Support for Understanding Emotions of Eating Disorders
These 8-week support groups offers individuals (18 years and above) an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of their struggles, share their experiences, challenges and successes with each other in a safe and structured environment.
These group will help participants to:
explore the deeper emotional motivators that keep an eating disorder in a person’s life,
maintain motivation and hope in the recovery process,
gain a better understanding of the recovery process, and
discuss coping skills and how to use them in a way that makes a difference.
These groups do not differentiate between the different types of eating disorders because it is not our goal to discuss particular eating disorder behaviours. The group supports the struggle that individuals go through and focuses on underlying emotional issues that are common to all eating disorders.
This support group is not therapy and is not substitute for treatment.
Binge Eating Disorder Support
Binge eating can become a horrible and destructive pattern that leaves people feeling stuck, powerless, ashamed, alone and hopeless. Feeling out of control around eating can turn something designed to bring us joy and nourishment into a scary, confusing and threatening experience. This 8 week groups are for individuals (18 years and above) built on the premise that we are born with an internal wisdom around food but for many reasons it is easy to become disconnected from our own body and mistrust that wisdom. Binge eating develops when we attempt to meet our needs (e.g., emotional, for connection, physical and spiritual) with food. The group topics are developed to help you to enhance your self-awareness and identify your own personal binge eating triggers. Specific tools will be provided to help you to change unhelpful patterns and habits and to discover new ways to care for yourself and to meet your needs without food. Share wisdom with other group members who can relate to what you are going through and provide one another with ideas, understanding, helpful strategies and encouragement.
The group will help participants to:
explore the link between deprivation (food restriction) and binge eating
learn tools to tune into your body’s wisdom and start to identify your natural hunger and fullness cues
Identify the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger
gain self-awareness around your binge triggers, including; high risk situations, types of food and specific emotions (anxiety, sadness, loss, shame) that invite binging
Discuss strategies to care for yourself, manage stress, find comfort and cope with your emotions without turning to food
identify unhelpful thinking patterns that undermine your efforts to stop binge eating (i.e., perfectionism, all-or nothing thinking)
learn how mindful eating or being present when you eat can help reduce out of control eating. How you eat is more important than what you eat.
This support group is not therapy and is not substitute for treatment.