back. The approach to moving beyond bulimia in The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Bulimia is different than other treatments you may have tried. Instead of encouraging you to avoid or fight against the conflicted feelings you have about food and your body, this workbook invites you to welcome and accept your deepest fears, learn to live with them, and put the things that are really important in your life first. Easier said than done? Definitely. But with this plan based in acceptance and commitment therapy, a proven-effective therapeutic solution to bulimia and other conditions, you'll develop the powerful psychological skills you need to move past bulimia and toward a more fulfilling way of life. The worksheets, exercises, and questionnaires in this book will help you: • Determine the risks of continuing the bulimia cycle • Identify the experiences and relationships that matter to you most • Practice present-moment awareness • Learn to accept your thoughts, feelings, and experiences as they come • Recommit to living according to your deepest values

A Process-Focused Guide to Treating Eating Disorders with ACT At some point in clinical practice, most therapists will encounter a client suffering with an eating disorder, but many are uncertain of how to treat these issues. Because eating disorders are rooted in secrecy and reinforced by our culture's dangerous obsession with thinness, sufferers are likely to experience significant health complications before they receive the help they need. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Eating Disorders presents a thorough conceptual foundation along with a complete protocol therapists can use to target the rigidity and perfectionism at the core of most eating disorders. Using this protocol, therapists can help clients overcome anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, and other types of disordered eating. This professional guide offers a review of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as a theoretical orientation and presents case conceptualizations that illuminate the ACT process. Then, it provides session-by-session guidance for training and tracking present-moment focus, cognitive defusion, experiential acceptance, transcendent self-awareness, chosen values, and committed action-the six behavioral components that underlie ACT and allow clients to radically change their relationship to food and to their bodies. Both clinicians who already use ACT in their practices and those who have no prior familiarity with this revolutionary approach will find this resource essential to the effective assessment and treatment of all types of eating disorders.

At the root of bulimia is a need to feel in control. While purging is a strategy for controlling weight, bingeing is an attempt to calm depression, stress, shame, and even boredom. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia offers new and healthy ways to overcome the distressing feelings and negative body-image beliefs that keep you trapped in this cycle. In this powerful program used by therapists, you'll learn four key skill sets-mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness-and begin using them right away to manage bulimic urges. The book includes worksheets and exercises designed to help you take charge of your emotions and end your dependence on bulimia. You'll also learn how to stay motivated and committed to ending bulimia instead of reverting to old behaviors. Used together, the skills presented in this workbook will help you begin to cope with uncomfortable feelings in healthy ways, empower you to feel good about nourishing your body, and finally gain true control over your life.

Disordered eating, negative body image, and problems with weight have become an epidemic—and research shows that traditional treatments are not always effective. This professional resource offers proven-effective interventions using mindfulness and acceptance for treating clients with disordered eating, body image, or weight issues—and for whom other treatments have failed. Millions of people in the United States suffer from eating disorders, and dissatisfaction with weight and body type—even in individuals whose weight is considered normal—is similarly widespread. In addition, more than half of Americans could benefit from healthy weight loss. Unfortunately, not all people with eating disorders or weight concerns respond to traditional therapeutic interventions; many continue to suffer significant symptoms even after treatment. What these clients need is an integrated therapeutic approach that will prove effective in the long run—like the scientifically backed methods in this much-needed clinical guide. Edited by Ann F. Haynos, Jason Lillis, Evan M. Forman, and Meghan L. Butryn; and with contributors including Kay Segal, Debra Safer, and Hugo Alberts; Mindfulness and Acceptance for Treating Eating Disorders and Weight Concerns is the first professional resource to incorporate a variety of proven-effective acceptance- and mindfulness-based approaches—such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)—into the treatment of persistent disordered eating, body image issues, and weight problems. With these evidence-based interventions, you’ll be ready to help your clients move beyond their problems with disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, and weight management once and for all.

Severe dieting often results in periods of reactive binge eating, a phenomenon experienced by one in twenty American women. Responses to these periods may include prolonged fasting, self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives and diuretics, and obsessive exercise: all symptoms of bulimia. This workbook contains tools to help bulimics break the cycle of bingeing and reacting, allowing them to take control of their lives and make positive behavior changes. Practical advice and real-life examples reinforce attitudes and offer encouragement. Discover that it is possible to overcome the disorder and live a happier, more fulfilling life. Through their cutting-edge research at the internationally renown Toronto Hospital Eating Disorders Programme, the authors of The Overcoming Bulimia Workbook have developed a step-by-step program for recovery whose efficacy has been proven in clinical trials. The authors empower bulimia suffers to take control of their lives, not only by providing information and advice, but by giving them a personalized format with which they can put these new behavior changes into practice - a process that is critically important for lasting recovery. This comprehensive guide covers everything from bulimia's symptoms, causes, and risks to how to normalize eating, shift eating-disordered thoughts, build on personal strengths, improve self-esteem, deal with underlying issues, prevent relapse, and understand what medications can help. With many real-life examples, this book also helps readers learn through the experiences of other sufferers how to overcome their disorder and live a happier, more fulfilled life.

