Our Approach
We're a specialized psychotherapy practice that focuses on helping individuals find lasting healing from eating disorders, disordered eating and negative body image.
Our body-centered, integrated approach focuses on addressing attachment wounds and healing unresolved trauma to help you develop self-regulation skills. This enables you to handle challenges, discomfort and painful emotions so you can show up in life fully and wholeheartedly.
Building the bridge between body, mind and soul
A profoundly practical and transformative approach to reconnect your body and mind
Combining the latest research in neuroscience, nervous system understanding, trauma and eating disorders, we use a multi-faceted approach known as EMBODIED RECOVERY for EATING DISORDERS (ERED). It weaves together a holistic understanding of how eating disorders develop, offering an integrated journey to wholeness.
Our approach incorporates the following principles:
Somatic (body-centered) work
We believe that body-centered work (known as somatic work) is key to lasting recovery. When the body has become the enemy, it's a terrifying place to be. Making the body an active part of the therapy process is liberating and transformative.
We use yoga, breathing, mindfulness, embodiment coaching and other tools to help our clients understand their body's reactions, listen to their body's message and interpret their body's signals. To transform our relationship with our body we must slowly learn to understand what creates dysregulation, and gain skills to support us in returning to a more calm, alert and connected state.
Skills-based
Somatic work is both deep and practical. It offers you the opportunity to learn to regulate your emotions, find attunement and build the inner resources to manage when life feels overwhelming.
Our goal is to empower you with the insights to notice your reactions, and then draw on a range of techniques to shift your own state and move from overwhelm and dysregulation to attunement and centeredness. You'll walk out of every session with practical tools to use as you practice developing self-compassion. This piece is the missing link with talk therapy or DBT/CBT as it helps reconnect your body and mind.
An understanding of trauma and attachment
Eating disorders and negative body image may result from deep attachment wounds and unresolved trauma. As trained and experienced psychotherapists, we gently explore these roots in a safe and supportive environment, taking into account an individual's capacity and emotional state.
Recovery as an additive process
We don't actively attempt to remove or reduce behaviors. Instead, we focus on adding in resourcing actions, thoughts and behaviors. We view recovery as an additive process. This means we support clients in expanding the capacity of their nervous system to regulate through addressing sensory processing challenges, trauma history and attachment deficits. This process creates life-enhancing resiliency.
Alignment with Health at Every Size® and weight-inclusive care
We aim to bring awareness of the societal oppression that contributes to eating and body image challenges. Challenging the pervasive stigmas that make people vulnerable to eating disorders is an important layer for the healing process, and provides context, understanding and enlightenment. We are aligned with the weight-inclusive, Health At Every Size® approach.
Even when you don't, we believe...
-
Recovery is possible for every person, no matter how long or deep your struggle
No matter where you are, we believe that you can, and deserve to, find healing and peace.
Our additive approach means that we're not here to "fix" you. Rather, we're here to help you develop new skills, uncover your hidden strength, and build the resilience to cope without unhealthy coping mechanisms and disordered eating behaviors.
-
You can feel safer in your body
Your body is your home, and a place to honor your needs for movement, nourishment and connection. Your senses offer some of the greatest resources to support a feeling of safety, connection and returning home in your body. You are innately worthy. You will reclaim your own definition of beauty as you land back in your body in safety and connection. Still, for folks in marginalized identities, safety may not be possible in the culture we live in. In this case, you can increase resiliency to systems of oppression and build communities of love and belonging.
-
Your process will be as unique as you are
There's no one-size-fits-all here. Your journey will unfold as it needs to and together we will select the tools and support that will best serve you.
Body-mind-soul work facilitates healing on the deepest level
We use an intersection of therapeutic approaches to help you find lasting healing freedom from destructive behaviors, thoughts and feelings.
Your therapy process may include....
Yoga
Mindfulness
Sensory integration
Trauma work
Attachment theory
Expressive arts
-
Individual therapy
Integrated therapy to address eating disorders, disordered eating and body image challenges
-
Safe and Sound Protocol
Reset your nervous system with a non-invasive application of the polyvagal theory that helps you connect to the world around you from a foundation of physiological safety
-
Supervision
Supervision for professional counselors who want to deepen their expertise in eating disorders
-
Consult Groups
Monthly groups to focus on providing trauma-informed, weight-inclusive and somatically integrated care for clients
-
Embodiment Coaching
1:1 support for folx on the higher end of the weight spectrum to learn how to navigate the world in the body you have now
Professional organizations we're aligned with
