Let’s help you get your life back.
When you have an eating disorder, it becomes all-consuming, seeping into your relationships, affecting your focus, work/school performance, health, mood, mind, and your every thought.
It promises you thinness, happiness, control, praise from others, relief from pain, and a loyal presence in your life. Sometimes, you might think it’s delivering on those promises. Maybe at first you’re enjoying the changes you notice in your body, having something to distract you from emotional discomfort, and feeling lit up inside by the compliments you might be receiving (“You look AMAZING. I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is keep it up, it’s working.”). If they only knew what you were going through on the inside.
Unfortunately though, you might have experienced these short-term gains and that feeling of “having it all” has started to wane. Maybe you haven’t lost more weight, and now you’re desperately trying to figure out how to cut out and burn more calories. Maybe bingeing is leaving you physically uncomfortable and feeling ashamed, or you’re realizing that not only is your emotional pain not going away, but it’s multiplying. In the meantime, you’ve held yourself back from relationships and experiences in life because you needed to wait until you got to “x” weight. You may have brain fog that’s making focusing at school or work a nightmare, or you’ve been irritable and isolating yourself, pushing away the people closest to you. Your health might be at risk, and now you’re riddled with anxiety and deep in depression.
You don’t know how you got here, but you feel trapped. You’re scared to stop what you’re doing because you’ve been promised so much from your eating disorder. I won’t lie, breaking eating disorder patterns can feel terrifying. It’s not easy to even consider leaving something familiar, no matter how harmful it is.
But you don’t have to keep doing this.
You’re not stuck. You’re not alone.
Take the first step. Together, we can talk more about what’s going on for you. We can not only work to help you with what’s going on under the surface (body image concerns, eating disorder symptoms, current stressors), but also get to the root of how these thoughts and patterns began and how they have manifested. We won’t be putting on a bandaid here. The goal is lifelong change so you can live confidently and freely in your mind and body.
These patterns and beliefs you’ve been told or hold about yourself can be in your past. You can cope with life’s stressors in new ways without taking it out on yourself. You might start to LOVE your body. Or, maybe even better, you’ll feel neutral about it—where you can respect, care for, accept, and appreciate your body while recognizing that you are SO much more than your weight and your body shape/size.
You deserve so much more than living with food guilt and rules, yo-yo dieting, and having constant thoughts about changing your body.
Bad body image days don’t have to ruin your whole day or mental health, I promise! And you don’t have to live with an eating disorder or body hate forever.
As described in my “About” section, I am an anti-diet, HAES-oriented therapist. You will never hear me prescribing weight loss or diets.
Let’s do this together.
Please fill out the information below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation. I will return your message within two business days. I look forward to hearing from you!
Melanie Jennings, LMHC
melanie@freedominfeeling.com
(315) 236-4970