As a therapist I believe that:

The quality of my relationship with you, your partner and your family members is the most important part of what will make our therapeutic work together effective. My goal is to ensure that you, your partner and your family members feel supported, heard and understood in our sessions. I will ask for your feedback to make sure that I respect your needs in our therapeutic process.

Emotional connection is crucial to healing. I can help you build connected relationships that will help you hold onto hope and give you a reason to keep trying even when you are really struggling in your life.

Everyone’s behavior makes sense! We are all trying to feel emotionally safe, be heard and have our needs met whether we are consciously aware of this or not. We all carry emotional injuries from our pasts that influence our feelings, perceptions and behavior in our current relationships. Unhealthy coping strategies and relationship patterns can play important functions for us and yet keep us stuck. Change can feel scary! I can help you discover the self-awareness and self-compassion to successfully change your behavior in your relationship with yourself and with your loved ones.

As a partners or family member you can offer an incredible gift of recovery support to your loved one when you can learn to tolerate and validate her/his feelings.Recovery requires that someone develops the ability to “sit with” and work through their feelings rather than avoiding, suppressing, numbing out or self-harming. Out of caring intentions and anxiety you may find yourself moving into action mode offering advice and logic to “fix” your loved one’s problems and take away their painful feelings. Despite your caring, your loved one may end up withdrawing and feeling alone in their struggle. I can help you learn how to support your loved one as they learn how to tolerate distress. This is a vital part of building connection and promoting recovery efforts.

A collaborative approach is needed as couples and families work on supporting their adult loved one with an eating disorder. My approach respects the needs and boundaries of everyone involved at different stages of the recovery process. Together we will open a dialogue that may have been hard to do on your own.

As we work together, I can help you, your partner and family members to:

• Become educated about eating disorders, concurrent addiction/mental health issues, and the recovery process
• Develop a collaborative approach to offering and receiving support at all stages of the recovery process
• Recognize and end negative relationship patterns that maintain emotional disconnection, “walking on eggshells”, fighting, power struggles, blame and unhealthy boundaries
• Learn how to safely and constructively talk about feelings, needs, inner hurts, frustrations and difficult issues
• Work on resolving emotional wounds from the past
• Build the secure emotional connection needed for healing and the enjoyment of a healthy, loving relationship