One of my particular professional specialities and personal passions is working with people with Eating Disorders, various forms of disordered eating, Body image and Weight issues.
As a woman counsellor, what drew me to work in the field of eating disorders, weight and body image issues is their prevalence in today’s society, particularly among women. I was becoming aware of a constant stream of images of impossible standards of beauty and of the messages by the media and the advertising industry that our bodies, and ourselves, are either too much or not enough, but never good enough. I felt that they often played upon our deeper insecurities and echoed our negative core beliefs about ourselves which we carried from our childhood. It saddened me that generations of women and young girls, but increasingly men too, were made to feel like this and some went to dangerous lengths in order to change and control their bodies.
In my therapeutic work my intention is to create a safe space and a therapeutic relationship based on empathy and trust, within which you could feel free to explore and make sense of your difficulties with food and your body and learn techniques for alleviating them, but also explore who you are beyond food, eating and your body image. Metaphorically speaking, I’m also there in the therapy room holding a mirror, with the aim that you will begin to see yourself more realistically and more fully, with more acceptance and more compassion. I am interested in exploring the roots of the your difficult relationship with food and your body, as well as helping you manage and work on the emotional, cognitive, behavioural and nutritional aspects of that difficulty. My aim is to help you begin to view food as a way of nourishing and looking after yourself, to improve your sense of value and self-esteem and to support you in finding healthier ways of expressing your emotions and needs through the relationship with others, rather than through food and various ways of controlling your body.
I have trained with The National Centre for Eating Disorders and completed courses on working with eating disorders, as well as obesity.
In my work I use a holistic, integrative approach, which incorporates my psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural therapy training, but I am also influenced by mindfulness approaches and feminist psychotherapists and writers.
Whether you have been struggling with overeating, purging, restricting, poor body image or weight management, and whether your difficulties are mild or a fully developed Eating disorder that has overtaken your life, I can help you on your way to recovery and a healthy relationship with your body and food.
The issues that I work with include: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating Disorder, Emotional eating, Restrictive eating, EDNOS (a range of Disordered Eating issues that do not meet the clinical criteria to be diagnosed as a eating disorder), Obesity and Weight management.