Body Perfectionism: Innovative Tools from DBT, CBT, ACT, ERP and More to Improve Self-Worth

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Deanna Smith, LCSW, CEDS-C Related seminars and products

Center for Growth

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Deanna Smith, LCSW, CEDS-C, is a licensed clinical social worker, author, educator, and owner of The Center for Growth, a private practice specializing in eating disorders, body image concerns, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety disorders, and perfectionism. She has over a decade of clinical experience working with adolescents and adults across multiple levels of care and has presented in specialized spaces on proper assessment and intervention techniques to address these complex disorders. 

 

Deanna is the author of the book The Eating Disorder and Body Image Toolbox, a comprehensive, weight-inclusive resource offering over 115 evidence-based interventions, worksheets, and psychoeducational tools for clinicians. She has served as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Utah and is an author and presenter for PESI, providing professional education locally and internationally on topics including BDD, OCD, perfectionism, body image, and effective therapeutic interventions. 

 

Her clinical work is grounded in evidence-based approaches such as Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Deanna is passionate about collaborative, compassionate care and supporting meaningful, sustainable change to support long-term change in clients who are struggling with body dissatisfaction and disordered eating responses. 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Deanna Smith maintains a private practice and receives royalties as a published author. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Deanna Smith has no relevant non-financial relationships.

Additional Info

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For a more detailed outline that includes times or durations of time, if needed, please contact cepesi@pesi.com.

Objectives

1. Differentiate adaptive versus maladaptive perfectionism.
2. Conduct a case conceptualisation for clients with disordered eating, body image, and perfectionism.
3. Utilise cognitive restructuring to challenge negative perfectionistic beliefs about the self.
4. Integrate clients’ values related to food, weight, and body into treatment to increase motivation for change.
5. Choose distress tolerance skills to assist clients with managing food and body image triggers.
6. Utilise a self-compassion practice to decrease perfectionistic self-criticism.

Outline

Pressure to Portray a Perfect Image
Myths and Realities of Perfectionism

• Functions of perfectionism: gain approval, feel in control, compensate for shame
• Key differences between adaptive versus maladaptive perfectionism
• Relationships between perfectionism, disordered eating, and body image
• Disordered eating behaviours typically used by perfectionists
• The role of diet culture in reinforcing perfectionism
• The changing nature of beauty standards
• Social anxiety and appearance-related isolation
• How to help clients see the costs of perfectionism

Assessment and Case Conceptualisation
Overcontrolled or Out of Control?

• Top signs that your client might be struggling with perfectionism
• How to explore the impact of perfectionism on functioning
• Key assessment tools for perfectionism
• How to take a body image assessment
• Eating disorders screenings
• How to talk with clients about food-related behaviours
• Case conceptualisation for clients with perfectionism-related body dissatisfaction
• How to determine when a higher level of care or specialist is necessary
• Case study

DBT, CBT, ACT and Other Interventions
Clinical Tools to Shift Beliefs and Behaviours

• Uncover internalised and externalised perfectionistic expectations
• DBT middle path and decision-making skills for clients who polarise
• Cognitive restructuring for self-worth and selfesteem beliefs
• How to help clients tolerate fears of disappointment
• Strategies to reduce common body imagerelated avoidance
• CBT practices to promote flexible thinking
• Inference-based interventions for reality challenging
• How to decrease anxious reasoning and comparison-making
• ACT interventions to identify values related to food, weight, and body
• Self-compassion practices to decrease perfectionistic self-criticism
• Distress tolerance skills for body image triggers
• Inhibitory learning strategies to promote impulse control
• Mental flexibility practice for fear foods
• Exposure and response prevention techniques for lowering food fears
• Inference-based techniques to decrease food obsessions
• Construct a perfectionism exposure hierarchy
• Intuitive eating to improve relationship with food and body
• Case study

Clinical Considerations
Provide the Best Care for Clients with Perfectionism

• Troubleshoot top barriers to treatment
• Tools for working with clients who have limited insight into their symptoms
• How to integrate treatment interventions from multiple modalities
• Top relapse prevention strategies
• How to do this work when you’re not an eating disorders specialist
• Involve healthcare providers and dieticians
• When and when not to recommend support groups
• Strategies to bolster clients’ social support systems
• Impact of the therapist’s own perfectionism and body/food relationship
• Cultural considerations
• Limitations of the research and potential risks

Target Audience

• Counsellors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Psychiatrists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Addiction Counsellors
• Other Mental Health Professionals
• Nurses
• Physicians