Cognitive Behavior Therapy Essay

Negative body image can result in horrible eating disorders that are very unhealthy. Bulimia is a result, when one is self conscious about weight and purges food. It can also lead to a routine. This disorder can be

A body image is a subjective combination of all the thoughts, emotions, and judgments that an individual may perceive about his or her own body. Each individual has a unique perception of his or her own body. This image is strongly influenced and often times skewed due to the increasing pressure created from outside, societal factors. With a world that is continuously creating new forms of social media and entertainment, individuals are constantly exposed to images that supposedly define bodily perfection and are then expected to resemble these images in order to fit in and/or please society. The expectations that have been put in place by society has created unwanted pressure on individuals who feel as if they need to resemble these images to get society’s approval.

Girls especially are told that they are supposed to look how famous people look, but are not told how vastly edited and corrected the models in the pictures are. Today, women as young as 11 and 12 have began developing eating disorders due to the constant media bombardment telling them to look a certain way—incredibly skinny—which forces them into starvation. Psychologists have coined the new disorder ‘”body image disturbance syndrome” or BIDS. BIDS is characterized by the incessant feeling of being ‘fat’ when someone is perfectly healthy usually turning to one of two options: anorexia or bulimia. Anorexia is the act of not eating to achieve a body image, but this often results in gross malnourishment. On the other hand, bulimia is characterized by binge eating large meals followed by self-induced vomiting. The motivation behind bulimia is that if they keep the food in their body just long enough to absorb the nutrients, they can vomit the actual bulk of the food that makes them look overweight. The sad reality of the fact is that not only are the nutrients not completely absorbed until they reach the intestines, but the stomach acid brought forth with their vomit virtually rots away their

In this paper, I will discuss how cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be utilized in the management of eating disorders. More specifically I will identify Anorexia Nervosa and provide statistics that relate to the disease. Etiologies will be discussed as well as symptoms. Various techniques of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy will be described as well as the rationale as it relates to the clinical issue.

At the end of my speech, the audience will have a better understanding on how society plays a big role on women’s body image. They will also be able to identify the relationship between body image distortion and eating disorders. Finally, I will provide further understanding on the crucial factors of eating disorders, as well as the different treatments available.

Body Dysmorphia Disorder (BDD) is an imaginary defects in their appearance. This obsession can become debilitating to the point where one cannot leave the house resulting in the loss in occupation or socially. This disorder is often missed as it has close related to Eating Disorders, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and sometimes Social Anxiety. People with BDD often start to develop one of the related mental illnesses/ disorders after a time. Due to the nature of this disorder it is often dismissed until BDD becomes debilitating or develops into other relating disorders and mental illnesses. It is becoming more common for a person with BDD to look into getting plastic surgery continuously, which does not relieve the dysmorphic beliefs and thought patterns. Since gathering information it seems that Cognitive Behavior Therapy is the most common and affect use to treat BDD. This disorder is evident primarily in adolescence and peaks middle age.

The women with Bulimia exhibited negative responses to their bodies and that “self-images captivate[d] the attention of [the] BN patient” (Ortega-Roldan, et al). Their bodies also went into a defense mode, and part of the study’s results “confirm that one’s own body is perceived by BN patients as an unpleasant, uncontrollable, and activating stimulus” (Ortega-Roldan, et al). This study’s purpose was to look for a different way of spotting Bulimia, but it highlights the mental devastation that the people with these disorders face every day they face themselves.

Body image may be viewed as the way people see themselves and even imagine how they make look based off how they may feel about themselves. Yet it could also be viewed as the way other people see you. Body image, in medicine and psychology refers to a person 's emotional attitudes, beliefs and views of their own body (Positive and Negative Body Image). According to Positive and Negative Body Image, a negative body image develops when a person feels his or her body does not amount up to family, social, or media standards. Many people feel as if they don’t measure up to the belief of others. People who have accepted the way they look often feel good about their image and would be considered to have a positive body image. One’s appearance may not be measure up to how their family expects it to be or how it is perceived to be in the media, but once people learn accept and be proud of the way they look they’ll be better off in the long run. When a person is measured against the standards of the beauty seen frequently in the media and it doesn’t compare to how they feel about themselves it become discouraging. Having said that, long-lasting negative body image can affect both your mental and physical health which could lead to eating disorders down the road.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that consists of self-regulated food restriction in which the person strives for thinness and also involves distortion of the way the person sees his or her own body. An anorexic person weighs less than 85% of their ideal body weight. The prevalence of eating disorders is between .5-1% of women aged 15-40 and about 1/20 of this number occurs in men. Anorexia affects all aspects of an affected person's life including emotional health, physical health, and relationships with others (Shekter-Wolfson et al 5-6). A study completed in 1996 showed that anorexics also tend to possess traits that are obsessive in nature and carry heavy emotional

