Disordered Eating and Body Image
Disordered Eating and Body Image
Despite recent movements toward mental health and body acceptance, research shows eating disorders are on the rise. Mend Center for Psychotherapy offers outpatient counseling options for a wide range of challenges individuals are facing today with disordered eating and body image.
Disordered Eating and Body Image
Our unique personal experiences and struggles, combined with society’s conflicting messages about food and body image, can create real vulnerability to developing unhealthy relationships with food and our bodies.
As a result, many engage in disordered eating behaviors like restrictive eating, bingeing, or compensatory/purging actions. Sometimes these fit diagnostic criteria for anorexia, bulimia, or binge-eating disorder, but often, they’re less defined.
No matter how these issues show up, these patterns can feel like an isolating, endless cycle. Therapy can provide a space to understand what’s beneath the surface, gain insight into deeper emotional struggles, and offer tools to address symptoms in the present.
What To Expect In Therapy
Our eating disorder treatment is trauma-informed and integrative, blending various therapeutic approaches to create a treatment plan that’s tailored to each person’s unique needs. We utilize theory and techniques from the following:
Evidence-Based Approaches
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and Internal Family Systems (IFS) provide concrete tools to reduce distress, shift thinking patterns, and improve coping skills. These approaches introduce strategies early on for immediate, “here and now” support.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Focuses on uncovering the deeper emotional patterns behind disordered eating and body image. It helps explore past experiences, long-standing beliefs, and relational dynamics that fuel or even mask these struggles.
Psychoeducation
Education plays a crucial role in reducing shame and increasing agency. Clients are guided in understanding how disordered eating and body image issues develop. Your therapist may provide reading materials and optional homework to further your education.
Clinical Considerations
Before beginning therapy, all clients are screened to ensure outpatient treatment is an appropriate and safe level of care. Ongoing collaboration around medical suitability is part of the therapeutic process. In some cases, we may require clients to work concurrently with a registered dietitian or medical doctor. With client consent, we will coordinate care with these providers to ensure comprehensive support.
Ready to Begin?
If you're curious about whether this approach might be a good fit, please reach out and schedule a free 20 minute consult call.