What Is Bulimia? Treatment, Coping Skills and When to Get Help
What bulimia is, how it’s treated by a specialist team, three coping skills for urges to binge or purge, and the signs it’s time to reach out for therapy.
I'm Angela Harris, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Eating Disorder Specialist Consultant in Dallas. This post covers what bulimia is, how it's treated, three coping skills for urges to binge or purge, and the signs that it's time to reach out for therapy.
What is bulimia?
Bulimia refers to an eating disorder focused on body image distress and changing body size through binge eating and compensatory behaviors for binges. The term “binging” refers to eating more food in one sitting than one would eat in the same amount of time normally while eating rapidly and to uncomfortable fullness. Compensatory behaviors include a variety of ways a person may attempt to offset the impact on their body from a binge episode. Common examples of compensatory behaviors include self-induced vomiting, excessive exercise, and use of laxatives.
How is bulimia treated?
The gold standard of care for treatment of bulimia includes utilizing an eating disorder specialized treatment team including therapist, dietitian, physician, and/or psychiatrist. Bulimia is a mental health condition that commonly co-occurs with anxiety, depression, PTSD, and OCD. Given the mental and physiological nature of bulimia, a comprehensive treatment team covering each area of care ensures a comprehensive treatment plan and roadmap for recovery.
Therapy for bulimia includes a variety of modalities including Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), and others. I specialize in using a person-centered approach pulling from DBT, CBT, and ACT with a focus on incorporating EMDR therapy for eating disorders.
Three coping skills for bulimia urges
Holding ice for purging urges. Holding ice engages the body’s senses and serves as a safe “shock” to the nervous system. It can provide a similar sense of relief to purging by experiencing a jarring and distracting sensation in the body. This coping skill is an example of using a DBT skill to treat bulimia.
Set a timer to sit with the uncomfortably full feeling. This skill builds distress tolerance while waiting for the timer to go off before engaging in any purging or compensatory behaviors. It is important to build a muscle around delaying compensatory behaviors even if it is initially by 1-2 minutes at a time. Over time, lengthen the time on the timer before acting on the behavior and, with practice, it will become easier to delay the behavior longer and longer until the behavior is no longer appealing.
Write a list of your values tied to recovery. It is important to know your individual values to know what guides and motivates you in your recovery and your life as a whole. Take time to identify your values when you are feeling calm and regulated. Then, when feeling distressed with urges to engage in binging or purging, write a list of your values and remind yourself of the importance of acting in these values that are typically in contrast to continuing in eating disorder behaviors. This skill demonstrates an incorporation of ACT into eating disorder treatment.
When should you seek therapy for bulimia?
You find yourself hiding your behaviors from family and friends. Whether this is at home, while traveling, or going out to eat, you find yourself hiding binging and compensatory behaviors from your family and friends. Maybe this means going on runs in secret or hiding the evidence of binging or purging. These are indicators the eating disorder has created separation between you and loved ones. You deserve to feel close to your family and friends and professional help can do just that.
You cancel plans with friends and family to avoid a binge and purge episode. Instead of engaging with family and friends then hiding behaviors, you find yourself canceling plans entirely. Perhaps the menu at the restaurant is overwhelming or just too stressful to eat in front of other people. Canceling plans to avoid these challenges indicates the eating disorder is inhibiting you from enjoying your life. You don’t have to live this way and seeking therapy can help you break free of this pattern.
Everything you’ve tried isn’t working. You’ve tried recovering on your own and find that it either isn’t sustainable or simply isn’t working. You don’t have to do this alone. Take this as an opportunity to reach out for more support and professional guidance in your recovery. Recovery is possible and specialized treatment makes a difference!
Getting help for bulimia in Dallas
Reach out to me to schedule an individual therapy session to start your recovery from bulimia today. I see adults and teenagers from 14 in Dallas and by telehealth across Texas and Oklahoma, and you can read more about how I work on my eating disorder therapy page.