Reddit reviews The Body Image Workbook: An Eight-Step Program for Learning to Like Your Looks (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)

I have. I'm confused why you're still with someone who calls you a whore. Emotional/verbal abuse is a dealbreaker for a lot of people, why is it not for you?

These are great books, but you shouldn't stay with someone who is verbally abusive.

The Body Image Workbook: An Eight-Step Program for Learning to Like Your Looks

Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance

This body image workbook was recommended to me by the ED nutritionist I used to see.

Also, not a workbook, but this book about self compassion is a great read. Because self-esteem and confidence are also about being kind to yourself.

The Body Image Workbook - this is a good step by step therapy book for if you have BDD or generally have issues with that stem from hating a part of your appearance.

Amazon link to the book

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Full disclosure, I am still working through it, I am really slow on my roll to do it though cause it requires setting 20 mins daily for 3 days to journal and I am v noncommittal, but skimming through, I think I would be an excellent resource for people who's ED are affected by horrible body image.


I am also working through intuitive eating 3rd edition, I'm holding my recommendation until I finish tho

Specific to body image, I have heard a lot of good things about [The Body Image Workbook](https://www.amazon.com/Body-Image-Workbook-Eight-Step-Learning/dp/1572245468). Bird's eye view--comparison is the thief of joy. You can only be where you are now. The happiest people I know recognize this and focus on enjoying the journey toward becoming the best version of themselves versus trying to be somebody else. Life can be tough. No reason to make it harder on yourself :)

"scio me nihil scire" roughly "I am the wisest man alive for the one thing I know is that I know nothing." Please keep an open mind.

23F here, ED/depression for 13 years: I know /u/LePetitChou is pushing a real hard bottom line here and that seems to turn you off. I agree with him/her that it sounds like you could really benefit from some extra help. However, there are some other options when one-on-one psychotherapy is not feasible. I see a clinical psychology student for $10/hour. Also, I utilize ABA, SMART, and my local meditation center's zen sitting depending on the day of the week. All of these resources are free! OA has more meetings in more areas if there are no ABA meetings where you live.

This workbook is helpful for a lot of people with body image issues.

Also, please do not call yourself "fat"! You are merely above your healthy weight range. Let's stick to the facts here. Fat has a much worse connotation in our society.

Lastly, this is something you really need to talk to your BF about. My fiance is a big part of my recovery and I tell him when something he says bothers me, followed by a more appropriate response. Men can learn, I promise, they just need a little training ;)

This is part 2 of the other reply. I separated it because the other was getting long and this will have a different flavor to it anyway. I'm trying to collect resources here that will act as the best substitute for what you will get in therapy that you can start using to make a difference now. I'm no expert of course, but I've been down a few of the same roads before and I at least know part of what they will tell you in advance :)

> Well I am extremely panicky about going downstairs as I really don't know my grandparents well. Also they don't like the food I cook (strong spices) so they make little comments. Also, I have a fear I have always had, of eating in front of people. Plus I can't stand eating noises. I can get food no problem, I always try to have some carrots and fruit in my room along with some bread, but it's not really a replacement for a home cooked meal. I also (irrationally) fear people judging me if I buy something.

These are the areas in addition to the anorexia where therapy will be the most beneficial. There are a few main things that therapy will provide for you, and some of them you don't have to wait for a professional to tell you to start getting benefits. The first thing you get in therapy is patient education. In your case, "What is anxiety, how often and in what ways does it affect people, and what treatments or strategies tend to be effective for managing this?", and "What is anorexia, how often and in what ways does it affect people, and what treatments or strategies tend to be effective for managing this?". It's dangerous to assume that just because you are personally experiencing these phenomena that you know the answers to these questions... In my case, my biggest struggle has been with depression, and even well into my treatment in professional therapy, I didn't understand that "feeling sad" wasn't even a necessary component of depression, and that really held me back for a long time from understanding/believing that depression was truly what I was going through.

To this end, I've gone and done some basic searching to find the reading that I would do if I were in your shoes. These are by no means the only or best resources, but given that I know very little about eating disorders, the random google search will tend to be far more practical and informative than it will be misleading:

http://www.recoveryranch.com/articles/eating-disorders/eating-disorder-your-life/

http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/anorexia-nervosa.html

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/eating_disorders/

The second main thing that therapy will help you do is to learn how you interact with the world, and how your mind processes information it receives. In particular, most of these processes are invisible to us if we don't really slow down and learn to recognize the signs, and there are ways that they can go wrong, so that the information that reaches our conscious mind has been severely distorted as compared to objective reality. I want to emphasize here that there is no magic to therapy... it's pretty common in today's society to have this mental image of going into therapy and talking about your problems for an hour and then somehow the fact that you told all of this to a stranger suddenly makes you feel better. If that were the case I would tend to suspect such a person wasn't really in that much need of therapy in the first place. In my experience, the biggest gains from therapy come out of the work you do every day between sessions to change your mental state and environment. The professional guidance is important and useful to figure out where to focus your limited resources to have the most beneficial impact, and to help you understand what is and isn't genuine progress so that you don't fall prey to the traps of your own thinking, but the hard work is really done by you.

With that in mind, I think you might find some benefit from a good self-help workbook or two. The workbook aspect is key here, because a lot of the relief will come by actually doing the exercises recommended by the workbook, and answering the questions thoughtfully and learning about yourself during that self-reflection. These are the same things that therapy will generally ask you to do (although much more personalized and with other complicating factors taken into account), and I think you could expect at least some initial benefit. It will also help make the therapy sessions more productive once you are able to get to them, since you have some idea of what you are already trying to do, and the therapist will be able to help you understand the finer points more readily than if you are going in blind.

For anxiety and panic, the following two workbooks both come recommended by my therapist and my wife's (she also has panic attacks, though not as frequently now as before):

http://www.amazon.com/Anxiety-Phobia-Workbook-Edmund-Bourne/dp/1572248912

http://www.amazon.com/Panic-Attacks-Workbook-Program-Beating/dp/1569754152/

For the eating disorder, I suspect that something similar would be a good idea, but I unfortunately don't have any direct experience with this so I can't make any informed recommendations. The first book below is the most applicable that I can find that has reasonable reviews (although not as many as I would generally prefer), and the second is the most highly reviewed book that I can find about the relationship between food and emotions in general, but I think it tends to focus on overeating to avoid other emotional problems rather than a food disorder itself. This still could be helpful though because the relationship between food and emotions is always complicated, and a better understanding of this might help alleviate the fears you describe about weight gain and such.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Body-Image-Workbook-Eight-Step/dp/1572245468/

http://www.amazon.com/The-Food-Feelings-Workbook-Emotional/dp/0936077204/

That's a lot for now, I'll stop here and wait to see what you think of all this :)

I'm currently working through this workbook with my therapist. Perhaps ask your therapist if it's something that s/he would be willing to work through with you?

I'm surprised to hear that they don't have an eating disorders group - but I double checked the Counseling Website and you are right. However, they DO have a workshop on Wednesday, March 6th at 1pm in the Counseling Center called, "Love Your Bodies, Not a Size" - going to this workshop might be helpful for you - and it might be a good first step in getting comfortable enough with the Counseling Center and their staff to schedule an individual appointment.
At the very least, you could let the therapist who runs the workshop that you are disappointed that they don't have an eating disorders support group here at UCI and whether they could consider starting one (or at least refer you to one).

I hope that helps!

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P.S. You may find this book helpful: https://www.amazon.com/Body-Image-Workbook-Eight-Step-Learning/dp/1572245468/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Body+Image+Workbook&qid=1549762614&s=gateway&sr=8-1