We really want to help you overcome your eating disorder
Many people struggle with eating – feeling out of control, eating too much, not eating enough; having lost touch with the normal eating process. Maybe you feel ashamed, guilty, embarrassed; maybe it’s made you self-conscious around other people or you simply avoid eating out altogether. Perhaps your weight has suffered – going too high, dropping too low, or maybe yo-yoing in-between. You wish the whole problem would just go away, and that you could live your life doing what really matters to you.
We understand these struggles, and we really want to help make a difference in your life. We’ve got experience helping people through this, and disentangling you from the eating disorder. We make sure we get to know you and understand what it’s like for you personally, so that together we can work out what would work best for you. We meet with you regularly to hear about how things are going, to support and encourage you, and join with you in the fight against the eating disorder each step of the way. No matter how hard it gets, we stand by you and offer support and advice as you step away from the eating disorder and into new ways of being.
If you’d like more information or have questions, please see below.
What does eating disorder treatment look like?
The first step will be for your psychologist to understand your difficulties with eating, so they can get to know you and the particular struggles you face. This is also the time for you to get to know your psychologist to make sure their style and personality suits you. You’ll then work out with your psychologist a plan for steps you can take to turn your eating around.
For most people, the next step is directly targeting ways to improve your eating, to quickly get your eating on track, and drastically reduce any binging and other aspects of the eating disorder. As your eating improves, you can start focussing on the things that influenced the development of the eating disorder in the first place. Through this, you’ll be able to feel much happier about yourself as a person, more calm and relaxed, and able to cope with the challenging things in your life. You’ll develop tools to not just better manage the eating disorder, but to truly break free from it, so that you no longer have to worry about food and your body. Your relationship with food, and with yourself, will become healthy and strong.
The treatment we use is called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy-Enhanced (CBT-E), which is a form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) developed specifically for eating disorders. It’s the best treatment available. It suits most people, and most people do really well with it. If you’d like more information about CBT-E, click here.
If CBT-E doesn’t suit you, other options are Interpersonal Therapy (IPT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Narrative Therapy. Each of these also has strong evidence for helping people recover from eating disorders. IPT focuses specifically on how the eating disorder has affected your relationships, and on strengthening your relationships to help you recover from the eating disorder. ACT works on helping you respond to situations in new ways, in accordance with your personal values, so that the eating disorder stops having a place in your life. Narrative Therapy helps you discover and think through the stories the eating disorder has created about your life, and developing new stories for your life. Your psychologist will talk with you to help decide which treatment would suit you best.
Unfortunately we are not currently taking new clients. For other treatment options for Eating Disorders, please click here.
