The Embodied Approach to the Treatment of Eating Disorders Online Training (Module 3 Only)
This training will help you build your skills set for supporting and working with individuals who struggling with disordered eating. You will learn skills that you can integrate into your traditional treatment protocols and within your treatment team processes. The embodied practices detailed in this training will only serve to strengthen your work (and is not intended to replace or compete with standard protocols). You will learn to work with physiology (and the polyvagal theory), sensations, feelings, and work with embodiment with exposure work as well as a pathway to wellbeing.
This training asks you to consider that these are whole-self disorders extend beyond the cognitive and emotional experience of the body and food to something bigger, deeper and much more profound- embodiment (Cook-Cottone, 2020).
Embodiment is a way of being, in which being is understood as residing in and manifesting from the body as one experiences the internal (i.e., physiological, emotional, cognitive), external (i.e., interpersonal, social, cultural), and existential dimensions of life.
Eating disorders show us that embodiment can be a violent, self-destructive process (Cook-Cottone, 2020). They show us that embodiment, or attempts to avoid all that come with it, can also be a form of self-abandonment. As I described in the EAT-ED text, what makes these self-perpetuating disorders so difficult to treat, is that they involve a reliance on a set of behaviors, or an identity (e.g., “I am an anorexic,” or “ I am a bulimic”), that seek the objects and states of being that they ultimately destroy: the body, mind, spirit, and relationships, as well as a sense of safety, control, happiness, and peace (Cook-Cottone, 2020).
Eating disorders show us that no amount of eating, starving, or compensating truly connects you to your body, serves your mind or spirit, or supports meaningful relationships (Cook-Cottone, 2020). More, no amount of eating, starving, or compensating can make anyone happy, safe, satisfied, in control, or at peace.
In this training, you will explore the notion that for an ED intervention to work, it must offer the promise of what the patient seeks (Cook-Cottone, 2020). Prevention and recovery can effectively focus on processes that support positive embodiment, or a way of being that helps patients find what they long for and is inconsistent and incompatible with eating disordered thoughts and behaviors. Unlike the destructive embodiment that occurs in EDs, positive embodiment promotes a sense of wellbeing, agency, common humanity, and purpose in a person’s life (Cook-Cottone, 2020).
What will you do?
You will complete 4 modules, each with three instructional parts. After each part, you will complete a short refection. Once you have finished all 4 modules, you will write a short case reflection and submit for your certificate.
- Complete Module 1, 3 videos and 3 reflection queries.
- Complete Module 2, 3 videos and 3 reflection queries.
- Complete Module 4, 3 videos and 3 reflection queries.
- Complete the integrating, final processing paper.
- Submit finial paper for you certificate.
- Your paper should be between 5 and 10 pages long, double spaced.
- Apply the concepts from the 4 modules, 12 videos to a case.
- Note the empirically sported treatment you will be using and detail how you will integrate the EAT-ED practices and concepts.
- Be sure to include at least one practice from each of the video
Required Books for Course:
Cook-Cottone, C. P. (2020). Embodied and the treatment of eating disorders. [Click Here for Book]
Cook-Cottone, C. P. (2023). The embodied healing workbook. [Click Here for Book]