Consult Your Doctor
If you are suffering from an eating disorder such as bulimia nervosa then it is very important that you consult your doctor. Always consult your doctor to eliminate any treatable cause.
The Patterns Of Bulimia
The usual way bulimia manifests itself in thought, feeling and behaviour is by a cycle of bingeing and purging (or just eating and purging). The cycles of bulimia tend to be driven by feelings of fear and/or low self-image.
It seems to us that anything you repeat often enough will become 'automated' by the unconscious mind, so the bulimia seems to happen all by itself, seemingly just out of conscious control. Basically, bulimia seems to us to becomes a habit you can't quite control. This in turn often seems to us to lead to feelings of depression/self loathing/anger and feelings of failure.
Is Going Over The Past Useful?
Well it is bound to be useful for some people. However, going over the past in an attempt to understand how the bulimia 'began', or searching for 'deep hidden meanings' seems to us to be a very long winded (and often fruitless) approach.
By contrast, our approach is almost directly opposite to many counselors and psychotherapists in that we work directly with the bulimia patterns, using NLP principles and literally teaching you HOW to think differently, to help you to build flexibility and choice into your thoughts, feelings and behaviour's in the present. Its not conventional treatment for bulimia, it is not therapy, it is training.
Hypnotherapy and Bulimia
By itself there is no scientific evidence that hypnotherapy can help someone with bulimia. We often use hypnosis as part of what we do so that the client is more relaxed and in a better state of mind to begin to learn how to generate more appropriate thoughts. It is also used to map resources from areas of your life when you have felt confident, relaxed and resourceful (even if you haven't felt these things for a while!), to those times when you would have engaged in bulimia. Of course we also tend to give a host of suggestions that the person starts eating more healthily but we are in no way suggesting that hypnotherapy by itself can be really helpful in these cases.
Planning For Bulimia
It seems to us that what everyone with bulimia has in common is 'planning'. What we mean is this. Some wake up in the morning and plan what they are going to eat and when and where they will purge. Others will say to themselves 'today will be a good day' and start the day with the best of intentions. Then they will start breakfast/lunch/dinner and get to a point where they think, 'I have eaten this much, I may as well keep eating, I can always throw up afterwards'.
We suggest that you think of either of these thought patterns as 'plans'. It's not as if you do this deliberately, if you really had a conscious choice you would feel good and eat a healthy balanced diet. However, imagine what might happen if you were trained to 'plan' to eat well, trained to think, in advance, of eating more healthily...
Bulimia and Fear
As we have said, bulimia is usually driven by fear that if the person doesn't binge then they will put on weight. Unfortunately the activity of being bulimic often actually works against the body becoming slim, healthy and fit, For example, someone with bulimia and worried about their weight will often skip breakfast. If they were to eat something like porridge then their metabolic rate would increase and they would more effectively burn calories, and foods like porridge provide a long term energy release so that the person isn't 'starving' by lunchtime.
Bulimia and Nutrition
Most bulimics know more about nutrition than many nutritionists, it seems to us. After all, many people doing bulimia have been researching diets and nutrition for years. On the very rare occasion when the person is ignorant of the basic facts of what constitutes a healthy diet then we get them to go and see a nutritionist for specific help and advice before they see one of us.
Bulimia Nervosa and Conventional Medical Help
Simply make sure you get qualified appropriate medical help.
How long will all this take?
It is impossible to say, everyone is different and this kind of education and training certainly isn't going to help everyone. What we will say though is that we always AIM to train someone quickly. On the many testimonials pages you will find linked from this page you will find many examples of people saying that this work helped them train themselves very quickly indeed and whilst we wish this were the case for everyone, it isn't
Read an article from Elle magazine about Hypnotherapy And NLP For Bulimia »
