Eating Disorders
Understanding Eating Disorders
Reaching out to learn more about eating disorders can feel like a big and sometimes vulnerable step. Many people live with eating difficulties in silence for a long time, often feeling unsure whether their experience ‘counts’ or is serious enough. If you are reading this because you’re concerned about yourself or someone you care about, it’s important to know that support is available, and recovery is possible.
Eating disorders are not about willpower or choice — they are complex emotional and psychological conditions that often develop as a way of coping with distress, uncertainty, or difficult feelings. Therapy can help you work towards understanding what the eating difficulties may have been protecting you from and supporting you to build new ways of feeling safe or in control.
What Are Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders affect how a person thinks and feels about food, their body, and their sense of self. They can influence mood, self-identity, relationships, and daily functioning, and they often come with feelings of shame, fear, or guilt that make it hard to talk about.
They can affect people of any age, gender, body size, or background. Many individuals do not appear visibly unwell, which can make their struggle less recognised from the outside. Early support can prevent symptoms from becoming more entrenched and can make the path to recovery much easier.
Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa typically involves significant restriction of food intake, an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of body size or shape. People may use strict rules around food or exercise to feel safe or in control.
Psychological symptoms can include rigidity, high self-criticism, and perfectionism, alongside emotional numbness or anxiety. Physically, anorexia can lead to low body weight, weakened immune function, dizziness, digestive problems, and hormonal changes.
It is one of the eating disorders with the highest medical risk, which is why early intervention is so important. With specialist therapy and medical support, recovery and weight restoration are achievable.
If you are experiencing Anorexia and wish to start therapy, we will contract around medical management and this may include working with your GP, or other medical or healthcare professionals.
Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia nervosa involves recurrent cycles of binge eating followed by behaviours aimed at undoing or compensating for the binge — such as vomiting, fasting, laxative misuse, or excessive exercise.
Emotionally, these cycles are often driven by shame, distress, and a fear of losing control. People with bulimia may appear outwardly “fine” or within the average weight range, which can make the condition harder for others to recognise.
Physically, bulimia can affect the heart, teeth, digestion, and electrolyte balance. Psychological treatment can support you to regulate your emotions without bingeing and to reduce compensatory behaviours safely and gradually, as well as working on other important areas such as relationship with food and body image.
Binge Eating Disorder
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) involves repeated episodes of eating large amounts of food in a short time, often accompanied by a sense of loss of control, emotional overwhelm, or self-judgement afterwards.
Unlike bulimia, there are no regular purging or compensatory behaviours. People often struggle in silence due to shame or fear of being misunderstood.
BED can affect people in any body size. Therapy often focuses on breaking the binge–restriction cycle, developing emotional coping strategies, and cultivating a more compassionate relationship with food and the body.
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED)
OSFED describes eating difficulties that cause significant distress but don’t neatly fit the criteria for anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder. OSFED is one of the most common eating-disorder diagnoses and can include a wide range of patterns, such as restrictive eating, purging without bingeing, or atypical anorexia (where weight remains in a “normal” range despite severe restriction).
OSFED is just as serious and deserving of treatment as the more widely recognised diagnoses yet is often misunderstood and not offered the correct treatment and support.
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)
ARFID involves a restricted or very limited diet, usually due to sensory sensitivities, fear of choking/vomiting, or a lack of interest in food. Unlike other eating disorders, it is not primarily driven by body image concerns or a fear of weight gain, although these worries can sometimes occur.
ARFID can affect both children and adults and may lead to nutritional deficiencies, social withdrawal, or anxiety around mealtimes. Treatment helps expand food variety at a manageable pace and gently reduces the fear or discomfort associated with eating.
Body Dysmorphia (BDD)
Body Dysmorphic Disorder involves becoming preoccupied with one or more perceived flaws in your appearance — flaws that other people may not notice, or that appear very different to how they feel internally. This can lead to hours of checking, hiding, camouflaging, or mentally “fixing” the perceived problem, and can feel exhausting and distressing.
Therapy focuses on reducing the intense self-scrutiny and worry, gently reshaping the way the mind filters and interprets appearance-related information. We may look at the deeper emotional and psychological roots of the concern, helping you move towards a more realistic and compassionate sense of yourself, and supporting you to reclaim time, confidence and connection in life.