Inspired Life Health Centre Toronto

Almost everyone knows someone who has struggled or who is struggling with an eating disorder as it has become an epidemic in North America.  In a society that places body size and shape as crucial to a women's social value, we learn to focus on our appearances.  As a result, policing and controlling our appearance becomes essential for achieving both inner satisfaction and social success. Women learn that looking good is a form of currency in the world.

By exerting control over their bodies, women anticipate success, gain self-confidence and increase their sense of mastery and control over their lives. Women's sense of powerlessness and dissatisfaction can be reinstated by the self-satisfaction, social approval, and sense of accomplishments won through controlling their bodies appearance.

Eating Disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia and over eating) are disturbing diseases  which affect the mind, body and soul. It appears that a single approach directed at helping someone overcome this disorder is ineffective. The complexity found in attempting to understand the development and maintenance of  an eating disorder reinforces the need for an integrative and multidimensional approach that accounts for the many aspects of the disorder itself.

Obsession with food and weight are often attempts to cope with unresolved emotional issues such as depression, rage, powerlessness, and loss. Art therapy is a special tool that can help provide access to those hidden feelings that contain the key to our struggles. Eating disorders and art are similar in that they both enable the individual to express oneself without using words. Art therapy offers striking advantages as a treatment modality since it helps the client to form a strong therapeutic alliance and aids clients in establishing a sense of trust in their own feelings, intuitions, and abilities.

When using art therapy, the client is allowed to control his or her own therapy.  They can choose the materials they want to use and are in charge of what the interpretation of their piece is.  This sense of control is often something a person with an eating disorder is seeking, they have lost a sense of control in their lives and have established a form of control over their bodies. While in art therapy the emphasis will be on discovering new ways to nurture oneself and to take the conflict away from the arena of the body into an area where it can be expressed in images and words.