The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia: Using DBT to Break the Cycle and Regain Control of Your Life [Paperback]

Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher PhD (Author), Michael Maslar Psy/D (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1572246197 | ISBN-13: 978-1572246195 | Publication Date: August 1, 2009 | Edition: 1

At the root of bulimia is a need to feel in control. While purging is a strategy for controlling weight, bingeing is an attempt to calm depression, stress, shame, and even boredom. The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia offers new and healthy ways to overcome the distressing feelings and negative body-image beliefs that keep you trapped in this cycle.

In this powerful program used by therapists, you'll learn four key skill sets-mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness-and begin using them right away to manage bulimic urges. The book includes worksheets and exercises designed to help you take charge of your emotions and end your dependence on bulimia. You'll also learn how to stay motivated and committed to ending bulimia instead of reverting to old behaviors. Used together, the skills presented in this workbook will help you begin to cope with uncomfortable feelings in healthy ways, empower you to feel good about nourishing your body, and finally gain true control over your life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This self-help workbook is an excellent tool to help alleviate bulimia nervosa symptoms. It is also a useful guide for the practitioner who is assisting the patient in his or her quest to overcome an eating disorder. I highly recommend this workbook to sufferers and mental health professionals alike."
—Daniel le Grange, Ph.D., professor and director of the eating disorders program at the University of Chicago

"DBT has taught me how to meditate more effectively throughout the day, regulate my emotions, and tolerate the most uncomfortable and painful of times. I never knew how to ride the rollercoaster of life without resorting to bingeing until DBT helped to change my behavior and my life. Because DBT centers on mindfulness—being in the present moment—and having both acceptance of my condition as well as the willingness to change, I can now show up for my life without resorting to bingeing or other crutches. DBT has changed my life, and I have faith that it can change yours!"
—Sharon, client of coauthor Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher

"At my first dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) skills training session, I found it easier to speak without using vowels than to speak without judgment. I was skeptical, but desperate to have a life without my eating disorder, and once desperation won the battle over skepticism, I was in. Once I was able to chip away at the judgment, I began to think it might be possible there was a way to deal with distress that didn’t involve binge-purging. Before DBT, my emotions were something that required treatment. Happy, sad, angry, or glad, if I felt something, bulimia was right there to take me back to a state of numbness. Being able to radically and mindfully accept, without judgment, that I could actually experience an emotion and not have it end with a binge was a fascinating revelation. I still fight with bulimia, but I am armed with the tools of DBT and it’s now a battle I have a chance of winning."
—Ilene, client of coauthor Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher

"At first, I was very reluctant to join a DBT group, as I thought that I had control over my eating disorder. However, once I decided to participate in a group, I was hooked. For over two years, I have been involved in DBT. DBT has been a life-altering experience and my commitment has truly helped me to be present and create a life worth living."
—Carissa, client of coauthor Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher

"My commitment to DBT has brought me to an understanding of living in the moment. I now carry the benefits of instinctively knowing how to embrace life in an effective way. It is amazing how the exercises brought me to the awareness of just how little time I am now spending thinking obsessive thoughts about exercise and food!"
—Eileen, client of coauthor Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher

"DBT has given me an appreciation for what I believed to be the most insignificant pieces in life: what is going on around me in the present moment. My eating disorder had taken away the familiarity of the simplest joys in life and had focused my attention to my body, exercise, and food. DBT had helped me refocus my attention to the present moment, rather than the past or future."
—Annie, client of coauthor Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher

From the Publisher

In The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia, two psychologists specializing in eating disorders and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) show readers how to regulate negative emotions and behaviors and overcome bulimia.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (August 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1572246197
• ISBN-13: 978-1572246195
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Recovery > Drug Dependency
  • #39 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Mental Health > Eating Disorders

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clear guidance towards recovery for Bulimia, December 23, 2009

By 

Gaston Baslet (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia: Using DBT to Break the Cycle and Regain Control of Your Life (Paperback)

"The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia" is a hands-on workbook for individuals who suffer from bulimia nervosa that can be used alone or can accompany a formal treatment program with a mental health professional. The book has eleven chapters that cover a psychoeducational piece, purpose and behavioral pattern identification, training in and integration of all four DBT skills and maintenance and relapse strategies. The exercises throughout the book facilitate understanding of the concepts, which could otherwise be difficult to grasp for individuals who have never been in treatment. This, coupled with numerous clinical examples, highlights the practical, hands-on nature of the volume. The ultimate premise of DBT, "to create a life worth being present in" is frequently brought up, reminding the reader of the long-term gains they could achieve with treatment. Special acknowledgment should be given to the authors for the clarity in their explanations and the adaptation of DBT to this particular clinical population. Clinicians working with eating disordered patients will find that the book is an excellent tool for patient as an extension of their treatment and for themselves as a resource to expand their technical repertoire. Individuals with bulimia will have a better understanding of the work ahead towards recovery; reading this workbook and putting the skills into practice can very well serve as their first step in the recovery pathway.
Gaston Baslet, M.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Creating a life worth being present in: Useful workbook for both clients and clinicians, January 12, 2010

By 

E. Clerkin (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia: Using DBT to Break the Cycle and Regain Control of Your Life (Paperback)

"The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia," by Drs. Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher and Michael Maslar, is a much needed adaptation of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) for bulimia. This self-help workbook not only outlines the essential DBT "modules," including Mindfulness Skills, Emotion Regulation, Distress Tolerance, and Interpersonal Skills, but it also does a nice job orienting individuals to both DBT and bulimia. Further, the book is filled with useful and practical hands-on examples, activities, and vignettes to facilitate learning and teach individuals to synthesize their DBT skills. Much like the therapy it is based off of, this workbook takes a nonjudgmental yet encouraging and motivating stance. If used effectively and consistently, the tools in this workbook *will* help in the recovery from bulimia.

While this book is marketed as a "self-help workbook," it is important to highlight that it can be used by treatment providers. As a clinician, I have found that this workbook provides a welcome method for facilitating DBT informed treatment (both individual and group). It is especially useful in translating basic DBT skills for the specific population of individuals suffering from disordered eating.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good tool for recovering bulimics, March 27, 2011

By 

S. L. Dowell (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bulimia: Using DBT to Break the Cycle and Regain Control of Your Life (Paperback)

DBT has been proven a effective strategy for dealing with eating disorders; bulimics often have a distorted sense of reality and priorities, and this workbook can provide the patient with that realization while offering useful tools. As with many bulimia books, it provides background on this disorder, its causes and symptoms and treatments.

There are many exercises aimed toward helping the bulimic understand herself. These are often taxing to do because when one isn't in "bulimic mood", it's difficult to imagine how one feels in "bulimic mood". I found the benefit from the exercises not during or even soon after completing them -- their effect would often hit me weeks later as I came to understand their full implications.

Two exercises stood out to me in particular. One was wherein the patient needed to write out a "purpose" for her life (an important step of DBT). Many bulimics will have trouble with this, as they consider their lives purposeless. The book offers the suggestion of "to be healthier", which is a practical purpose that will appeal to anyone. The other exercise consisted of writing a letter to oneself from the perspective of one's body -- I felt very touched and ashamed as I realized all that my body did and tried to do for me, despite receiving my scorn instead of appreciation.

I subtracted one star because the authors do at times seem a bit patronizing and overly firm -- too clinical and too little compassion -- and being the sensitive issue that bulimia is, I imagine it could turn off patients.