While your feeding habits may not seem like a serious concern to you, seeking help at the right moment will go a long way in preventing the feeding behavior from escalating to become a life-threatening situation. However, even if you have been struggling with an eating disorder for a long time, there is always hope for treatment and recovery.
For you to get help, make an appointment with your mental health professional. When going to see your therapist, carry a record of the purging, eating, or exercising behavior that is of concern to you and how often you engage in them. This will enable your therapist to identify the best eating disorder treatment program for you in their facility in Westport. That said, here are some of the options that might be suitable for you:
Psychotherapy
Also referred to as counseling or talk therapy, psychotherapy focuses on helping you identify and examine behavior, which leads to a negative body image and eating disorders. Psychotherapy might be in the form of cognitive behavioral therapy. This helps you deal with irrational thoughts and ideas about your body and overall image by replacing the toxic ways of coping with healthy habits. Sometimes, your mental health therapist might recommend family therapy for your disorders. The reason is that reducing family stress and improving communication and family dynamics reduce the types of stress that result in eating disorders in children and teenagers.
Nutritional Education
For patients who are extremely underweight, the first point of focus will be to help them return to a healthy body weight. This will be coupled up with the assurance that feeding in healthy meals will not affect your body nor your overall image. You will learn the basics of a satisfactory healthy diet to help you develop and sustain healthy and safe eating habits. Nurses, doctors, and nutritionists can be of help.
Medication
This is normally used on patients who have a consistent urge to purge food or binge eat. In most cases, anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications are used to suppress and treat stress and other symptoms that lead to unhealthy eating habits. While there is no specific drug developed to cure eating disorders exclusively, these drugs are an important consideration and should be discussed with your doctor to see whether it is a viable option for you. However, you should never self-medicate yourself as these drugs might cause addiction.
In-Patient Treatment
A therapist or a doctor might recommend in-patient treatment for you in case you are highly malnourished or you have developed life-threatening complications. Unlike the other options, in-patient care is more intensive. Here, you receive nutritional interventions, individual counseling, and round-the-clock care to ensure that you are in a stable state of physical and mental health.
The path to healing from eating disorders starts with your commitment to giving an opportunity to other people who are willing to support you in your journey. As such, always lean on and talk to your support network even if they have never had an experience like yours. While change may not occur immediately, taking steps in the right direction will get you off the eating disorder hook, and you will feel whole again.
