GROUPS FOR EATING AND BODY IMAGE PROBLEMS
In a
therapist-led supportive environment, participants in our
six-week groups are introduced to the process of relating
more comfortably to food and one's body. The diet culture
has caused most women to become disconnected from their
innate ability to feed themselves in accordance with
bodily appetite and in a way that is emotionally
nourishing, as well as physiologically and
psychologically organizing and sustainable. Our six-week
groups help women rediscover this lost relationship with
their bodies and needs. Because we regard all eating
problems as expressive of the emotional and social
struggles women experience, these groups are designed to
work effectively with the continuum of problematic
eating, from compulsive and binge eating, to anorexia,
bulimia, and chronic dieting. Our groups are open to
women of all colors, sizes, sexual orientations and
identities. Our only requirement for participation is an
interested in developing a more harmonious relationship
with food and one's body.
Our six-week groups combine psychoeducational and
psychodynamic elements to give women the tools and
insights they will need to begin to understand, heal, and
transform their relationship with food and their bodies.
Exploration, fantasy exercises, and homework assignments
are utilized in each phase of the group to encourage
participants to personalize and internalize the group
experience.
The group begins with an introduction to
our "self-attuned" model of eating, which is
anti-diet and mindfulness based. Participants are helped
to use this model to eat with their hunger and to stop at
fullness, while examining why they might
feel compelled to eat at times when they are not
physically hungry and/or to restrict their eating
during times when they are. The group also attends to the
complex emotional experience of satiety/fullness and how
one can begin to register satisfaction and bodily limits
in the eating experience with increased ease and
security. The self-attuned model introduces curiosity and
compassion as alternatives to the punitive and
restrictive methods women typically employ in their
efforts to change their relationships with food and their
bodies.
Next, the group focuses on legalizing all foods and
eliminating dichotomous thinking about food, such as
good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, or permitted
and forbidden food groups. Finally, the group
addresses issues of body image and embodiment, including
the symbolic meaning of fat and thin and how one's
ideas about and experiences of one's body function
psychologically, interpersonally, and culturally.
All phases of the group's work are informed by a
psychodynamic perspective and by the conscious and
explicitly articulated awareness that we live in a
culture that encourages women to live in disharmony with
their bodies and that, for most, an embodied life
requires an active choice to resist cultural norms.
What to do Next
Advance
registration is required, as under-enrolled groups will
be
re-scheduled and group size is limited.
Please
register here
or for more information, contact Joanne Messina,
LCSW, Coordinator 212-501-6033.
GROUPS FOR THE PUBLIC
Thursdays, starting June
6, 2013
5:45pm-7:15pm
Location: Flatiron District
Joanne Messina, LCSW Fee: $240
Starts September 13, 2012
Thursdays 7:15pm-8:45pm
Location: Flatiron District
Kristin Miscall-Brown, LCSW completed
Starts November 20, 2012
Tuesdays 6:00pm-7:30pm
Location: Upper East Side
Janet Zinn, LCSW completed
Starts January 8, 2013
Tuesdays, 7:00pm-8:30pm
Location: Greenwich Village
Audrey Wolf, LCSW postponed
Starts March 19, 2013
Tuesdays, 8:30pm-10:00pm
Location: Chelsea
Lisa Thaler, LCSW filled
April 10, 2013
7:00pm-8:30pm
Location: Greenwich Village
Audrey Wolf, LCSW filled