Chicago Behavioral Health, LLC is now Equipoise Teletherapy, the telehealth side of our practice.
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We will help you understand why you repeat behaviors that you want to stop, and enable you to regain control of your life.
In our view, therapy is a guided process that supports your autonomy, rather than a directed program that requires your compliance.
The ultimate goal is to help you understand the underlying motivation for unwanted behaviors so you can choose to make the changes necessary to overcome the urge to repeat them.
We believe that most unwanted behaviors are motivated by the need to protect autonomy and resist imposed control. Reevaluating and reframing the experience of being controlled, makes the need to resist it unnecessary, eliminating the need to engage in unwanted behaviors. This allows you to focus instead on making only those choices that you want, improving your health, mood, and quality of life.
Together, we can unlock the root causes of your unwanted behavior and find a solution to end them.
Emotional Eating
Binge Eating Disorder
Repetitive Dieting
Body Image Concerns
Alcohol Abuse
Compulsive Shopping
Body-focused Behaviors
Substance Abuse
Are you an emotional eater?
The questions in our online assessment describe the thoughts and feelings that accompany the eating behaviors we address at Equipoise.
8 Keys To End Emotional Eating
Get our new book with an insightful look at the psychology behind emotional eating and other unwanted behaviors.
"While diet advice typically aims at identifying triggers and strengthening self-restraint, clinical health psychologist Farkas contends that emotional eating is primarily owing to the rejection of the control necessitated by dieting--a desire to "be bad." Farkas seeks to help readers change their mind-sets about dieting through the use of his eight keys, which include breaking the diet mentality, resolving inner conflict, and upgrading coping mechanisms."
"This excellent, short, and practical book offers many refreshing ideas and perspectives...A valuable book with many interesting insights in line with HG understandings."
"Filled with useful tips and compassionate expertise, this book could help anyone to become more conscious around their eating, whether you're experiencing issues or not. For those who suffer most, it could mean the end of emotional eating and painful dieting, and hope for a better relationship to food and life."
8 Keys to Ending Emotional Eating offers insights into emotional eating that I have not read/heard before. The information is easy to read, in a personable, engaging writing style. The content is detailed, well informed, and supported with clinical examples. I see this book as part of a healthy therapeutic relationship with a therapist who resonates with you, who feels into, senses into your struggle and offers the support you need to both come to awareness of and appreciate your past and then take the next steps to make changes for a healthier relationship with food and with yourself.
Your search is over if you are an emotional eater, and you have time and again tried and failed to “will yourself” into a diet only to end up self-sabotaging. The lessons in this book are not only sound, especially amidst the endless mounds of ... (Read Full Review)
This is an excellent book. It’s straight to the point, has strategies and exercises that are simple to implement into my life and has helped me transform from an emotional eater into a “normal” eater. I have read a million diet books and none have helped me as much as this book- probably because it’s not ...(Read Full Review)
Howard S. Farkas, Ph.D.
Founder and owner, Equipoise Teletherapy/Chicago Behavioral Health, LLC
Take Back Control of Your Life
I believe that emotional eating and other unwanted, self-defeating behaviors are not due to a failure of self-control or weak willpower; instead, they're an active, motivated response to reassert autonomy when you feel controlled by external forces.
This means that you're experiencing a conflict between two sides of yourself: one that feels the need to comply with social expectations, and the other that wants autonomy when those expectations feel unreasonable. At that point, though, asserting autonomy can look more like defiant, self-defeating behavior.
That's where we can help.
We work with you to help resolve this internal conflict and help you negotiate a compromise between the two sides battling within you.
You are not alone in this struggle. We can help.
