Eating Disorders
What is an eating disorder / disordered eating?
Eating disorders and disordered eating encompass a wide range of painful or harmful experiences when it comes to your relationship to food and your body. They are complex psychological experiences that involve far more than food or weight. They often develop as coping strategies in response to emotional pain, trauma, perfectionism, relational stress, or a sense of internal disconnection.
Your experience may or may not fall into a diagnostic category; this is not a focus in our work together. While symptoms may appear through restrictive eating, bingeing, purging, over-exercising, or obsessive food-related thoughts, their roots go much deeper into emotions, identity, worth, safety, and how a woman relates to her body and her life.
These patterns are not choices, failures, or signs of weakness. They are ways the mind and body try to cope, communicate, and survive when something deeper feels unbearable or impossible to express in words.
Eating disorders often arise in the space between wanting control and feeling out of control; between wanting belonging and feeling misunderstood; and between longing for peace and feeling at war with yourself.
They touch every layer of a woman’s life: emotions, relationships, identity, the body, and the nervous system. And while two women may share similar symptoms, the story underneath is always profoundly individual.
Why I Work Primarily With Women
In my practice, I work primarily with women because the stage of recovery I support involves rebuilding a deeper relationship with the body. For many women, this includes hormones, cycles, puberty, reproductive health, sensitivity, and the broader social and emotional context of being a woman. These experiences shape not only how an eating disorder might develop, but also what long-term healing requires.
Women’s bodies move in rhythms and cycles, hold stories in unique ways, and respond to life differently. This stage of healing asks for an attunement to those subtleties. My practice is designed to meet women in that terrain with clarity, steadiness, and care.
How This Might Be Showing Up for You
I work with eating disorders from a primarily non-pathologizing perspective. You do not need a referral or diagnosis to seek out therapy. I specialize in working with eating disorders and disordered eating from a depth perspective, meaning we will focus on your relationship with your body, from a holistic, whole-person perspective.
You may have tried different forms of therapy or support, but something still feels missing.
You might still be engaging in cycles of restricting, purging, or bingeing and feel anywhere on the spectrum from uncertain to fully ready for change. I work with women who are ready to shift these patterns now, as well as those who are ambivalent, overwhelmed, or simply wanting steady support while they figure out what recovery means for them.
You may no longer engage in the behaviours you once did, yet that harsh, critical voice still lives somewhere inside you, narrating your choices, your appearance, your worth.
You might have followed the protocol, restored your physical health, done everything “right,” and still feel disconnected from your body or from yourself.
You may notice the same patterns of your eating disorder showing up in other areas of your life: the need for control, the desire to numb or distract, the fear of feeling certain emotions, the difficulty trusting yourself.
You might feel tied to a meal plan or a more mechanical way of eating and long to feel safe enough in your body to listen to your own cues. You want ease, intuition, and a sense of peace without fearing relapse.
If you have been through inpatient or highly structured treatment, you may be grateful for the stabilization and still feel the impact of such an intense protocol. Even years later, you may not feel like yourself again.
My Personal Understanding
My understanding of eating disorders is both personal and professional. For many years, I was at war with my body in nearly every way. The process of finding my way into a truly peaceful relationship with my body and myself has shaped how I work with women, allowing me to see beyond labels and diagnoses and to help women return to a sense of home within themselves.
My Approach to Eating Disorder Recovery
One of the biggest challenges in healing our relationship with food or our bodies is that food is something we meet many times a day. When food feels loaded with fear, punishment, avoidance, or pressure, it can wear on you in ways you may not even realize at first.
Yet many women are surprised by how much can shift in their relationship with food even when we are not talking about food directly. Eating disorders are about food and not about food and very much about food all at the same time.
When we trace this back, our relationship with food is like a tree with many branches and roots. It is connected to nourishment, which in our early lives is tied to our caregivers and our earliest experiences of being held, fed, and cared for. Nourishment extends far beyond food. It is linked to emotional expression, culture, family, safety, belonging, pleasure, and connection. Food is biological, relational, symbolic, cultural, and deeply personal. It carries layers of meaning whether we realize it or not.
This is why my approach includes talking about things that seem far removed from food, and also returning gently to food itself. Everything is connected. One feeds the other.
In our work together, we look at the emotional, relational, existential, and nervous-system layers that shape your experience. I weave together aspects of Existential Therapy, Emotion Focused Therapy, Intuition, and Nature-based approaches in our work together. We explore what your patterns with food and your body have been trying to communicate or protect. We honour the parts of you that have been coping in the best ways they knew how.
I draw from several therapeutic approaches, including Existential Psychotherapy, Depth Psychology, Emotion-Focused Therapy, mindfulness, and intuitive, nature-based practices. Each of these helps us explore meaning, identity, emotional experience, embodiment, connection, and the deeper roots of your relationship with yourself.
My work is grounded in sovereignty and in the natural intelligence of the body. We move at a pace that feels steady and respectful, creating safety, trust, and spaciousness. The goal is not to force change, but to create an environment where change becomes possible, meaningful, and sustainable.
What We Might Explore Together
Every woman’s relationship with food and her body has its own history, meaning, and emotional landscape. Our work will depend on your story and your goals, but we may explore things like:
• the emotions, beliefs, and fears beneath eating disorder patterns
• the parts of you that learned to cope through control, avoidance, or perfectionism
• the internal voice that criticizes, pressures, or overwhelms you
• the deeper stories you hold about worth, identity, and being in a body
• the patterns that show up in relationships and self-protection
• the nervous system states that shape eating, embodiment, and emotion
• your relationship with hunger, fullness, pleasure, rest, and desire
• the impact of past treatment, medical interventions, or structured protocols
• rebuilding trust with your body and its cues
• supporting regular and adequate nourishment in a way that feels safe, doable, and moving toward attunement
• reconnecting with intuition, gentleness, and choice
• grounding in nature-based wisdom, rhythm, and regulation
The focus is always on creating a more spacious, compassionate, and grounded relationship with yourself and with your body.