Working with Eating Disorders and Comorbid Trauma: A Schema Therapy Perspective blending top-down and bottom-up techniques

About this event

Webinar Overview: Eating Disorders present with relatively high rates of trauma-based comorbidity across the lifespan. Unprocessed trauma in this clinical population has been shown to have significant knock-on effects in terms of high rates of psychiatric comorbidity, severity of symptoms and (un)responsiveness to standard treatments. Whereas preliminary research has examined the impact of more obvious childhood traumas such as sexual/physical/emotional abuse, hidden traumas such as developmental emotional neglect remain under-investigated. In this webinar, Dr. Susan Simpson will describe recent research findings in this field, exploring the devastating consequences of adverse childhood experiences on people with eating disorders, leading many sufferers to feel stuck and struggling to engage with our standard treatment protocols. The Schema Therapy model will provide a transdiagnostic framework for understanding the function of eating (and comorbid) symptoms as temporary ‘solutions’ to manage trauma-based dysregulation of the nervous system which in turn form self-perpetuating feedback loops, keeping the person increasingly reliant on their disordered eating behaviours. A case example will be used to illustrate the difficulties that can arise in addressing eating disorders with comorbid complex trauma, as well as potential treatment adaptations in the form of integrating top down and bottom up treatment models (including Imagery Rescripting, EMDR, DBR, and other somatic-body-based approaches).

Dr. Susan Simpson is a Clinical Psychologist who has specialised in Schema Therapy over the past 25 years. She is director of Schema Therapy Scotland, and also works in the National Health Service as Lead for a regional outpatient eating disorders service. She is part of an international research group which is investigating the effectiveness of Schema Therapy for eating disorders and has published several research papers, and book chapters on this topic. She regularly presents workshops and trainings at national and international conferences. Susan is co-author of the books Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders, (Routledge) and Cambridge Guide to Schema Therapy (Cambridge University Press).  A full list of her publications can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Susan_Simpson/publications