Concerns about one’s own appearance are not uncommon. The majority of people that dislike a certain aspect of their appearance may occasionally refer to it negatively and leave it at that, whereas someone with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) will refer to their perceived flaws so much so that it affects their life on a daily basis (The BDD Alliance, 2016). About 1.7% to 2.4% of the general population is affected by BDD, meaning that about 1 in 50 people have the disorder (Phillips, n.d.). Fortunately, there is a generous amount of information available about the history of BDD, which includes its causes, effects, treatments, and much more.

Item #3: My attempt to achieve my desired body image came with many consequences, psychological and physical. A major psychological sign of my anorexia nervosa is that my self worth has been defined by the way I think I look: overweight. Due to this distorted body image I am consumed with perfecting, I am constantly preoccupied with the thought of food and how to continue losing more weight to accomplish my goal of becoming thin. Emotionally, I have developed strong feelings of anxiety and irritableness when it is the normal time to eat a meal. I have also become incredibly sensitive to comments regarding food, weight, body shape, and exercise. Restricting my food intake has helped me relieve these negative emotions by having a sense of control over my body, even though I am still left dissatisfied with what I see of myself.

Research has shown that the greater the disparity between a person’s perceived current weight and their imagined ideal body weight, the greater the body image dissatisfaction (Glauert, Rhodes, Byrne, Fink, & Grammer, 2009; MacNeill & Best, 2015). Negative body feelings are a known precursor to disordered eating behaviors and the progression to an eating disorder (“Eating Disorder Statistics”, 2015). Inpatient treatment of eating disorder in the United States ranges from $500 to $2,000 per day while outpatient treatment costs vary but could be upwards of $100,000 over the course of an individual’s life (“Eating Disorder Statistics”, 2015). Additionally, eating disorders have the highest rate of mortality for any mental illness, with most recent statistics reporting that nearly 20% will die from a cause directly related to the illness (“Eating Disorder Statistics”, 2015). Eating disorders can lead to medical complications including, infertility, osteoporosis, and cardiac arrhythmias, further escalating the healthcare burden (“Eating Disorder Statistics”, 2015). As a psychiatric nurse and a mental health case manager previously, I have seen first hand the damage that disordered eating patterns, body image dissatisfaction, and eating disorders can have on an

What is body image? A two-dimensional model of body image incorporates both perceptual and emotional components. It focuses on both how we feel about the size and shape of our bodies and how accurately we perceive our body size as well. A more recent cognitive approach suggests that body image is a complex set of cognitive schema. A schema is a grouped body of knowledge. Groups of schema are readily available for important tasks such as guiding behavior, circumstantial scripts (or dialogue), and evoking the appropriate emotional, somatic, visual, and auditory responses in certain situations. The cognitive schema for body image is an organized domain of knowledge about oneself and others.

As our society is bombarded with the images of manufactured beauty and “thinness”, conversations increasingly center on dieting and body dissatisfaction. The media advertises weight loss products in the form of pills, drinks, surgery, fitness equipment and support groups to mold individuals into the proposed ideal form. This evidence alone suggests a strong case for the possibility of a pathological fear of fat. Is this fear, however, the driving force behind all cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia? According to the DSM IV, the fear of gaining weight is essential for these diagnoses to be made. Strong arguments have been made both in favor and against modifying the existing criteria to allow for the diagnosis and

The Body Image and Self-Schema Theory can be defined as the degree of attractiveness, “…our own internal view of how we look, how we think we appear to others, and how we feel about our looks” (Thompson et al., 1999, p. 3). People may be found attractive by others but when they look at themselves they have a negative body image. When a woman has a negative body image this is known as body image disturbance. Body image disturbance can include affective (e. g. anxiety), cognitive (e. g. expectations), behavioural (e. g. avoiding situations that expose the body), and perceptual (e. g. overestimation of one’s body size) features and its levels may range from none to extremely high with most individuals falling somewhere in the middle. (Thompson et al., 1999, p. 7).