by Rob Hadley

Created on: October 21, 2008   Last Updated: April 09, 2009

Up to one in ten women between 18 and 25 will at some stage suffer an eating disorder. Worse still, it will be the one in ten we least expect.

As a hypnotherapist specializing in eating disorders I often work with clients struggling with Bulimia. In many cases they consider themselves overweight, and yet are not. Like anorexics, they have little idea of how they appear to others. Yet, this is not an issue that has a great deal to do with food. Food is merely the media of expression for the problem.

Here's an example. A client tells of how they first began their bulimic behavior in school. The symptoms subsided a few years later, only to return following a painful breakup with a boyfriend. On closer examination it turns out that around the time the client started her bulimic behavior, her mother was going through a separation and he father had left the family home.

The bulimia was related to her feelings of abandonment and insecurity, and had little to do with food. However, as a means of expressing herself, and a tool to create a physical response, food became a via media. As unlikely as it may seem, this client was looking for security and a means to satisfy her own feelings of abandonment. No amount of reassurance about how little she needed to loose weight would have any positive effect.

In this simplistic example things appear straightforward. Unfortunately, life is rarely this simple. However, when the cause of the initial outbreak of bulimic behavior is uncovered in many instances, using hypnosis, the behavior can be altered, or eliminated completely. Hypnosis can also play a valuable role in intervening when a sufferer needs to increase their food intake rapidly.

An unusual and effective method to achieve this is to place a sufferer in hypnosis, stimulate them to eat some high protein foods, such as a boiled egg, and a protein drink, and then while they remain in hypnosis, take any memory of eating these foods away. Without the memory of eating, there is no desire to purge.

In a bulimic binge purge cycle' hypnosis can be used to interrupt and relieve the process. Ultimately the causes will need to be addressed, however the bingeing can be stalled or prevented using the right suggestions. The single most important aspect of using hypnosis with bulimic clients is to reassure the sufferer that there is no shame in this debilitating condition. It's a disease, just the way flu and diabetes are. With proper care bulimia can be overcome.

Learn more about this author, Rob Hadley.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.