Weight loss: role of the therapist

WEIGHT LOSS: ROLE OF THE THERAPIST

Dr. Alan Goodsitt of Northwestern University describes the job beautifully:
Therapists are many things. They are parents, guides, teachers, and coaches. They make themselves available as committed, caring professionals. They are involved. They relate. They encourage, cajole, and exhort. They provide their expert knowledge and experience to relate to another person, to use sound judgment, and help the patient integrate her thoughts, feelings, and actions. They empathically anticipate and care about the patient's experience. They patiently explain and clarify her thinking about significant issues. Because they know there are good reasons for her behavior and feelings, they do not criticize or belittle her defensive adaptation but at the same time they truthfully acknowledge her present shortcomings. Most important, they are the carriers of hope for the future of the patient.
My first words to the patient-"How may I help?"-tell her that I am on her side. We'll work together to learn how she sees the world and what we can do to make her life better.
I use my intuition to figure out what the patient's "inner voice" is saying to her. If I can help her articulate those thoughts, I will open a window into her mind, a window through which we both can look. I know, too, that she may come into therapy frightened and suspicious. I try to communicate that I understand her fears. I show her I will listen to what she has to say-listen in a way perhaps no one else ever has.
Sometimes patients are afraid that their feelings are so "bad" that no one would like them if they revealed their innermost self.
Exploring this "dark side" freely, guided by a supportive and nonjudgmental therapist, can be a powerful new experience for the patient, an experience that in itself helps the patient change and grow.
As a teacher, I try to supply the patient with the information she needs to plan healthy meals and to eat properly. As coach, I help her set goals for herself, encourage her to meet those goals, and support her when she fails. As her "parent," I help her deal with the feelings that she originally developed toward her own mother and father and that are now "transferred" onto me. We may work on her wishes for someone to take care of her, her fears about growing up, her anger and shame about events from her childhood.
How do we know when therapy has done its job? One way is that the patient shows she can maintain normal weight and eating habits. She reports feeling more comfortable in relationships with others, especially her peers, and can solve problems in inventive new ways, without falling back on her old habits. She gains an enhanced sense of personal freedom and the ability to take responsibility for her choices in life.
Of equal importance is that she feels strongly rooted in her new personality-an identity that is no longer defined by her symptoms or by her enmeshment with other people. The work she began in therapy proceeds after therapy ends, as she continues to evolve and to meet life's new challenges.

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WEIGHT LOSS

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