This raises an important point, if we put ourselves in the position of trying to make clients do things they don't want to do or trying to stop clients for doing things that they want to do, they're likely to resist us directly or indirectly. It is really easy to end up in this position when working with anorexia, especially if the anorexia has reached the point where it is medically important for them to stop losing weight and put some of the weight back on.

Ideally in CT we take a collaborative stance by negotiating goals for therapy early in treatment and working with the client to accomplish things they want to accomplish. The idea is that a collaborative relationship minimizes resistance and maximizes both the client's involvement in the session and their follow-through sessions. However, this isn't simple to do if the anorexic is convinced that they need to lose more weight while others are insisting that we have to get them to eat more right away.

Certainly, it would be useful to understand what appeals to the client about restricting eating/losing weight and what they fear about eating normally and having a normal build. This could be a good start to developing treatment goals that we can work towards collaboratively.