Trauma-Informed Compassionate Care for Healing Your Relationship with Your Body & Food
A Unique, Holistic, Anti-Diet Approach To Recovery That Is HAES Aligned
Your body plays the most important role in your recovery and therefore, we center it first and foremost, valuing its information and messages.
I have specialized in working with eating disorders and disordered eating/body image issues for over 34 years. Although I am a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS) through IAEDP, my approach to recovery is “out of the box” and different from cognitive behavioral approaches that focus on behavioral management and often leave out the most important relationship in healing and growth—your BODY!
I have lived experience of freedom in recovery from an eating disorder for 35 years, and found this through the journey of self-compassion and embodiment. These are the primary tools we will learn together.
The Integration of Somatic Self-Compassion & Embodiment
what you’ll learn
Return to Life & An Embodied Way of Living
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I focus on the integration of somatic skills which, from the start, helps to teach you about what is happening within your body—the signals you may or may not be receiving, sensations, along with an understanding of your Autonomic Nervous System.
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You’ll learn how your internal state, not just now but perhaps throughout your whole life, has had an impact on the way you have learned to adapt in the world and with food.
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We will develop this understanding together to create a self-compassionate, trauma-sensitive, harm-reduction recovery model of care that is unique to YOUR body and internal system, to help you return back to life and back to an embodied way of living.
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I believe in each person’s ability to step back into their lives despite behaviors. Every BODY has the right to RE-EMBODY, despite the messages and challenges faced in a world that does not support each body in doing so. Unfortunately, the world of diet-culture, and the long-standing history of mind/body divide, has robbed our ability to honor and trust the inborn knowledge that we each have within. We will work together to regain this knowledge.
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Eating disorders are not “disorders,” rather they are a DIS-ORDERING within, much of it learned from the messages received from the outside in. We will work together to help you disentangle from these embedded messages and help you find your internal voice once again.
More Info:
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I developed this model of care and recovery through my many years of clinical practice, my Doctoral research, independent research and my own lived experience. My first qualitative research, a Constructivist Grounded Theory study, helped me to discover the life-giving role and impact self-compassion has in recovery helping you to hold yourself during the most difficult and challenging times in a new and gentle way.
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Somatic self-compassion utilizes skills of interoceptive awareness, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, somatic techniques, and self-compassion practices to build emotion and nervous system regulation to gently re-program your internal body’s functioning, allowing self-compassion to actually be felt on an embodied level, not just thought about. Once that internal regulation is felt we no longer need to rely on external sources of regulation, such as your current behavior.
This healing model is a “BOTTOM UP” approach, rather than top down approach like many recovery models are focusing on behavioral change first and often bypassing embodiment altogether. Your body plays the most important role in your recovery and therefore, we center it first and foremost valuing its information and messages.
Discovering what your body needs from the “inside out,” meaning re-connecting with your body’s internal messaging is what Interoceptive Awareness (IA) is all about and it is the central somatic skill I will teach you to help you safely and securely re-embody.
A disordered relationship with food needs an internal re-balancing of the body, mind and self. Therefore, my work is not just about behavioral change; rather, it includes developing and discovering a new relationship with one’s body and self.
I teach, train, supervise and consult for agencies and individual professionals educating them on this model of care so that we may break through the limiting ways we have been treating eating disorders for so many years. I am proud that my treatment model does not fit within the norm, but rather works through a wholistic lens that believes in mind/body/spirit integration, as well as starting from the understanding that there are multiple intersections that influence the development of an eating disorder and disturbed relationships with food and our bodies—number one being our socio-cultural beliefs about bodies and the oppression and marginalization that most bodies endure. I believe each and every body deserves the right to full healing and freedom.
Work With Me
I offer the above healing model for those seeking Individual Psychotherapy and in Somatic Skills Coaching for those who already are working with a therapist and/or treatment team.
Session Fee: $200 per session
Additional Resources
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Please see here for information on the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) for Eating Disorder Recovery:
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Learn more about Somatic Skills Coaching for Embodied living:
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Looking for community support? Join my powerful, life-changing program!
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Professionals can find out more information about my training and consultation here, including becoming a Certified Befriending Your Body Program Teacher: