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Listed below are articles written by Doctors, Therapists, Nutritionists, and others who have worked in the field related to Eating Disorders Awareness and Treatment. If you have an article you'd like to submit, please e-mail it to: [email protected] (include the article, the proper credits and any links you'd like to appear).
How I Incorporate Spirituality In My Practice As A Psychotherapist
by: Carolyn Costin, M.A., M.Ed., M.F.C.C.
In my eating disorder therapy group the other day, I asked Clara, one of the
patients , to lie down on the floor and pretend she was dead. After the usual
disbelief and uncomfortableness I get when I ask the patients to do something
strange like this, I managed to get Clara prone on the floor and every patient
into a serious contemplation of what it would be like if Clara were actually
dead. What would we be feeling? What would we all be missing? If Clara died
right now her body would still be here but what would be gone? Everyone
thought for a few seconds and then someone said, "Her soul would be gone",
then another said, "Her spirit" and they all then agreed that both of these
things would be missing. "Yes", I said, "We would have her body here but not
her soul. In that context, the body seems pretty useless, doesn't it? I now
want you to think of a loved one. Is there anyone here who would rather have
that person's body than their soul?" There was an appropriate and deeply felt
silence in the room. "Isn't that what you are in essence doing to yourself
when, for the sake of appearance, to have the body you want, you destroy your
spirit and betray your soul? How much time have you spent lately paying
attention to and cultivating your body and how much time on cultivating your
soul? Both body and soul need to be nourished; yet, while you have been
preoccupied with your body, you have been neglecting your soul."
The above exercise, which came to me after viewing my own father's body after
his death, led to a discussion of how each of my patients could begin to
attend to and nourish her soul. It is through moments like these that I
believe I bring a spiritual, or I like to say, soulful, aspect to my work as a
psychotherapist.
Although I do not think of myself as a religious person, I have come to view
my treatment of eating disorder patients as the cultivation of neglected souls
and psychotherapy as a form of spiritual practice. Rather than focusing on
eradicating symptoms or solving problems, the goal of therapy is to bring
about meaning, fulfillment, and satisfaction to patients' lives. Thomas Moore,
in his book, Care Of The Soul, tells us that the great malady of the
twentieth century is loss of soul and that, "When soul is neglected, it
doesn't just go away, it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions,
violence, and the loss of meaning.....By caring for the soul we can find
relief from our distress and discover deep satisfaction and pleasure."
The two main aspects of caring for the soul involve:
The first aspect, observing, accepting, and interpreting, involves helping
my patients to understand the meaning of their symptoms; what their soul is
manifesting and why. For example, when patients are ashamed of their bingeing
and/or purging or enraged and hateful towards these behaviors or themselves,
I re-direct them to work at accepting that these behaviors are there for a
reason and that together we will work to learn what meaning they have or what
purpose or "adaptive function" they serve. In following my philosophy that
every eating disorder patient has a healthy self and an eating disorder self,
I tell my patients that they have to learn from their eating disorder self
because that part of them is representing something that they are unable to
express. This means contacting the eating disorder self and accepting it in
order to ultimately transform it.
The second aspect of cultivating the soul involves bringing spirituality or
soulfulness into everyday life. Books Like Lynda Sexton's Ordinarily Sacred
or Thomas Moore's, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, helped me formalize
this concept in my work. Making things more spiritual or sacred means taking
time to notice, to pay attention, to revere, to be mindful of the little
things, to be creative. The following are examples of how I bring this aspect
of soul or spirit into my work at my residential treatment center, Monte Nido:
Too many times I hear patients saying things like they don't have time for
work or their family or church or school because they have to "focus" on their
recovery. I think this is the wrong idea and I tell them so. To me, finding
meaning in work, spending time with family, sharing reverence and worship with
others, and seeing soul in ordinary things are all forms of recovery.
Recovery is doing life in a meaningful, deeply felt spiritual way, realizing
that all of it is sacred if we only take time to notice, appreciate and
understand it.
Carolyn Costin, M.A., M.Ed., M.F.C.C.
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