Social Workers as Writers: An Interview with Diane Petrella, MSW
I’m so excited to interview another social worker who is also an author!
Diane is the author of Healing Emotional Eating for Trauma Survivors: Trauma-Informed Practices to Nurture a Peaceful Relationship with Your Emotions, Body, and Food (New Harbinger Publications, 2023).
Tell us about yourself.
I originally trained as a child therapist and early in my nearly 40-year career, I codeveloped the first child sexual abuse treatment program in Rhode Island. I worked extensively with child and adolescent victims of incest and other sexual assault, adults molested as children, and sexual abuse offenders. As a forensic expert witness, I conducted court-involved evaluations as well.
My work expanded to include all forms of early trauma and adverse experiences. I no longer work with children and see adults only now in my private practice. While I specialize in early trauma and emotional eating, I also work with clients addressing other issues including grief, relationship challenges, and life transitions.
When did you first start to think about the connection between trauma and emotional eating?
I learned about this connection during those years of my career as a trauma-specialist. An astute dietitian often referred her clients to me because she knew that early trauma blocked them from using the tools she offered. It was clear that trauma-related issues were getting in their way. As colleagues, she and I collaborated and this connection between trauma and emotional eating became crystal clear. For many decades now I’ve been working with clients to address how early trauma has affected their relationship with food, their bodies, and their feelings.
How did this book come about?
Ever since I was a child I’ve loved to write. My career path led me to becoming a clinical social worker but I always knew I’d write a book someday. I developed the idea for this book about 15 years ago, but my clinical practice took precedence at that time. When I was ready, I didn’t know of any other books that offered a program specifically addressing the direct link between early trauma and emotional eating and wanted to offer a resource that would fill that gap. Once I decided to start my writing journey in earnest, I took courses on book proposal development and worked with a book coach and writing mentor. It was a long process!
What does healing or recovery look like for your clients?
I don’t believe there’s a set finish line to healing. I think of healing on a continuum and it includes developing self-compassion, connection with one’s inner guidance, and wisdom. At the start of a healing journey, clients may feel triggered and experience intense emotion and engage in unproductive coping behaviors about 85 to 100 percent of the time. As they develop expanded ways of thinking about themselves and their world, learn to calm and settle nervous system dysregulation, relate to their feelings more mindfully, and connect with their inner wisdom for guidance, they begin to feel triggered less frequently and with less intensity. Healing doesn’t mean they’ll never feel triggered. At some point in the healing process, clients move down to 30, 20, or 10 percent of frequency and intensity of feeling triggered. They can live successfully with that because they’ve developed improved ways of not only handling situations differently but accepting their responses and themselves with greater self-compassion, self-trust, and wisdom.
What do social workers or social work students need to know about treating trauma?
If you experienced childhood trauma, it’s important to do your own healing work. We can only help clients to the degree that we’ve helped ourselves. Keep learning because it’s so important to get ongoing, quality training. Learn different therapeutic approaches and find what you’re most comfortable working with. Get good supervision as necessary. It’s also important to know and accept that you don’t have to be all things to all people. Refer out to other therapists or discuss with a supervisor when a client presents with challenges that feel beyond your experience or comfort level. It’s okay to take care of yourself in this way.
What advice do you have for social workers who want to write?
Get started! And don’t let fear and insecurity get in your way. If you have a book idea, know that this idea was put in your mind for a reason. It’s a gift to give to the world. And stay committed. There’s a lot that goes into writing a book and getting it published so hire a book coach or writing mentor to help and support you. For non-fiction books, you don’t write the book and then send it off to an agent or publisher. You write a book proposal first, which is basically a marketing plan for your book. This was all new to me which is why I took classes and worked with a book coach and writing mentor so I could get the tools I needed to navigate the process.
What are you reading right now?
I normally read two books at the same time, a nonfiction and fiction. I just started reading The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life, by Lisa Miller, Ph. D. I’m a holistic and spiritually oriented psychotherapist so this is right up my alley.
And because I’m Italian-American, someone suggested I read Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels, which is a collection of four books about a friendship of two women from Naples. I finished the first, My Beautiful Friend and just started the second, which is called The Story of a New Name. Ferrante is a beautiful writer.
What’s next for you?
What’s next is simply continuing my private practice and perhaps some teaching and training based on the content from my book.
Congratulations, Diane! You can find Diane through her web site at dianepetrella.com.
You can find Diane’s book on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.