Understand what the rules are doing
Restriction and control usually developed because they worked, often during something genuinely hard. Treating them as stupid habits misses why they are so difficult to put down.
Food stops being the thing you manage all day.
Therapy for disordered eating and the anxiety, control and self-worth sitting underneath it. Virtual throughout New York and Vermont, in person in Patchogue.
Book a free consult
Fifteen minutes, free, and nothing to prepare.
Prefer to call or text? 631-371-4888
- Focus
- Restriction, food guilt, compensating, and rules that keep multiplying.
- Methods
- CBT, Internal Family Systems and somatic work.
- Who
- Gen Z and Millennial women.
- Sessions
- Virtual across New York and Vermont, in person in Patchogue.
Insurance & payment
Select New York plans accepted: Aetna, Northwell Direct, UnitedHealthcare and Optum. Vermont clients and anyone out of network are private pay, and a sliding scale is available.
How it usually presents
It rarely arrives looking like an emergency.
Most people describing disordered eating are describing a set of rules that made sense one at a time. The problem is the number of them, and how much of the day they now take.
- Rules about food that have quietly multiplied over years.
- Eating being fine until somebody else is watching.
- Deciding a day is ruined by one meal.
- Exercise that is arithmetic rather than movement.
- Thinking about the next meal through the whole of the current one.
- Other people saying you are disciplined about something that feels compulsory.
How the work goes
Underneath the rules, then the rules.
Take the moral weight out of food
Good and bad, earned and owed, clean and ruined. The language is doing a lot of the damage, and it can be examined directly.
Work with the part that is scared to stop
There is usually a part of you convinced that letting go means everything falls apart. Arguing with it does not work. Understanding it does.
Rebuild a life with more in it
As food takes up less of the day, something has to fill the space. That is part of the work, not an afterthought to it.
Please read this part
Some situations need more than weekly therapy.
Eating disorders can be medically serious. If you are experiencing significant weight loss, fainting, heart symptoms, purging or a medical complication, outpatient talk therapy on its own is not the right level of care, and I will say so rather than take you on and hope.
In that situation the right step is a team: a physician, often a dietitian, and sometimes a higher level of care. I would rather help you find that than be the only person in the room. If you are in crisis or unsafe, contact emergency services or call or text 988 in the United States.
Common questions
A few honest things before you book.
- Do I need an eating disorder diagnosis to come in?
- No. A great deal of disordered eating never meets diagnostic criteria and still takes an enormous amount of a person's life. You do not have to qualify for anything to get help with your relationship with food.
- Do you work alongside a dietitian or doctor?
- Where that is the right setup, yes. Coordinated care is common in this work, and with your consent I am glad to be one part of a team rather than working in isolation.
- What if I am not sure it is bad enough?
- That doubt is close to universal, and it is not a reliable measure. The free consult exists partly for this: fifteen minutes to describe what is happening and get an honest answer about whether this is the right kind of help.
- Is this the same as your body image work?
- They are connected but not identical. Body image work is about how you see and value yourself. Eating disorder work also involves behavior around food, and sometimes medical considerations that body image work does not.
Related
What else I work on, and where.
- Self-esteem and self-worthThe inner critic, approval seeking, and worth that moves with feedback.
- AnxietyOverthinking, anticipation, social anxiety and physical tension.
- Perfectionism and people pleasingPerfectionism, people pleasing, boundaries and the fear of being too much.
- Relationship issuesAttachment patterns, over-giving, jealousy and losing yourself in a relationship.
- Life transitionsGraduating, moving, career changes, breakups and identity shifts.
- Trauma and PTSDTrauma responses, hypervigilance, shutdown and the past showing up in the present.
You can describe it before you have a name for it.
Fifteen minutes, free, and an honest answer about whether this is the right level of support for what is going on.
Book a free consult
Prefer to call or text? 631-371-4888
Insurance accepted for select New York plans: Aetna, Northwell Direct, UnitedHealthcare and Optum. Private pay and sliding scale available everywhere, including Vermont.