Eating Disorders Today: Joanna Poppink's eating disorder recovery psychotherapy practice

If you are a person with an eating disorder, no matter how good your life looks on the outside, you know more about suffering and despair than most people. Sometimes even you don’t know how deep your anguish goes because the numbing power of an eating disorder can anesthetize you to pain you only become aware of once recovery begins.

My lifework is dedicated to eating disorder recovery. My own experience with bulimia, long before it had a name, and my recovery journey deeply informs my work with others. Each person’s experience, history and challenges in recovery are different, but the misery of living with an eating disorder is the same – a kind of desperate despair.

The good news is that recovery is possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. I see it often. Seeing yet another woman take her place in life free of the eating disorder and free to live according to her authentic self makes the hard work worthwhile.

Details:

I’ve been a Los Angeles psychotherapist since 1980, ( MFT #15563) and specialize in treating adults with eating disorders who seek more health, inner peace and power to live successful lives. The work is confidential, personal and moves at a pace set by the client.

My approach to treatment has four main themes:

   1. slow down and eventually stop acting out behavior,
   2. heal emotional wounds,
   3. restart emotional/psychological development that was stalled at a critical time
            in the person's life,
   4. support tentative entry into newly perceived world as individual relies
            on greater vision and newly developed courage, inner strength and realistic
            trust.

Cognitive behavioral approach that leads to psychodynamic work, journal writing, art therapy, humor, readings, body work and most of all, a relationship between myself and the woman I’m working with that can weather, survive and thrive under the stresses of recovery. Often our relationship is the first trustworthy, sturdy and honest relationship the woman has ever had.

The specialized psychotherapy helps free clients to relax and move through crisis situations to the ongoing work of healing from bulimia, compulsive eating and binge eating. It helps them work through personal stress situations that somehow are related to eating disorders because they trigger acting out behavior. My practice is in a garden setting.

People wait in my garden before their private sessions, an experience most people find comforting, soothing and sometimes inspiring.

I am continually startled when I’m asked, “Doesn’t your work make you sad, listening to all those terrible experiences people share with you.”

My answer is always a definite, “No.” The people who come to me have faced many challenges in order to reach the point where they are ready to dedicate themselves to their recovery. It takes courage to make that first phone call and actually show up for that first appointment.

The people who get this far are filled with hope and fear and have more courage than they know. It’s my joy to greet them and join them in their journey to healing and a new life better than they ever imagined they could have.

Yes, the work is long and hard. But sad? Quite the contrary. My work is heartwarming and satisfying. How wonderful it is to be with a person whose true self unfolds as she drops the eating disorder and enters life with her own heart and values as guides. She makes authentic choices and lives in a way that is satisfying to her. What could be better? I love my work.

"Freedom from compulsions, development of self confidence and inner peace, an ability to recognize who and what is trustworthy and confidence in knowing how to make wise and self caring life decisions are goals clients and I strive to achieve."

Joanna Poppink, MFT, psychotherapist eating disorder specialist, Los Angeles, CA bulimia, anorexia, compulsive overeating recovery, www.poppink.com