The Compassionate Mind Approach to Beating Overeating: Using Compassion Focussed Therapy

Compassionate-mind Guides

by Ken Goss

This self-help book explores the problems created by having ready access to high fat foods designed to taste good. Because we evolved in conditions of relative scarcity we have few natural food inhibitors and so most diet books try to encourage people to inhibit their eating by highly rule governed behaviours which have to be constantly worked at. However, this can lead to various forms of self-criticism which can undermine efforts at self-control. As a result our relationship with eating can be complex, multifaceted and problematic.Beating Overeating Using Compassion Focused Therapy uses Compassion Focused Therapy - a groundbreaking new therapeutic approach - to understand and work with our urges and passions for food. We can learn to enjoy and accept food and pay attention to our biological and emotional needs. This book is for people who have tried diets and found that they don't work and will enable the reader to have a healthier and happier relationship with food and their body.Topics covered: ? The relationship between our brains and food, the evolutionary background to finding, conserving and eating food ? How too much or too little food affects the brain, why diets don't work, factors affecting our eating behaviour (tastes, stress, comfort, etc) ? Body shape and culture? Developing an inner compassion for one's relationship with food - recognising what we need and what is helpful

Genres: Self Help, Psychology, Nonfiction

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

**Changing the equation**

If you’ve dabbled in Buddhism, you’re probably familiar with the concept that resisting pain leads to suffering:
Pain + Resistance → Suffering

Compassion-focused therapy—the approach used in this book—helps to change this equation by replacing resistance with understanding:
“To alleviate suffering, we need to understand its nature. The compassion-focused approach of this book acknowledges a debt to Buddhist thinking, and places these aspects centrally in its view of compassion. However, it also turns to new scientific thinking about our minds: how they work and are influenced by different processes that are linked to the way our brains have evolved…As we begin to understand in detail the key issues that lie behind our eating difficulties, we will come to see more and more clearly why we need to develop a compassionate mind so that, working with these other mind-sets and using wisdom and understanding, we can take responsibility for our own bodies and learn to live connectedly and healthily with our see-food-and-eat-it brains in our modern world.” (pp. 47, 56)

Specifically, this book helps readers understand how eating has served as a safety strategy for dealing with (mis/perceived) threats, but in the process has created unintended consequences. Moving from a threatened mindset to a compassionate one is key, and is accomplished here by: (1) using a three systems approach to understand emotional regulation (i.e., recognizing that overeating results from imbalances amongst the drive, threat, and affiliative soothing systems), (2) developing an individualized compassionate formulation to understand difficulties with overeating, and (3) developing a specific plan to help compassionately overcome these difficulties.

How does this compassionate-mind formulation for overeating work?
• It allows you to be open and honest without blaming yourself.
• It can help you to recognize that your overeating is the result of many complex and interacting factors.
• It can help you to see more clearly how your overeating works, including all the intended and unintended consequences of overeating.
• It can help you to recognize that although it’s not your fault you overeat (because you are “set up” for it in so many ways), it *is* your responsibility to resolve it.
• It can help you to think carefully, from a kind, encouraging, and supportive perspective, about how to move forward to be the kind of person you want to be and cope with things in your life in a way that you’re happy with.
• It can help you to acknowledge the need for compassion, understanding, and encouragement on your journey toward becoming that person.
• It can help you to think about and plan what aspects of your overeating to work on first.
• It can help you to see if the work you are doing is successfully tackling the factors that trigger your overeating and keep it going. (p. 119)

And, if you replace the word “overeating” with anything else that’s causing you suffering, you can see how this compassionate approach has legs!

I highly recommend this book for anyone struggling with overeating, as well as the compassionate-mind approach in general for anyone who is breathing. It’s time to change that equation:
Pain + Compassion → Way less suffering!

[Inez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has loads on information about how to change your relationship to food. The quantity of information is overwhelming if you're someone who like to get through a book rapidly. This is a book that requires time to process each section before moving on to the next of you truly want to change. Think weeks and months rather than days

[Mrs Reddy Mallender-Katzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was reading this even though i dont over eat i was curious and it is definitely a comassionate book, the beginning factual information is really intereating but for me the emotional wasnt relevant so i stopped reading it when it got to midnfullness because i do that anyway

[Carrie]

Most important book I've read this year on CFT = its the future!!