Dr. Karin Lawson shares her personal experience of transitioning from Clinical Director in our comprehensive program to our Director of Embrace, the new binge eating recovery program at Oliver-Pyatt Centers. Dr. Lawson is pleased to introduce you to Embrace.
As you may or may not know, I made a shift for myself at Oliver-Pyatt Centers this summer and left my beloved Casa Verde to open Embrace, the new binge eating recovery program at Oliver-Pyatt Centers. There are so many things that excite me about Embrace! I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of those and talk about my decision to change programs.
As expected, in Embrace we continue to teach and guide with a mindful eating foundation lending toward an Intuitive Eating approach and practice. We also have many similar groups as we do in our other programs; such as DBT, Family and Relationships, Body Image, and Interpersonal Process Group. In addition, we have added a new group to OPC, called Psychology of Movement, led by Senior Primary Therapist Megan Bendig. This group is based on an assessment Dr. Wendy Oliver-Pyatt created for her book Fed Up! which explores one’s history of movement, early messages around exercise, and identity with movement. Another special piece of Embrace is the twice per week grocery outing. Aside from navigating the logistics of buying groceries for the townhouse, our women work on any anxiety, fears, or triggers that correspond with the grocery store experience. My third, and definitely not last, appealing pull of Embrace was starting the Shame and Resilience group. Shame and Resilience is de-stigmatizing, empowering, and validating; addressing the fact that we all experience shame, but don’t have to let it paralyze us. We can become resilient to this difficult human emotion.
The programmatic change in my professional life is not surprising to me. I like change. In my opinion, change is energizing and adventurous. What did surprise me was how attached I had become to Casa Verde overall… the space, the schedule, and (not surprisingly) the clients and team. It goes to show even when you have yourself pegged and think you are predictable in one way or another, we are always growing and changing as people. Experiences impact us. People impact us. Even consistency and routine impact us.
That is actually how our team creates change with our clients at Embrace. We show them love and support, boundaries and structure, new adventures and opportunities. So, while it can be uncomfortable, because there is attachment and loss of a former routine, there is an enlivening as women choose new options for their life.
I encourage you to be open to your own assumptions about yourself and allow some space for those things that may be more enlivening, even though it may mean letting go of the comfortable, predictable norm.
“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.” – C. JoyBell C.
For more information about Oliver-Pyatt Centers and newly introduced Embrace, a binge eating recovery program and Clementine, a residential program exclusively for adolescents girls please call 866.511.HEAL (4325), visit our website, subscribe to our blog, and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.