Eating disorders, body image, and our
relationship with food
You
don't have to have a "disorder" to feel badly about your body. Because
of images in the media, messages in movies, and conflicting opinions
from our families and friends, we can often feel badly about how our
body looks.
Flipping open a magazine can reveal an impossibly
flawless model, signaling to our brains that beauty means an impossible
ideal: perfection. Even if we may know that airbrushing and photo
editing created that image in the first place.
There are
proven treatments for changing how we feel about our bodies - whether
we have a specific focus on one area of our bodies that we can't stop
thinking about, or if we are experiencing symptoms like starving
ourselves, overly-controlled eating, meal skipping, binge eating,
purging, too much exercise, or significant changes in mood that result
from our food habits.
You're not alone. Our eating habits and
compulsions often change during stressful times in our lives. Old
habits become activated, new ones get created. They can persist from
messages in our family of origin, our cultures of origin, or when we
try to adjust to American culture from another set of traditions and
beliefs.
Regardless of the cause, our clinicians are trained
to help reclaim your body and your mind from thoughts that make you
feel badly about what you eat and how you look. Treatments from a
cognitive behavioral approach will help with making small changes in
your habits that will empower change in how you think and feel.