Chapter 12 - Recipe for Recovery: Necessary Ingredients for the Client's and Clinician's Success

Abstract

This chapter provides suggestions for successful treatment of eating disorder (ED). Personally defined therapists are more able to calibrate the workings of their intuitive sensibilities. Coordinating these sensibilities with the blending of the basic clinical knowledge, accumulated experience, clinical training, and psychotherapeutic techniques, allows finely adjust and appropriately titrate therapeutic interventions according to the stage of treatment and the unique needs of the clients. Spiced with empathy and trust and ability to self-nurture heighten the likelihood of success in ED treatment. Empathy, including empathic memory of what have learned from the client, about the client, is required to facilitate this kind of letting go. Active listening and mindful attending, empathic memory and present empathy, void of triteness, provide evidence to clients that they matter. Being listened to, heard, understood, taken in, remembered, without being intruded upon is a reflection of the process of introjection and empathy without the loss of self, abandonment of self-identity, or annihilation of other so many clients fear. The daily practice of treating people with ED requires adequate self-nurturance in addition to the base of clinical training.