People who come to seem me with eating issues may not be obese, have bulimia or any other diagnosed eating disorder; but there are occasions when they struggle with control over eating in a way that is out of kilter with the rest of their lives. No amount of rational thinking seems to help.
Here's an example - one of my clients is an attractive and bright professional woman. She is not overweight in the BMI (body mass index) sense, she knows what to eat nutritionally and knows how to exercise. In fact, she is happy in every aspect of her life - and yet, on occasion, 'loses control' and binges on carefully hidden stashes of chocolate. She has done it for as long as she can remember and it never bothered her before. In fact, she used to regard it as an acceptable form of weight management - very healthy eating and regular exercise, with occasional bouts of bingeing. Now, she feels differently. It bothers her that she can't control it, she doesn't regard it as acceptable, can't see a pattern or a rationale, wants to change - and has come to me for help.
We've done three sessions so far and she has been delighted with early progress, noticing positive changes in her behaviour and thinking (e.g. a change from daily shopping for chocolate to occasional shopping for it, comfortably eating - and enjoying - half a slice of cake with friends instead of going on to eat three or more slices). However, she had a 'blip' this week where she 'went berserk' and ate so much chocolate she was sick. This panicked her and she now worries she is straight back into the old pattern. She didn't understand why, so I asked her to talk me through the day until the point she felt out of control.
She began to describe how many things had happened that day which demanded her attention - a real overload of work and worry from all directions. As she described it, you could see the penny beginning to drop. I reassured her that this was progress as, at least, she was beginning to see that, perhaps there was a pattern to this, after all. Then I asked her to tell me what kind of things she did to relax. At this point, she struggled to come up with anything.
So, after asking what she most wanted from the session, we then agreed we would use the hypnosis to establish what the unconscious intention was behind the bouts of over-eating. I suggested we could get beneath the apparent self sabotage to understand what positive intention her subconscious mind considered it was fulfilling.
I use the analogy of a young child being well meaning in cleaning Mummy's favourite Manolo Blahnik shoes with a brillo pad, having heard her say they were dirty and having seen her clean dishes with the brillo pad before. I explain that the subconscious mind can behave in the same way - believing that it is responding appropriately to fulfil a need, but having it's wires crossed by misunderstanding early patterns of behaviour, by making links where none logically exist.
This is such a simple session and I must give credit to Dr Judith Pearson ('Weight, Hypnotherapy and You', Amazon) for describing the technique in such crystal clear terms. When you get the results, clients are invariably surprised by both the simplicity of the underlying motivation (which you might have logically expected to be able to come up with) and the simplicity of the solutions (which you might also have logically expected to be able to come up with).
Today's session is no exception and my client is amazed at how easily she could answer a question in hypnosis that she struggled to answer beforehand. She leaves feeling in control and confident again. Gradually she will gain confidence that she can sustain this easily.
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