Meta-Emotion Therapy for Bulimia Nervosa

Meta-Emotion Therapy is an individual form of therapy utilizing various psychological techniques (e.g., psycho-education, self-monitoring task, detached mindfulness task, Socratic questioning, behavioral experiments, and short videos). The treatment will involve 16 weekly 1 hour sessions. The treatment will be conducted one-on-one by a Provisional Psychologist. This therapist is a postgraduate psychology student who has undertaken clinical psychology training including training in the area of MET. The therapist will be working as a therapist in the QUT Clinic as part of their thesis requirements. This therapist will have weekly supervision sessions with a Registered Clinical Psychologist. This treatment focuses on meta-cognitions about emotions (eg. “Strong negative emotions mean something uncontrollable is happening and therefore I need to focus and perseverate on my negative thoughts to protect me from losing control of my eating because if I lose control of my eating I become fat and worthless”). A summary of the content covered during the treatment is as follows: Psycho-education on binge eating, purging and risks, Socialise patient to the language of MET, Create mini-formulation, Introduce self-monitoring task, Review formulation, and self-monitoring, Introduce rationale for detached mindfulness task, Introduce the role of attentional bias, Attentional Training Technique, Continue to review formulation and treatment plan, Focus on negative beliefs about emotions and their role based on the formulation, Identify the patient’s negative beliefs about emotions, Challenge negative meta-beliefs towards emotions using Socratic questioning, Challenge negative meta-beliefs towards emotions using Socratic questioning, Explore and challenge positive beliefs about cognitive coping strategies, Behavioural Experiments, Reviewing and implementing strategies and Relapse prevention.