Disordered Eating & Eating Disorder Therapy
It can be frustrating, difficult, and often isolating, to know your relationship with food needs to change but not knowing how or where to begin.
Often other people don’t understand or give well meaning, but unhelpful, advice.
They’re not seeing the anxiety, guilt, food noise or constant negative self talk that you are experiencing. And that you’re fed up carrying.
So, it's completely understandable that you might feel stuck and I recognise the courage it can take to speak to someone about this. I also understand that it might be something that you want support with, but at the same time you have concerns about what recovery might look like and mean. I’m here to help you.
I have chosen to specialise in this area because of my own lived experience of disordered eating, an eating disorder and exercise dependency. This has given me insight which helps me to support you. I know what it’s like to live with thoughts and behaviours around food or exercise that can overwhelm each day and impact your quality of life. I also know what it is to address and recover from this.
It is very possible to form a healthy & fulfilling relationship with your body, exercise and food regardless of how difficult that might seem now.
I am able to work with a full range of issues, including diagnosed eating disorders (bulimia, binge eating, anorexia and other restrictive or purge disorders).
Disordered eating, eating disorders and exercise dependency appear in many shapes and forms. This might include:
A cycle of binging, restricting and compensating
Yo-yo dieting and never feeling good enough about your weight or shape
Intense negative feelings about how you look or what you have eaten
Worrying that you have lost control (or will do) over how much you eat
Thoughts dominated by food, weight or body shape
Restricting amounts of food, certain foods or food groups
Having safe foods that feel easier to stick to
Eating in secret
Fluctuating between eating lots and eating little
Having rules about food and / or exercise
Exercising more than you mean to and feeling unable to take rest time
Exercising to justify what you eat or have eaten
Vomitting or using laxatives to try to get rid of calories
Chewing & spitting food
Please note that I currently only work with people 18+.
MY APPROACH
Our first starting point is a conversation (usually on zoom, but can be via telephone) to see how we might get on working together. It’s important that you feel comfortable talking to me, and we check that I am the appropriate person to support you.
Following that, if we decide we are a good fit, then I will send you some information and a lifestyle questionnaire so that we can start moving forward together from our first session.
Some of the thing we might work on during our sessions together are:
Recognising where we are starting from & what changes are most important for you
Gaining insight about your eating patterns and behaviours around food
Exploring what might have contributed to your relationship with food
Managing thoughts, worries and responses about food and weight
Understanding food as a coping mechanism for you
Developing alternative coping methods
What we actually work on will be unique to you as your relationship with food and your body is individual to you. So while I may draw from various evidence based modalities (such as CBT and schema therapy), I always mindful that our approach first and foremost needs to make sense to you. So I integrate other kinds of therapy modalities as and when needed (eg somatic work, NLP, mindfulness)
HOW SESSIONS WORK
Therapy sessions are for 60 minutes and usually start off either weekly or fortnightly in order to have some momentum. These are usually scheduled at the same set time, but some flexibility is available. We will then decide together during the course of therapy when to reduce or finish sessions.
I work on an open-ended basis and you are not committed to a certain number of sessions. However, from my experience in working in this area, time to really understand the patterns of thoughts, feelings, thoughts and behaviours and where they might come from is more likely to lead to long term sustained change.
Therefore I recommend making a commitment to yourself for at least 10-12 sessions in order to let the work and changes happen. We will review as we go along (usually every 4-6 sessions) to check in with how things are going.
FEES & LOCATION
Pre-session zoom call (30 mins): No charge
1 hour sessions: £65
Sessions can be in-person at my therapy room in Gorebridge, Midlothian (EH23 4LD) or online via Zoom. I can also offer outdoor sessions from Gorebridge or nearby Vogrie Park .
My usual working hours are: Monday: 1pm - 6:30pm, Tuesday: 9am - 5:30pm, Wednesday: 3pm - 6:30pm and Thursday: 9am - 4pm