IFS and Our Relationships with Food and the Body

Jeanne Catanzaro

Mindful eating has become an increasingly popular antidote to dieting, seen as a helpful strategy for differentiating emotional from physical hunger and for encouraging self-acceptance. But eating mindfully by itself often isn’t enough to fully address the extreme beliefs and emotions about food and body size. This workshop offers a model for pairing mindful eating with Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy that’s especially helpful with clients who have entrenched issues with eating and food. You’ll explore how to:

• Help clients identify parts of themselves that hold extreme beliefs and emotions about food and body image, and guide them through an inner dialogue with these parts and their protective intentions
• Develop a sustainable practice regarding food and exercise by identifying parts with extreme or unattainable goals and helping them shift to a more reasonable approach to food
• Work with the conflicting agendas that come up in clients’ moment-to-moment decisions about food and exercise

Jeanne Catanzaro, PhD, is clinical psychologist in private practice who’s worked extensively with clients with eating disorders and trauma. She’s the former director of the partial hospitalization program at the Renfrew Center of NYC.