Disordered Eating & Body Image
Body-image challenges that shape clients' relationships with food, weight, and appearance are often linked to cultural pressures, trauma, and anxiety issues. These articles highlight cases that look beyond symptoms to the underlying shame, control, and attachment struggles that drive them. Learn from experts in the field as they delve into trauma-informed, mindfulness-informed, and body-positive approaches, such as the Health at Every Size model, to address body-image concerns with clinical sophistication and cultural sensitivity. Gain the insights you need to help clients develop a healthy relationship with food, appreciation for their body regardless of weight, more flexible eating patterns, and gentler inner dialogues.
My Eating Disorder, My Attachment Trauma
A Therapist's Journey from Suffering to Healing and Understanding
The overlap between autism and eating disorders is poorly understood, even by many eating disorder specialists. Read more
Therapists can help disfigured clients build the necessary skills to navigate the documented reality that they’re often avoided, judged, and asked invasive... Read more
Binge-eating disorder is the most common eating disorder, but it’s also the most underdiagnosed and misunderstood. Read more
It's time to untangle weight gain and binge eating from trauma. Read more
Refusing to be defined by others can sometimes require an unexpected catalyst. Read more
When COVID-19 hit and many of us began stocking up on food and sheltering in place, I grew deeply concerned for my clients. How were they going to handle the... Read more
A paradigm shift around weight and wellness is taking on old stigmas. Read more
There’s been a lot of outcry from mental health professionals, doctors, parents, and people who’ve suffered from eating disorders about the trailer for the... Read more
Although binge eating disorder is more prevalent than anorexia and bulimia, many people still don’t get the help they need for it. Read more
By Judith Matz - I’ve come to believe that the way we as therapists feel about our clients’ body size is not only a clinical concern, but a social justice... Read more
When it comes to eating disorders, therapy can be a matter of life and death. Read more
Most therapists have been taught that if we can help clients understand the emotional triggers of their overeating, they’ll be able to control their behavior... Read more
Too often both clinicians and clients fall into the trap of pursuing weight loss as a therapeutic goal. Read more
A critic of one of our central cultural obsessions goes too far Read more
A middle-aged man explores his troubled relationship with the body his genetics have saddled him with. Read more
Therapists should not only be aware of their prejudices toward higher-weight clients, but should commit themselves to challenge those attitudes as well. Read more
Despite the common cultural notion that anyone can successfully lose weight---constantly reinforced by the $60 billion-a-year diet industry---at least 95... Read more
The key to working effectively with eating disorders is understanding that starving, bingeing, and purging aren't simply bad habits. For treatment to work, it... Read more
Attuned eating can take people beyond the dead end of the diet mentality. Read more
This article first appeared in the January/February 2006 issue. There are many ways to say “I don’t know.” She was a diminutive woman... Read more
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