EATING DISORDER TREATMENT

Eating Disorders are complex, confusing, and counter intuitive. Eating disorders are not about vanity, they are about feeling overwhelmed and not worthy of self-care. Living with an eating disorder is a profoundly painful experience and sadly, so often the individuals who are suffering feel deeply alone and severely misunderstood.

At Cedars we understand the nature of eating disorders and we recognize how to effectively and compassionately treat individuals who are suffering. We have developed a unique and intensive residential eating disorder treatment program for individuals who are struggling with an eating disorder and negative body image.

At Cedars we believe in treating the individual as a whole, unique and dynamic person.  We offer personalized, insightful and compassionate support through the process of recovery. Our clinical team works collectively in assisting patients to recognize, define and implement healthy and safe, recovery focused goals.

The staff at Cedars respects and honors the fact that every person will have their own journey and their own path. Our primary goal is to provide compassionate navigation and support along that path to recovery and well-being.

At Cedars, we understand that eating disorder symptoms are accompanied by an underlying problem. The symptoms are not the disease itself and therefore weight restoration or the cessation of the behaviors alone will not cure the individual who is suffering.

INDIVIDUALIZED EATING DISORDER TREATMENT COMMITTED TO YOUR COMPLETE AND LASTING RECOVERY.

The Eating Disorder treatment program at Cedars incorporates a comprehensive and individualized approach in a private, peaceful environment. We do not only address the symptoms, but we also help our clients resolve underlying trauma and the roots of the disease leading to a deeper, lasting recovery.

"Cedars gave me the tools to stay sober one day at a time and for that I am grateful, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me my life back."

Tracy.G

WHAT WE OFFER

• Separate residences for men and women.
  
  
• A comprehensive medical, psychological, emotional and spiritual assessment process.
  
  
• Individualized plans to ensure each patient receives the most effective treatment.
  
  
• Separate treatment streams for patients with co-occurring disorders.
  
  
• A length of stay that is determined by measured progress toward patient and staff
  identified goals.
  
  
• High staff to patient ratio.
  
  
• Individual Therapy.
  
  
• Psychodynamic Group Therapy.
  
  
• Cognitive behavioural therapy/ Motivational Enhancement Therapy/
  Dialectic Behavioural Therapy.
  
  
• Educational Seminars.
  
  
• Art Therapy (Recovering Words Workshop).
  
  
• Spiritual guidance from our team of chaplains and local First Nations Elders.
  
  
• Daily Exercise training with our physical trainer, yoga sessions and mindfulness practices.
  
  
• Twelve step facilitated therapy supported by on campus twelve step meetings.
  
  
• An approach to recovery that emphasizes balance.  Good nutrition, exercise, and mindfulness practices are all an essential part of a full recovery.

ADDITIONAL SERVICES (available offsite, additional fee required)

• Equine Therapy Facilitated by Generation Farms.
  
  
• Brainwave Optimization Therapy.

We also treat co-occurring disorders

While providing Anorexia Nervosa treatment, Bulimia Nervosa treatment, and treatment of all other types of eating disorders, including binge eating, orthorexia, purging disorder and compulsive exercising we also identify and treat co-occurring disorders such as Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and co-occurring addictions. These illnesses become inter-related in a complex way. Both the disorders will need to be treated if the individual is to experience a full, sustainable recovery. This will be done through assessment and re-assessment by our medical and psychiatric staff. Cedars at Cobble hill has consulting relationships with psychiatrist, psychologists, pain management doctors, PTSD psychologists and providers of spiritual guidance.

RELAPSE PREVENTION PLANNING

In order to create a viable relapse prevention plan, each individual patient must identify high risk situations and create plans for handling those situations, then present their relapse prevention plan to their counsellor and group members for feedback. A relapse prevention plan includes awareness of personal avoidance and escape strategies, steps for redirecting addictive thoughts, and how to manage emotional distress. It often appears as though a relapse “just happened” when in reality the relapse began long before the compulsive act, in the more subtle change of attitudes and behaviours. The relapse prevention plan helps the patient recognize their personal symptoms before they lead to a relapse.

CONTINUING CARE

The first 24 months in recovery is a critical time period for someone suffering from an Addiction disorder. The beginning phase will be done in a residential setting.  This will include a comprehensive medical, psychological, emotional and spiritual assessment and treatment process.  Following the residential component, the next phase of treatment is 6 months of weekly continuing care meetings in your home community.  What we accomplish in the residential setting is vital to set the foundation of recovery.  However, this can be undone very quickly if this work is not maintained. These continuing care groups will be facilitated by a trained professional for a minimum of 6 months post treatment. The third phase of treatment is continued maintenance of the continuing care plan, while maintaining contact with Cedars and our continuing care team.

