Sometimes it helps me to conceptualize an eating disorder as a self-disorder. In other words, an eating disorder evolves out of a lapse in development of a Self. Many of my patients express feeling as though their eating disorder has become them. They don’t know who they are without it. They often express fear of facing a great emptiness or abyss if they give up their eating disorder. This “emptiness” they describe is that disconnection from one’s true self. Most [...]
Rachel Cantrell, MFT
Rachel Cantrell is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders. She also has experience working with other addictions, anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, trauma and dissociation, and depression. She enjoys working with individuals, couples, and families and is devoted to providing help and service to the community of Santa Barbara County.
Articles
Nature or nurture? That’s been the question for ages. Fascinating new research is pointing to the possibility that underlying neurobiological factors drive the behaviors exhibited by Anorexia Nervosa. Most abide by the belief that some combination of genetics, culture, and family dynamics contributes to the development of eating disorders: society is the gun, genetics loads the gun, and the family pulls the trigger. Unfortunately, many afflicted individuals and their families have lived with a negative stigma associated with this disorder. [...]
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe your weight is not the problem? Have you ever noticed that you feel worse about your body when you’re stressed out or frustrated? Maybe the real issue is not your body. Glamour conducted a survey of more than 300 women of all sizes. They found that, on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily. Some women even attest to having 50 or 100 hateful thoughts about their bodies each day. Cultural [...]
