The Radically Open DBT Workbook for Eating Disorders: From Overcontrol and Loneliness to Recovery and Connection

Summary

If you've been in therapy for an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, your past treatment may have focused on helping you control your emotions and contain your behaviors. However, research now shows that many people with eating disorders actually suffer from emotional overcontrol. This breakthrough workbook offers skills based in radically open dialectical behavior therapy (RO DBT), a proven-effective, transdiagnostic approach for treating disorders of overcontrol (OC).

You'll learn how to move beyond the unhealthy coping strategies that keep you feeling isolated and lonely, find tips for building a support network and enriching social connections, and develop your own plan for staying on the path to recovery. You'll also find assessments to help you determine the root cause of your OC disorder, exercises for increasing social engagement, and skills for improving social flexibility, trust, and intimacy.

Having an eating disorder can make you feel like you're alone. Even if you're in recovery, you may have days when feelings of isolation are too much, and you may feel tempted to fall back into unhealthy patterns. This workbook will help you build your own "treatment tribe," a group of people that help lift you up and support you as you find your way to a full recovery and a rich, meaningful life.