Ep 69 - Margit Berman
Acceptance & Integrity in Weight Inclusive Care with Margit Berman
Professor Margit Berman on acceptance-oriented approaches in weight inclusive practice.
In this episode, Margit shares how she first found size acceptance and HAES, her initial dislike for ACT and how she evolved to become an ACT specialist, ACT’s powerful ability to allow us and our clients to be with pain, what acceptance really is, how we avoid and alternatives to avoidance, more about Margit’s book (and important workbook!) and how the integration of frameworks all came together, how social justice and intersectionality is woven into her practice, why we need to do more than the ‘work and the importance of acting in alignment with our values.
Here Fi and Margit speak about:
Co-collaborating, alongside Janean Anderson, on the EDRD Pro ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)’ Symposium for Dietitians, find out more here.
How ACT, Health at Every Size (HAES) and size acceptance first showed up in Margit’s life.
Margit’s initial dislike for ACT, how it all turned around after a conversation with her husband and the incredible power of ACT as a framework when working with clients, both on a psychological and political level.
‘Acceptance’ as a word and a construct: how it can be imagined as a ‘feeling’ or a ‘state’ but ways in which it can be understood and interpreted more helpfully by our clients and as clinicians.
‘Avoidance’: the common things we avoid (but are generally aware of), the alternative ways we can respond to the urge to avoid (that we are less aware of) and how they can show up for us.
Margit’s book: ‘A Clinician’s Guide to Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework’ and why the integration of ACT with clinical ED treatment, weight concerns, HAES and body image just made sense!
How Margit came to this work from (white) feminism and how she has integrated justice-oriented approaches and intersectionality into her practice.
Doing the work; we MUST look to, support, elevate and pay for the works of people of colour BUT we MUST also SHOW UP and ACT.
The importance of aligning our values with our actions and how we can use our fears to know and understand what direction we should be heading in.
As mentioned in the podcast:
EDRD Pro – From Struggling to Thriving: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) for Dietitians
Women En Large (book) by Laurie Toby Edison (photographer) and Debbie Notkin (writer, poet), find it here.
A Clinician’s Guide to Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (book) by Margit Berman, find it here.
A Workbook of Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (workbook) by Margit Berman, find it here.
Sonya Renee Taylor, Poet, Activists, Author, Leader.
Me and White Supremacy (2020) (book), by Layla F. Saad, find it here.
Barriers to Self-Compassion Scale.
About Margit:
Margit I. Berman has a Ph.D. in counseling and social psychology from the University of Minnesota. She is currently Program Director and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at Augsburg University and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. She is the author of A Clinician’s Guide to Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (Routledge, 2018) and A Workbook of Acceptance-Based Approaches for Weight Concerns: The Accept Yourself! Framework (Routledge, 2018). She was a recipient of the 2015 Hitchcock Foundation Scholars Career Development award for her research and development of the Accept Yourself! intervention for women with obesity and depression. She is past chair of the Society for Counseling Psychology’s Section for the Promotion of Psychotherapy Science, and is on the editorial boards of The Counseling Psychologist and the Journal of Counseling Psychology. She is a feminist, cognitive-behavioral therapist who trains clinicians in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and self-acceptance based interventions throughout the U.S.
