Mindfulness in Eating Disorders with Katherine Prakken, PhD

Mindfulness Approach to Eating Disorders and Everyday Eating    Slides | Handouts | Bibliography

Mindfulness has been shown to be a powerful tool in facilitating self-regulation. In this workshop, Katherine Prakken focuses on ways that mindful eating practices can transform people’s relationship with food, whether they suffer from eating disorders or more “everyday” struggles with eating and body image. Dr. Prakken describes strategies that can help individuals identify different kinds of hunger, create the ability to “feed” the self without food, cultivate “bodyfulness” as well as mindfulness, and understand how mood and cognitions can undermine mindful eating. These mindfulness practices have been shown to decrease emotional and unconscious eating; increase enjoyment and satisfaction with food, eating, and the body; and lead a more consistently aware approach to eating and living. Dr. Prakken will present case examples to illustrate their use with clients with bulimia, binge eating, and restricting disorders.

Katherine A. Prakken, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chapel Hill, NC, who works with individuals, couples, and families. Her specialty areas are eating disorders, particularly bulimia and binge eating disorder, and sexual abuse and women’s issues. She was trained psychoanalytically and has since incorporated a diverse array of approaches including cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness skills. She has a particular interest in countertransference and has presented locally and nationally on the role of countertransference in work with individuals with disordered eating. Dr. Prakken, long interested in mindfulness practices, has recently pursued additional training on the art of combining traditional psychodynamic psychotherapy with mindfulness principles.