Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders: Theory and Practice for Individual and Group Settings

This chapter explores a range of behavioural interventions to specifically address anorexia (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN)/binge eating, by integrating schema therapy (ST) with behavioural strategies utilised in other evidence-based approaches. Each diagnostic profile is symptomatically different, to the extent that, at times, the specific challenges may indeed be contradictory. The challenges concern the differences between coping modes, which serve to regulate emotions, but also the quality of the Inner Critic (Demanding or Punitive Parent modes) (Archonti, Roediger & De Zwaan, 2016). Historical assessment of the onset of eating disorder (ED) symptoms often reveals important signs that these were preceded by expressions of already frustrated needs and self-soothing behaviours. Identification of these 'clues' point to the early factors that precipitated and maintained 'survival' coping modes at the time they first emerged.