Some of my clients share that they believe they are better people with their eating disorder. For some women, it feels like an eating disorder shows they have control, and that feels empowering to them. It can feel this way at the beginning but eventually, you surrender all of your control to your eating disorder. You are no longer the one calling the shots but it’s your eating disorder. You don’t want to feel like this anymore but you don’t know any other way to live. You might be skeptical that therapy can even help you. It’s hard to know if it’s worth the risk.
What is eating disorder therapy?
Eating disorder therapy involves working with a therapist who has the specialized training to know how to help you overcome your eating disorder. Often times when you have an eating disorder, it is helpful to use a team approach. I recommend my clients work with an eating disorder dietitian and a medical provider to monitor their physical heal and nutrition. What I do in eating disorder therapy with my clients is help them recognize the underlying issues and experiences that have contributed to their eating disorder. As much as your eating disorder is about food and body image, it’s also about so much more. What you do with food and how you feel about your body are symptoms of negative beliefs you may be holding onto.
Eating disorder therapy focuses on identifying the negative beliefs and where they came from. You can learn to challenge these beliefs and focus on viewing yourself in more helpful ways. How you feel about yourself holds a lot more power over you than your relationship with food does.
Why should I go to eating disorder therapy?
There are probably hundreds of reasons why you going to eating disorder therapy might be beneficial for you. I’m happy to keep writing blog posts on the reasons why you should go to eating disorder therapy but here are some things to think about for now.
Reasons to go to eating disorder therapy:
1. Eating disorder therapy can help you feel better physically
Here is the reality, eating disorders cause physical complications in the body that you may not even realize. In fact, if a doctor isn’t trained in treating eating disorders, they can also miss them. Honestly, getting my clients to understand the medical issues that are associated with is one of the most difficult parts of my job. My clients have had medical doctors tell them to lose weight even in the midst of their eating disorders. They have missed issues that are a result of my client’s eating disorder or minimized at the least. If you have read “Sick Enough” by Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani then you know about the medical complications of your eating disorder.
Attending eating disorder therapy can help you recognize the physical impact that your eating disorder is having on your body and to focus on getting your body to heal physically while therapy helps you heal emotionally and mentally. Clients have shared that they didn’t realize how much their eating disorder was impacting them physically until they start to focus on decreasing eating disorder behaviors and utilizing an intuitive eating approach to eating and recovery.
2. Eating disorder therapy may improve your relationships
One of the hardest things for the women I work with who have been struggling with their eating disorders is recognizing how it’s impacted their relationships. You don’t realize when you are in your eating disorder how much it is changing your relationships with the people you love. One of the ways an eating disorder thrives is in secrecy. You keep things from the people who love and care about you, and it’s hard to remain connected. Your eating disorder can keep you isolated and lead you to believe you don’t need other people or even worse that other people don’t care about you. Eating disorder therapy helps you rebuild and improve your relationships. A significant part of eating disorder recovery is replacing your eating disorder with meaningful and caring relationships. There will be people in your life that don’t even realize you have an eating disorder and being able to gain support from them can aid you in eating disorder recovery. Therapy can help you change your relationships for the better and help you feel more connected again.
3. Eating disorder therapy can help manage anxiety better
Part of what we explore in therapy when it comes to your eating disorder is how much it is used to manage or numb anxiety. This isn’t always a conscious connection for some people. Realizing that you are coping with anxiety using eating disorder behaviors is something that is addressed in eating disorder therapy. Finding newer healthier ways to cope with anxiety is also an important aspect of counseling. You can learn to understand how you started dealing with your anxiety using eating disorder behaviors and start utilizing healthier strategies instead. You may be reading this now and feeling skeptical that this is true for you. The women I work with don’t always realize they have anxiety until they stop using eating disorder behaviors. Eating disorder therapy can help you make connections that you haven’t realized before. When you begin focusing on eating disorder recovery, your anxiety might get higher than it was before because you have stopped using eating disorder behaviors. This is a normal part of the experience. However, the more you utilize therapy and understand yourself better the less anxiety will have an impact on you.
