Alyssa Kalata, Ph.D and Associate Clinical Director of Veritas has learned that life values are an important step when it comes to treating eating disorders and that each individual needs their own individual compass on their path to recovery. Find out more about Kalata's treatment strategies at http://veritascollaborative.com/blog/2015/12/finding-your-compass-on-the-path-to-recovery. Also, for more insights to helping those suffering of eating disorders, visit http://veritascollaborative.com/blog.

1. Finding Your
Compass on the
Path To Recovery
By Alyssa Kalata, Ph.D.
Associate Clinical Director,
Veritas Collaborative

2. When I began seeing my first few patients years ago as
part of my graduate training, I expected therapy
would go something like this:
• Meet patient.
• Talk about problems.
• Identify solutions.
• Try solutions.
• Patient gets better.
I quickly learned the reality of therapy is pretty far
afield from that initial idea.

3. And it doesn’t take long for many young therapists-in-
training to come to similar conclusions.
We therapists are not omniscient fountains of wisdom.
I have solutions to problems, of course, but so do many,
many other people. And it turns out my solutions
often don’t look that much different than theirs.
The more interesting lesson that followed was learning
about what falls in between the bookends of meeting
my patient and watching my patient get better.
Certainly therapy involves talking about problems,
identifying solutions, and trying them out, and there is
so much more that happens.

4. The reality is often that my patients are incredible
problem-solvers, with a good number of tools at the
ready. They did not come to me to have me tell them
what they should do.
Most mental illnesses block the sufferer from living the
life that they want to live, and the reality of the
treatments for most mental illnesses is that they
require incredibly hard work – work that is so hard, in
fact, that the difficulty of the journey blocks the
sufferer from making movement toward their desired
destination.

5. With depression, everything feels too hard and too
tiring; with anxiety, everything feels too scary and too
daunting. This difficulty is only further compounded
with many of the mental illnesses that are categorized
as eating disorders, where the physiologically and
psychologically rewarding nature of the illness further
impedes motivation for change.
Why get better if your illness paradoxically
makes you feel good?

6. As a treatment provider for patients who often suffer
from both an eating disorder and co-occurring mental
illnesses, I am thankful to have values work at the
ready. There is ample research that shows connecting
with your values can assist with motivation for change,
and in turn, lead to a happier and healthier life.
So how does one go about connecting with values?
Typically, values work with my patients begins with a
values assessment across life domains – Who do you
want to be as a student? As a sister or a daughter? As a
spiritual being? As a member of your community?

7. The assessment then continues by looking at the areas
in my patients’ lives where they feel they are living
most incongruously with their values. For example, my
patient wants to be a good friend, but he has stopped
returning phone calls, texts, and e-mails.
Once I have identified with my patients the areas they
most want to change, we set an overarching values goal
(“I want to be a responsive, communicative friend”)
and identify smaller, achievable concrete actions that
are consistent with this goal (“Call a friend,” “Send a
text,” “Schedule a time to see a movie”).

8. At this point in the values work, my patients are ready
to put their preparations into action. We start tracking
their engagement in values-based activities over time
and begin to examine a number of important questions.
Are they doing the values-based activities?
If so, what are their feelings about them? If they are not
doing these activities, did we focus on a value that is
not important at this time? Or, are there barriers
getting in the way?
As the continuous dance of assessment and action plays
out over time, I find my patients not only start feeling
better, but actually start getting better as well.

9. The well-known business consultant and author
Idowu Koyenikan once said,
“A highly developed values system is like a
compass. It serves as a guide to point you in
the right direction when you are lost.”
I hold hope for each of my patients that they will find
their compass and, in turn, their path toward
recovery. I am honored to join them on that journey.