ssja
I am a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in counseling people with eating disorders (primarily compulsive overeating). My focus is helping my clients examine their relationship with food. In my teens and early 20’s I suffered from compulsive overeating and was extremely over weight. It wasn't until I learned how and why I was using food was I able to stop using food to anesthetize my feelings/issues and deal with them. I am proud to say I have maintained my weight for more than 25 years.
Surprisingly, when asked… many people can not identify how they are feeling! For so long they have buried their feeling by “swallowing” them (i.e pushing their feeling down with food). The pattern is like this…a person experiences an event or an uncomfortable exchange of words….instead of dealing with their uncomfortable feelings…..they reach for food….their thoughts and feelings are then focused on their out of control eating and how bad they feel about themselves. They are no longer focused on the event or their feelings about the event. Food serves a distraction.
So what happens after a person has the Bariatric surgery and they can no longer eat in the way they used to?? Sometimes giving up overeating can lead to adoption of a new compulsion. The adoption of a new compulsion to replace an old one is called “addiction transfer”. Addiction transfer occurs when someone is unable or unwilling to rely on one compulsion and so switches to a new compulsion due to not having dealt with the underlying issue behind the compulsion
This is where my work fits in. I help people examine how and why they used to use food and how to deal and cope with life’s issues that were buried under all the food consumed. As one of my patients recently told me, “the pain does not disappear with the pounds!” My focus is helping WLS patients identify their true feelings, teach them how to communicate and deal with the pain which is underneath.