PSYCHODYNAMIC GROUP THERAPY

At Cedars, Group therapy provides a unique opportunity for our patients to interact. These sessions are professionally facilitated and are an integral part of the therapeutic process. This particular type of therapy is designed to help patients develop interpersonal relationships and identify behaviours within the group. In group therapy emphasis is placed on current, honest feelings. The counsellor’s s role in group therapy is to guide, model and educate group members in the task of identifying defenses in self and others. While individual therapeutic techniques vary, the purpose of all groups is growth through honest sharing and self-discovery.

EDUCATIONAL SEMINARS

Presented by our Executive Director Neal Berger and members of our clinical team, the education series provides fundamental insight into the disease of addiction. Through these seminars our patients learn about the science behind addiction, and the questions of “why” and “how” of addictive behaviours are addressed. Our educational seminar series assists our patients in establishing the necessary tools for recovery, self awareness, and relapse prevention.

COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL / MOTIVATIONAL / DIALECTIC BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY

At Cedars we offer a non- confrontational, supportive approach to change in addictive behaviours. Patients are encouraged to identify destructive feelings and thoughts that influence negative behaviours, and are given new tools and coping skills for their sustained recovery. These therapeutic approaches encourage and empower the individual to gain insight into their own behaviours and create a conduit for self discovery. Throughout treatment our patients will learn how to respond rather than react to situations and environments that may have previously led to a relapse.

EQUINE THERAPY

A man kneels beside the fence. He is terrified, not of the small horse on the other side, but of his fear that she won’t like him and will walk away. As he lets go of his tough act and acknowledges how lonely he really is, she comes over and blows on his face with her gentle breath.

On the other side of the barn, a young woman meets a huge horse.  He pulls at her clothing and pushes at her with his nose.  She laughs.  People do what they want with her.  Later, when she is supported to stand her ground with this gentle giant, learning to push him away and create a safe space around her, she cries for all the times that she let her boundaries be violated.  Never again.

Staying in the present moment, emotional honesty, being uncomfortable without panicking, having healthy boundaries; these all support recovery but can be merely words or ideas. Horses teach real lessons that are hard to learn in the classroom.  The field of Equine Facilitated Wellness partners people with horses in safe but powerful experiences.  There is no riding and no one is pushed beyond their comfort level with the horses.

Finely tuned receptors in the horse keep them safe in the wild where they can be preyed upon. Being with horses in an Equine Facilitated Wellness setting can help humans to return to our natural instincts and connection to self, others and nature.  Horses are comfortable with us when we are really ourselves.  No judgement, no criticism; just how we are in the moment.

As people return to Cedars after a day at Generation Farms, they take with them experiences that will continue to support their recovery.

Deborah Marshall MA RCC

ART THERAPY - RECOVERING WORDS WORKSHOP

To write and discover you have words inside you; to see them appear mysteriously on the white page; yours and not yours; words that can reveal yourself to you and help you heal and recover.
This describes the art of poetry and the healing process provided by the Recovering Words poetry workshops. These Recovering Words Workshops are facilitated by Richard Osler (60), a published poet and a poetry workshop and retreat leader with extensive experience. He has worked with more than 1,500 participants over a five year period.

This three hour workshop introduces participants to the healing words of contemporary poets, many, but not all, who have also struggled with serious addictions in their lives. Using the themes and words of these poets as a springboard, participants also write their own poems.
At the heart of these workshops is the mysterious reality that American poet, Jane Hirschfield, captures so clearly:

"The poet, pursuing a vessel to hold something known, finds what the poem may know that the poet as yet does not." A strange paradox in life and poetry.
Gregory Orr, a celebrated American poet in his sixties, was responsible for the death of his younger brother in a hunting accident when he was only twelve years old. He says what saved him in the horrific aftermath of this trauma was "the making of poems."

His experience with the healing power of poetry has been confirmed countless times in Recovering Words workshops. As Orr says "because poems are meanings even the saddest poem I write is proof that I want to survive. And therefore it represents an affirmation of life in all its complexities and contradictions."
When participants in a Recovery Words workshop write their poems and read them out loud to each other they discover they are not alone in the world. The poetry workshop creates another foundation in which individuals may express themselves, and relate to one another.

Orr says that when he reads or hears a poem “I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or something I have felt." He adds” the gift of their poem enters deeply into me and helps me live and believe in living."
Over five years the poems written by Recovery Words workshop participants proves again and again that the healing power of poetry cannot be overestimated; they prove that words in the form of poems can give exuberant hope and meaning to the those who write them as well as to those who hear them.

Dead of the Day
Incantations of the afternoon.
Hushed condolences of the wicker creel.
A green punt irons the back of the pond’s dark shirt.
Water so still a thought might break it.
Willows bend down and listen.
Quiet.
The day dries out on a log and sleeps.
Mayflies make a vow of silence, of hunger,
reach for sunlight like a rope.
The heart bells out into ripples
from fish that rise from the dead of the day.
- Richard Osler