The No-Resistance Method of Eating Disorder Treatment
Barbara Cole, Ph.D., MFT.

The No-Resistance Method of Eating Disorder Treatment is used by the staff at the Victorian of Newport Beach to promote women effectively fighting their own eating disorders. This method was developed by Dr. Barbara Cole, a specialist in the treatment of eating disorders and the Clinical Director of the Victorian of Newport Beach. It has been utilized in residential, private practice and intervention treatment settings to obtain a positive outcome with those suffering from eating disorders. The No-Resistance Method can be studied in more detail in the upcoming publications by Dr. Cole titled, “ The Eating Disorder Solution” (Trafford/Doubleday), “ Successful Eating Disorder Intervention”, (Trafford/Winter), and “ The No-Resistance Method of Eating Disorder Treatment for Practitioners”.

Dr. Cole’s prior publications include Gifts of Sobriety (Hazelden Publishing and Information), Successful Intervention (Winter Publishing), Don’t Tell a Soul (Rosen Publishing), Alex The Great (Rosen Publishing), Color and You, (Revelli, Inc.) and more. She has been in private practice as a marriage and family therapist in Newport Beach, Corona del Mar and Los Angeles for many years, and adds to a wealth of experience her years as a clinician at The Betty Ford Center and prior to that the Program Director of many licensed treatment facilities in northern California. Dr. Cole has a bachelor’s degree in World & Comparative Literature, a master’s degree in Creative Writing and English, a second master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, and doctorate degrees in Psychology, hypnotherapy certification and licensure. She is a member of the American Association of Marriage & Family Therapists as well as a member of the International Association for Eating Disorder Professionals. She has dedicated her life to making unnecessary suffering optional.

The No-Resistance Method (“NRM”) promotes healing by acknowledging that eating disorders are first and foremost a set of disordered thoughts, separate and split apart from a person’s healthy, normal, common sense thoughts. These thoughts become increasingly concrete, otherwise understood as ‘black and white’, or ‘concrete’, as the thought process of malnourishment becomes more pronounced. NRM works around the usual resistance found in the rigid thought process by having the victim of an eating disorder become educated about their own disordered thinking, and then turn their healthy set of thoughts against their unhealthy set of thoughts.

NRM utilizes several assumptions that make working effectively against eating disordered thinking possible: 1) Eating disorders are trackable, traceable, knowable and curable, 2) eating disorders are not difficult to treat, 3) confusion about what an eating disorder is and how to effectively treat it between practitioners and families promotes the progression of an eating disorder, 4) individual and family education utilizing a simple, easily understandable method eliminates the confusion and leads to a lack of resistance by the one suffering with the eating disorder. Further, a gradual ‘step-down’ in structure (from intensive/residential or inpatient to outpatient/aftercare) when healing from an active eating disorder, is the very best way to put an eating disorder in permanent remission.

The Victorian of Newport Beach is a residential treatment program for adult women where the No-Resistance Method is utilized. Over the past 4 ½ years, Dr. Cole and her staff have helped many women to transition from imprisonment within their own mindset and behaviors to a state of freedom, autonomy and independence. Families participate, along with Victorian clients, in becoming quickly and simply educated as to what an eating disorder actually is, where it comes from, and how to successfully heal from same. The calm, structured environment promotes integration into every day living without disordered eating. Clients can come into the Victorian at the residential level and then move on to the Lido Continuing Care Program, participating in a return to college, volunteer work or employment (or a combination of these activities).

If you or someone you care about has an eating disorder, arguing with them over their food choices and habits only makes the disorder worse over time. Learning about the No-Resistance Method makes this otherwise difficult to treat disorder much easier to understand and cope with for all concerned. For more information, read The Eating Disorder Solution (expected publication is approximately October 2005) and/or contact Dr. Cole via her website at www.drbarbaracole.com.

 

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