Emotional Eating: Identifying and Treating Clients Using Your Own Modality

12:00 PM – 12:15 PM Identifying Clients with Emotional Eating and Binge Eating Disorder

Emotional eating (including binge eating disorder and its subclinical manifestations) is a serious psychiatric disorder which frequently goes unrecognized and untreated by psychotherapists (Grilo et al., 2023). This is despite the fact that psychotherapy is considered the treatment of choice and many evidence-based forms of psychotherapy have been demonstrated effective in its treatment (Donnelly et al., 2024). This course teaches psychotherapists trained in a variety of modalities to identify and treat their clients who are emotional eaters (Hilbert et al., 2020). Diets and exercise are considered by many clients to be the only treatments for their overeating, but in fact have been shown to increase the severity of binge eating (Messer et al., 2024). Many clients are not even aware that psychotherapy can be used to treat this issue. Substantial stigma and shame is associated with emotional eating (Levinson et al., 2024) creating reluctance for clients to reveal this issue to their therapists. Clinicians will be taught to identify clients who have emotional eating issues (Mathisen et al., 2024) and address the trust issues inherent in clients’ disclosure of their emotional eating symptoms (Radunz et al., 2023). Participants will learn techniques to identify and increase readiness for treatment (Geller et al., 2012). This class will provide ways for clinicians to explain emotional eating to their clients and help them understand how psychotherapy can effectively address these issues.