Helping You Create a Positive Relationship with Food and Your Body
You hate what you see in the mirror. You feel overwhelmed by food choices. You negotiate every bite. You are drowning in thoughts about food and your body. You want to stop using so much of your brain space thinking about your weight. We can help.
We can help you find a flexible and peaceful relationship with food and body!
Tell me about your worst eating disorder day.
Maybe you didn’t eat at all. Maybe a binge left you in physical pain. Maybe you had to spend so much time compensating for what you ate that you missed out on time with friends. Or maybe that you felt so ashamed by how you looked that you didn’t go to a special event. You don’t have to do life this way. Therapy at The Current can help. We can help you gain control over your thoughts and behaviors surrounding food. We can help change the relationship you have with food and your body.
Eating Disorders are the tip of a deep ice berg.
We know that eating disorders are often a coping mechanism, developed over time as a way to cope with painful experiences, anxiety or depression. And then they spiral out of control. Eating disorders have a way of taking over a person. They can distort our thoughts and our images. They can make you feel like you have no power, yet powerful all at the same time. Our therapists’ job is to help you uncover what is underneath that ice berg.
Eating disorders are complex and require a specialized treatment team.
At The Current, you receive specialized treatment. All of our therapists have put in countless training hours towards being specialized in treating eating disorders. We know the value of multi-disciplinary treatment team work. Your therapist will work collaboratively with your dietician, medical doctor, and/or psychiatrist to ensure that you have all the pieces you need for sustainable recovery.
Depending on your unique needs, we use a combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Eating Disorders (CBT-ED), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Radically Open DBT (RO-DBT), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you recover from the eating disorder. A combination of these evidence-based therapies help you to challenge eating distorted thoughts, follow your customized meal plan, and improve your body image. Once we gain control over eating disorder thoughts and behaviors, we can dive a bit deeper and start chipping away at that iceberg under the surface of the eating disorder. This will lead you to sustainable recovery.
Schedule with one of our therapists today to help you manage your patterns of disordered eating.
Eating Disorders and Anxiety
Many of us who struggle with an eating disorder also have high levels of anxiety. The two can become intertwined. Anxiety is experienced both in the body and in the mind. It can hyper-activate or slow down different systems in our body to help protect us against threat. It has a big impact on our digestive system. Experiencing anxiety sensations can physically make it harder to eat. Sensations such as jaw tension, muscle tension, and upset stomach can all contribute to this. When in a state of threat, eating becomes a low priority. Your body feels urgency and it is focused on moving or getting ready to shut down (freeze). Thoughts tend to move fast and become overwhelming. It is incredibly difficult to make decisions in this state. The act of eating involves many decisions such as where to eat or what to eat. The sensations of anxiety are also incredibly uncomfortable. The urge to get rid of them is strong. These distressing sensations are often calmed by increasing physical activity, restriction, purging or bingeing.
Anxiety is also connected to body image. Anxiety can include a persistent fear of being judged by others and experiencing discomfort when being "watched". Judgement can be interpreted as a threat. To avoid potential criticism or public induced shame, we often attempt to control this anxiety by controlling our appearance.
Anxiety and an eating disorder can be woven in a tight cycle. Often times anxiety pre-dates the onset of the eating disorder. Eating disorder behaviors, such as restriction, bingeing, purging or compulsive exercise come into play when a person is attempting to cope with uncomfortable anxiety. Eating Disorder behaviors are regulating in that they often “shut down” the nervous system, brining on a feeling of numbness (which in the moment, can feel better than anxiety). Over time the source of anxiety can become related to food, weight and body. And therefore, ED behaviors increase to cope with the distress related to those sources.
The therapists at The Current know how to help you unravel this tight cycle. They can teach you the skills necessary to cope with your anxiety effectively and put a stop to using eating disorder behaviors to achieve anxiety relief. Contact us today to see how we can help or check out our workbook on Anxiety and Eating Disorders.