Healing Your Hungry Heart Amazon.com BarnesandNoble.com Category:  Self-Help Publisher: Conari Press ISBN-10:  1573244708 Pages: 256 Copyright: August 1, 2011 ISBN-13: 9781573244701 Step by step guide for adults to heal from their eating disorder and develop a more healthy and satisfying life. Healing Your Hungry Heart is written for the adult woman wanting eating disorder recovery and for the people who love her. Through stories, meditations, exercises and real life examples it presents a layered and unfolding recovery plan designed to meet the reader where she is in her illness and her life. It covers warning signs not usually revealed; secrets; eating routines; spiritual depth; boundaries; terror episodes; sex, stalking and exploitation; family; triggers; and how to stay on the recovery path.  Healing Your Hungry Heart is written to be a kind and sturdy companion and guide, providing new recovery tools with successive readings. It's clear, personal, honest and straightforward, covering many experiences rarely discussed in writing or in treatment settings.  It steadily and, with empathy and compassion, teaches, strengthens and guides the reader to recovery.           Excerpt Chapter 1 Unreal to Real: Snapshots of My Story "Self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening." -- George Gurdjieff I started making myself throw up when I was thirteen years old and dint stop for thirty years. I hope that the snapshots of my story and other women's stories in this book, coupled with my own healing and recovery work with women for over twenty-five years, can help you find your personal path to recovery. Within the pages of these shared experiences, please look for what touches your heart, your memories, and your fears. If one story or one exercise delivers sudden understanding or amazement (because you didn't know anyone else behaved like that), you have found your entry into your recovery path. I hope this book supports and sustains you on that path to freedom. It can be done. I was bulimic for over twenty-nine years. I've been in recovery for twenty-six years. I've seen and been part of the recovery of many women along the way.

Joan A. Lang, M.D. Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst
Joanna Poppink writes not only of the heart, but from the heart. She has been there, and shares generously of her personal struggles with bulimia. Her authenticity cannot be mistaken and gives her readers reason to be confident that she knows whereof she writes, and will not offer mere theory, nor platitudes, nor judgment. This confidence does not prove mistaken.

She has also been there as a psychotherapist--a gifted and experienced therapist, a genuine healer. This, too, comes through clearly in her book. Through many examples, exercises, and distillations of her well-earned wisdom, the author gives hope and help to women who are struggling with the pain and shame of eating disorders.

Make no mistake: this book offers no easy “fix.” The author invites her readers to undertake an admittedly difficult and often intimidating exploration of self, of the hidden meanings of symptoms and actions. She knows that one must “stay present and bear your feelings” to walk this path, and also knows how to extend help. She knows and teaches that “everything counts.” I imagine that most readers will find that they cannot work through this substantial book all at once, but will need to return to it again and again, sometimes with frustration but often, too, with joy."

Joan A. Lang, M.D.

Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst

Professor Emeritus & Former Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Saint Louis University

—Marya Hornbacher, author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
“Finally—a book that speaks beyond the stereotype of eating disorders as the ‘little girl’s disease,’ reaching out to women who have lived with these devastating disorders for years, and offering practical, sound, and insightful advice on how to begin, and sustain, real recovery.”

—Marya Hornbacher, author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Gurze Publishers
his step-by-step self-help book lays out essential guidelines for creating and supporting your ongoing recovery. It is written in conversational style, covering diverse topics, many of which are seldom mentioned in other ED books, such as spiritual depth, sexuality, the great terror, and triggers as teachers.

Like a sage guide and friend, psychotherapist Joanna Poppink also outlines the specific strategies, exercises, and activities she uses in her practice to help patients free themselves from the shame, secrecy, and isolation of living a life controlled by an eating disorder.

Interspersed are the inspiring stories of the women she has counseled, along with stories of her own personal experience with bulimia, to show how to face the challenges of these disorders and build internal strength, acquire wisdom, and move into recovery. "A lot of fortitude, creativity, determination, and strategic thinking are required to maintain an eating disorder and all of its demands," says Poppink. "If you have the strength and ability to sustain an eating disorder, then you have the strength and ability to move beyond it."

Healing Your Hungry Heart is a comprehensive, effective, recovery program that shows how to:

• Overcome triggers to emotional eating and self-criticism.
• Develop ways to feel safe and secure without resorting to eating disorder behaviors for comfort.
• Cope with tensions around relationships including friendships, romances, and family without acting out your eating disorder.
• Use your eating disorder behaviors as a metaphor to understand how you behave in other situations.
• Develop new mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual power and resiliency to cope with challenges without resorting to food or exercise rescues.

CONTENTS:

Ch 1 – Unreal to Read: Snapshots of My Story
Ch 2 – Beginning to Free Yourself
Ch 3 – Early Warning Signs
Ch 4 – How Do I Begin Recovery?
Ch 5 – Boundaries: A Challenge in Early Recovery
Ch 6 – Secrets
Ch 7 – Challenges to Eating Well
Ch 8 – Contemplations on Eating a Meal
Ch 9 – Spiritual Depth
Ch 10 – The Great Terror
Ch 11 – Recovery Check-In
Ch 12 – Sex, Stalking, and Exploitation
Ch 13 – Family
Ch 14 – Triggers as Teachers: Staying on Your Recovery Path
Appendix A – Affirmations
Appendix B – Additional Exercises and Activities for All Chapters
Appendix C – Facts about Eating Disorders and the Search for Solutions
Appendix D – Recovery Journal Prompts
Appendix E – How to Find More Helap
Recommended Readings and References

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joanna Poppink, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist with more than 25 years of experience specializing in treating adults with eating disorders. She studied psychology at UCLA and the Saybrook Institute and received her master's degree from Antioch University. She lives in Los Angeles.

REVIEWS:

"Joanna Poppink writes not only of the heart, but from the heart. Through many examples, exercises, and distillations of her well-earned wisdom, she gives hope and help to women who are struggling with the pain and shame of eating disorders."
— Joan A. Lang, MD, Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, professor emeritus ad former chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Saint Louis University

"If you struggle with food or body image, Joanna Poppink's Healing Your Hungry Heart is sure to help! Through her story and those of others, Joanna assures us that true recovery is both real and attainable. This is an important addition to the recovery bookshelf."
— Jenni Schaefer, author of Goodbye Ed, Hello Me and Life Without Ed.

"At last, it's here! A book that speaks to women of all ages who have lived with the devastating and deadly conditions called eating disorders. Healing Your Hungry Heart not only gives solid, practical advice to someone who wants to be truly recovered, but also gives advice that speaks to the heart and true identity of a real woman."
— Jeanne Rust, PhD, CEO and founder of Mirasol Eating Disorder Treatment Center