Stress is a part of life—but it doesn’t have to take over your life. With this guide, you’ll develop the skills needed to help you manage difficult emotions, cultivate self-compassion, adopt positive physical and emotional habits, build resilience, and connect with your true values. Everyone experiences stress. From the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we finally settle into bed at night, our days are packed with stressful moments—some big and some small—that can quickly add up and feel overwhelming. Unfortunately, you can’t escape stress. But you can change the way you relate to it. This important workbook will show you how. Written by internationally renowned ACT experts, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Stress Reduction offers a powerful ten-week program for stress management drawing on the latest research in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and mindfulness. You’ll gain a better understanding of what stress really is, how it affects the brain and body, and what you can do to manage and reduce stress in your life. You’ll discover how to build resilience and set smart, effective personal goals that align with your values. And finally, you’ll learn to be more aware of how you deal with stress in the moment. Stress is an unavoidable side effect of being human in today’s fast-paced world. But with this workbook, you’ll build the skills necessary to keep stress in its place and live a more vital life!

Let’s be honest: most people are unhappy with at least some aspect of their physical appearance. Just think of all the money we spend each year trying to improve our looks! But if worrying about your appearance is getting in the way of living, maybe it’s time to start thinking about body image in a completely new way. Based in proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), Living with Your Body and Other Things You Hate offers a unique approach to addressing your struggle with body image. In this book, you will not be told that your self-perceptions are wrong, that your thoughts are irrational, or that your feelings are misguided. Instead, you will learn to live with the reality that these often painful thoughts and beliefs about yourself will arise from time to time, and that what is really important is accepting these distressing thoughts without allowing them to dominate your life. You know what it’s like to constantly be checking the mirror, to avoid certain social situations where your body may be exposed, or to gaze longingly at a fashion model in a magazine and think, “Why can’t I be her?” But what you may not know is that people who struggle with negative body image are at an increased risk for depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. Body image problems can even lead to major financial issues. By focusing on your appearance and little else, you are hurting yourself in more ways than one. If you are ready to find a purpose in life that is more important than the pain you feel about your appearance, this book provides a truthful, powerful resource.

This groundbreaking book gives clinicians a new set of tools for helping people overcome binge-eating disorder and bulimia. It presents an adaptation of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) developed expressly for this population. The treatment is unique in approaching disordered eating as a problem of emotional dysregulation. Featuring vivid case examples and 32 reproducible handouts and forms, the book shows how to put an end to binge eating and purging by teaching clients more adaptive ways to manage painful emotions. Step-by-step guidelines are provided for implementing DBT skills training in mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance, including a specially tailored skill, mindful eating. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible handouts and forms in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. See also the related self-help guide, The DBT Solution for Emotional Eating, by Debra L. Safer, Sarah Adler, and Philip C. Masson, ideal for client recommendation.

Stand up to your OCD! The ACT Workbook for OCD combines evidence-based acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with exposure and response prevention (ERP) for the most up-to-date, effective treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). If you’re one of millions of people who suffer from OCD, you may experience obsessive, intrusive, or even disturbing thoughts. You may engage in compulsive or ritualistic behaviors, such as checking to make sure you’ve locked the front door, or endlessly washing your hands for fear of germs or contamination. And you may be tempted to give up if treatment just doesn’t work for you. Whether you’ve just received a diagnosis, or have suffered for years, this workbook can help. Using the powerful and proven-effective treatments in this guide, you’ll learn what type of OCD you suffer from (such as harm OCD), how to identify the underlying mechanisms of your OCD, move through triggering incidents while staying present and connected to your values, be more aware and flexible, tolerate uncertainty, and commit to behaviors that ultimately allow you to lead a full, rewarding life. Once you realize what really matters to you, you’ll find the motivation needed to start on the path to psychological well-being. If you’re ready to be courageous, take a risk, and stand up to your OCD symptoms, this workbook can help guide you, every step of the way.

Patients are guided to objectively observe their own eating patterns, including contexts in which problematic eating takes place. Through careful education, patients are guided toward normalizing their eating patterns as a way of breaking the deprivation/ binge cycle. Alternative pleasurable activities to problematic eating are explored. Patients are encouraged to explore problematic thoughts associated with bingeing and purging and taught to challenge these thoughts. This Client Workbook is intended to be used by individuals with Bulimia Nervosa or binge-eating disorder, under the supervision of a qualified professional who can help them stay on track and overcome obstacles. The Client Workbook contains background information that will improve the client's understanding of Bulimia Nervosa and binge-eating disorder and its treatment with cognitive-behavioral therapy. Each chapter presents important educational material, relevant exercises, homework assignments, and self-assessments. In general, the client should plan on proceeding at a pace of approximately one chapter per session.