4. Eating disorder therapy will help you make peace with food
You have learned to manage a lot of your life using food. Food has become a weapon in some ways. You don’t trust it, and you don’t trust yourself with it. The women I work with share experiences where they heard someone, a parent, or a grandparent make a negative remark about themselves or someone else’s body. This changed the way they viewed their body and learned that food could be used to change their size in some ways. The clients I work with also have learned that foods are “good” or “bad” and have learned to avoid certain foods because they are “bad” and might make them “fat”. There is a lot to try and undo when these experiences have had a profound impact on how you view food. This is not a helpful way to view food or use food. Eating disorder therapy can help you learn to challenge the messages you have received about your body and foods. Working with an eating disorder therapist allows you to change what you believe about food to something more helpful and healthy.
5. Eating disorder therapy can help you recognize your values
When we have troubles in our lives sometimes it’s helpful to recognize what we value the most and find ways to align our actions more so with our values and beliefs. What happens when you are engaged in eating disorder behaviors is that you often neglect the values and beliefs that mean the most to you. The women I work with share how they don’t even feel like themselves. When it comes to their eating disorder it feels like someone else is controlling them when are using eating disorder behaviors. They feel like they’ve abandoned themselves and the things they care about most for their eating disorder. Eating disorder therapy can help you find your values again and what you care about. Therapy can help you recognize how your eating disorder behaviors are behaviors that go against your values. Letting go of your eating disorder will help you live what you value more fully.
Eating disorder therapy can change your life.
Eating disorder therapy has the power to change the entire trajectory of your life. I know that sounds like a big and bold statement but it’s the absolute truth. I have worked with women in inpatient hospital settings to outpatient therapy, and I’m confident in saying therapy is the thing that has impacted these women. When you don’t have the tools it can be hard to see another way out of this. The feeling of hopelessness and being trapped doesn’t have to last. As a therapist, I have spent years and years learning how to help women that feel just like you. I have been able to see them leave their eating disorders behind and live happy and purposeful lives. You can experience this too.
Start working with an eating disorder therapist in Utah
You don’t have to live the way you are living now. You know you feel miserable in your eating disorder but you just can’t find a way out of it. You’ve probably tried everything you can think of on your own to feel better. You don’t have to do it alone and eating disorder therapy can help. This Utah Counseling Clinic has an eating disorder therapist specializing in eating disorder therapy. To begin counseling follow the steps below:
Meet with an eating disorder therapist in Utah
Begin eating disorder recovery
Online Eating Disorder Therapy in Utah
It can be hard to find a therapist that lives close by in the town you live in Utah. There are many areas in Utah that are rural and don’t live close to an eating disorder therapist. Just because you live away from an eating disorder therapist doesn’t mean you can’t get quality care to help you recover. This is why I offer online therapy in Utah. Using online eating disorder therapy can help you recover from your eating disorder just as effective as in-person therapy.
Online eating disorder therapy means that I can help you wherever you are located in Utah. I work with clients in Salt Lake City, St. George, Cedar City, Logan, Heber City, and more.
Other mental health services provided by Maple Canyon Therapy
Eating disorder therapy isn’t the only counseling service provided at this Utah Counseling Clinic. Other mental health services provided by Maple Canyon Therapy include body image therapy, anxiety therapy, binge eating disorder treatment, EMDR therapy, and birth trauma therapy.
About the Author
Ashlee Hunt is a licensed therapist and owner of Maple Canyon Therapy in Utah. She has a master's degree in social work from Utah State University in Logan and two bachelor's degrees from Southern Utah University in Cedar City. Ashlee has worked with women with eating disorders since being a student therapist at Utah State University CAPS. She enjoys helping women find freedom from their eating disorders by utilizing self-compassion and learning their identity again. Ashlee believes that women (and of course men!) can recover from their eating disorders and live happy and fulfilling lives. When Ashlee isn’t doing therapy, she enjoys exploring the outdoors of Utah County.