Support for Individuals

There are several options for supporting and resourcing yourself as you face your eating issue. These include (but are not restricted to) attending support groups, seeing a counsellor, reading helpful literature, becoming active in your community around issues of size and weight, doing activities that you love, having supportive conversations, reaching out to others and reducing your sense of isolation.

Many individuals find it difficult to tell somebody what they are going through. If this is you

• Consider who you have a trusting and respectful relationship with
• Make a time to meet with that person in a safe place to discuss your concerns
• Explain the feelings and behaviours that have become a part of your life
• Ask the person if they would be willing to support you in seeking help

Many people find counselling helpful for addressing their eating issues. An important part of counselling for body image and eating difficulties from an EDEN perspective includes developing body trust. The ways EDEN would look at developing this would be to

• investigate the origins and nature of eating issues and body image dissatisfaction
• look at the role of hunger in our lives and our abilities to meet our many hungers (emotional, spiritual, psychological, physical)
• reflect on our current relationship with food and body image
• find ways to learn to eat in response to hunger and to stop eating when we are full
• find ways to free ourselves from our food and body difficulties
• find ways to celebrate ourselves as we are now
• Consider, reflect and draw upon our resources, strengths and competencies

EDEN considers the following to be important within a counselling relationship:

• non-pathologising approaches to the whole range of eating and body image difficulties.
• holistic definitions of health and wellbeing that are not related to size, weight and shape.
• locating eating and body image difficulties within the socio-cultural context within which they arise.
• clients feeling validated in their counselling relationships. We consider that your own knowledge and understandings around your eating and body image issues and experiences should be central to the counselling process.