Position: Senior staff psychologist, Counseling and Psychological Services, New Brunswick
Length of Service: Since June 2005; prior to that with Livingston College Counseling Services
Residence: Somerset
Food as a metaphor Deering is one of seven senior staff psychologists at Counseling and Psychological Services where she sees 15 to 20 students a week in individual therapy. She also conducts therapy support groups for students with eating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating. In these groups, the topic of food is verboten. “I don’t view food as the problem, but rather a metaphor for how a person relates to the world and those around them,” Deering said. Disordered eating occurs when food gets abnormally wrapped up in emotions – “it’s about emotions management.” Deering compares eating issues to other addictions like alcohol, but said they’re more complex. “You can give up alcohol, but without food you can’t exist. You need food to sustain the body.” The group offers a safe place where troubled eaters can discover their “emotional triggers,” gain insight, and make informed changes.A team approach Aside from running the groups, Deering coordinates the Rutgers Eating Disorders Treatment Team, which involves close collaboration among university psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, and nurse practitioners on each case. She said it is essential that students be seen by a psychiatrist, at the Hurtado Health Center or privately, because of the overlap between eating disorders and other problems, such as depression. The transition of Counseling and Psychological Services from the separate colleges to its present affliliation with Health Services has helped strengthen the team effort. “It’s much easier now to coordinate care – regardless of which point a person comes into the system,” Deering said. Support groups are not mandatory; for some, they may not be appropriate, she said. But anyone who wants to participate in a group also must be in individual therapy.
Early achiever Deering, the youngest of three girls raised by their Jamaican-born mother in the South Bronx, attended Cardinal Spellman High School. She graduated 11th in her class, and went on to Brown.University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology. She taught high school math and chemistry, and worked as a trainer in human resources for a Fortune 500 company in Boston. She also served as an admissions officer for Lesley University’s School of Management, while completing her master’s degree in education at Cambridge College.
A boy named Eddie It was at the Boston firm where she discovered her calling. One of Deering’s responsibilities was helping inner-city teenagers get jobs with the company, which is how she met Eddie. He may have seemed beyond help to others, but Deering took him under her wing. “I met his Mom, engaged him in conversation, learned what he was juggling in his life,” she said. She offered him advice on grooming and manners, but was “never disrespectful of his manhood.” And Eddie turned around, achieving a successful career in the Navy. Deering dedicated her dissertation to Eddie. The topic: coping strategies, adjustment, and persistence of black men in predominantly white colleges and universities.
A home at Rutgers In 1995, Deering came to Rutgers to pursue a doctorate in counseling psychology. She liked the field’s emphasis on prevention and wanted to work with students. She held several jobs, from residence adviser to an assistant in the dean’s office at the Graduate School of Education, then spent three years as an intern and postdoc at the Livingston Counseling Center. She joined the New Brunswick–College Avenue Campus counseling center nearly two years ago when there was a vacancy and expressed an interest in developing a specialty in eating disorders. Aprroximately one-third of Deering’s caseload involves students with eating disorders. About 60 students come to the center reporting some form of eating issue as a presenting problem, which she believes represents only a fraction of cases universitywide. “The numbers are growing,” she said. The prevalence of eating disorders among college students nationwide is estimated at 5 to 15 percent, the problem particularly acute in female athletes. So far, Deering has encountered only two men who have sought help for eating issues. “Men deal with eating differently,” she said. “You’re more likely to find them in the gym working two hours-plus a day.”Students do get better Deering was trained psychodynamically, but she incorporates cognitive-behavioral techniques into therapy as well as “energy psychology,” which includes relaxation exercises and meditation. Treatment is hard work and can take time, but patients do improve. “I see young people coming to new realizations, learning to navigate parental relationships, becoming more accepting about all relationships,” Deering said. “When someone from an abusive background says, ‘I felt hurt,’ or sheds a tear, I call that improvement.”
Cool stuff Deering and her husband, Scott, an IT consultant, are parents to five-year-old twin girls. She is a drummer, who loves Afro-Cuban jazz and plays percussion in her church orchestra. An athlete in high school and a one-time basketball coach, Deering is also an avid curler – kind of like bowling-on-ice and a member of the Plainfield Curling Club in South Plainfield, New Jersey.