Disclaimer: I only provide outpatient-level support to clients with eating disorders. I must refer clients who require a higher level of care.
You might be worried about looking “sick enough.” You might not “look like you have an eating disorder.” You might be thinking, “it’s just eating clean.” And yet, your relationship with food rules your life: you can’t stop thinking about it, or planning your day around (or hiding the lack of) it, or plotting against, or with, Ed (or Karen, or the other secret name you gave it).
Or, you’re stepping down from a higher level of care and are looking for someone to support you in outpatient treatment. Welcome to this next stage of recovery. You can do this.
Either way, if you’re looking for a therapist who will:
- Challenge you on diet culture, both internalized and societal
- Help you establish a sense of identity outside of your relationship to food and body
- Meet you with understanding in the moments where you’re not sure if you want to choose recovery
- Take a tough-as-nails, yet relentlessly curious and compassionate approach to your eating disorder
I might be the outpatient therapist for you.
I specialize in treating clients with an overcontrol presentation of their eating disorder versus a specific diagnosis (in other words, the next paragraph feels like you, versus you having been diagnosed specifically with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, ARFID, etc.).
Overcontrol can look and feel like:
- High levels of self-discipline and perfectionism (e.g. needing to do things “just right,” good at delaying or denying pleasure, gratification, food, etc.)
- Aversion to emotional expression or vulnerability leading to isolation and loneliness (e.g. people-pleasing, masking, not letting anyone see you hurt or cry, shoving all your emotions down, not asking for or letting anyone help)
- Preference for structure, predictability, and rules (e.g. preferring things one way, having rules for yourself and not others, feeling the need to compensate or punish yourself)
- Difficulty adapting to new or unexpected situations
- Fear of failure or rejection
I completed my clinical internship at Opal: Food + Body Wisdom, a Seattle eating disorder clinic, offering (at the time) 5-day/wk, 10- and 6-hour partial hospitalization programming, and 3-hour intensive outpatient programming. During my internship, I completed over 1,000 clinical hours hours, and over 300 direct hours of individual, family, and group therapy supporting clients with eating disorders, and the people who love them.
I pull from the following published works:
- Comorbid Eating Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (DiLossi & Harrison, 2021)
- What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat (Gordon, 2020)
- You Just Need to Lose Weight: and 19 Other Myths About Fat People (Gordon, 2020)
- The Radically Open DBT Workbook for Eating Disorders: From Overcontrol and Loneliness to Recovery and Connection (Hall, Astrachan-Fletcher & Simic, 2022)
- Trauma-Focused ACT: A Practitioner’s Guide to Working with Mind, Body, and Emotion Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Harris, 2021)
- Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families (Johnson, 2019)
- Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy: Theory and Practice for Treating Disorders of Overcontrol (Lynch, 2018)
- The Skills Training Manual for Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy: A Clinician’s Guide for Treating Disorders of Overcontrol (Lynch, 2018)
- The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotional Regulation, and Distress Tolerance (McKay, Wood, & Brantley, 2019)
- Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia (Strings, 2019)
- The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love (Taylor, 2018)
