Susan Berlin

How Therapy Can Help Stop the Pain of an Eating Disorder and Improve Your Body Image

Eating disorders can be both mentally and physically painful. The control over food intake ranges from dangerously restricting your calorie intake and starving yourself to binging on large quantities of food, then purging it and hiding this from friends and family.

An eating disorder is an illness, much like depression and alcoholism. In the most basic terms, an eating disorder may cause you to adopt harmful or self-destructive eating habits. This could mean:

• Eating too much
• Binging
• Starving yourself
• Anorexia nervosa: “is deliberate and sustained weight loss driven by an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, and a preoccupation with body weight and shape. “ (Santrock, J. W. (2005). Nutrition and Eating Behavior. In Mike Ryan (Ed.). A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development, Fourth Edition (pp 156-157). New York City: McGraw-Hill.)
• Bulimia nervosa: “is a cyclical and recurring pattern of binge eating (uncontrolled bursts of overeating) followed by guilt, self-recrimination and overcompensatory behavior such as crash dieting, overexercising and purging to compensate for the excessive caloric intake.” (Santrock, J. W. (2005). Nutrition and Eating Behavior. In Mike Ryan (Ed.). A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development, Fourth Edition (pp 156-157). New York City: McGraw-Hill.)
• Compulsive over eating and other disorders.

In whatever way you are struggling with food and body image, you are suffering and likely medicating many feelings that could include anger, pain, hurt, sadness, guilt and shame. Underlying most eating disorders are often issues of depression, anxiety, and unresolved trauma or pain. An eating disorder can feel like it’s controlling your life.
And despite your best efforts at hiding your preoccupation with food issues, it greatly interferes with your ability to be with others.

You Can Overcome the Pain of an Eating Disorder Through Counseling or Therapy:

• Improve your body image and self esteem;
• Learn ways to eat in a more balanced way and not be a slave to your food, or binging, or purging;
• Improve relationships with others because you are no longer distracted by disguising your behaviors;
• Have peace; find relief from the depression, anxiety, guilt and shame of these behaviors that have plagued you.

If any of this sounds familiar, if any of this touches you inside, I encourage you to contact me.   Call me to set up a consultation and we will get together and talk about what is troubling you with these and other issues. My Washington DC therapy office phone number is 202-333-1787 or you can contact me via email.