Re-Versing the Numbers

Simultaneously devastating and difficult to understand, eating disorders present unique challenges to therapists. By trying to treat these physical and mental ailments, they often come into conflict with their patients. And that’s where award-winning author and celebrated poet Cynthia Gustavson’s “Re-Versing the Numbers,” a poetry workbook for eating disorders, can help.

Designed to be used not only by mental health professionals, but also by individual readers, this guidebook addresses the need to make cognitive and behavioral changes from the holistic, artistic side of things. Gustavson writes in the introduction to “Re-Versing the Numbers:”

“As a psychotherapist, I often see clients with eating disorders who have been through non-helpful behavioral programs. Behaviorism is only part of the answer. Even cognitive change is affected by feelings, and if those feelings remain hidden, then little can be changed.”

This guidebook will help bring those feelings into the light so that they can be acknowledge and addressed, and it will help struggling patients connect both with their therapists and with themselves. Recovery cannot be made “easy”–but Gustavson has certainly made it easier.