Eating Disorder Therapy in Brighton

It is incredibly exhausting when food, numbers, and body image take up all the space in your mind. You don't have to keep fighting your body or navigating this anxiety alone.

Does this sound familiar? You find yourself planning your entire day around what you can or cannot eat, feeling intense guilt over a single meal, then looking in the mirror and feeling a wave of a combination of frustration, guilt, and shame.

A difficult relationship with food doesn't always look like a textbook medical diagnosis. It can simply exist as a quiet daily stress of constant tracking or using food as the only way to cope with overwhelming emotions. You might feel like you are endlessly stuck trying to “fix” your body to finally feel like you are enough.

Right here in the Brighton community, we provide a safe and entirely judgment-free space to help you step away from rigid food rules, process the underlying stress, and finally rebuild a peaceful relationship with eating and your body.

Signs of Disordered Eating

Eating disorders can show up very differently for different people, ranging from restrictive eating, binge eating, behaviours to “make up” for calories consumed, or being overly avoidant of certain textures or smells. Here are just some of these signs:

Rigid Food Rules

Categorizing foods into strict "good" or "bad" categories and experiencing intense anxiety or guilt if you eat something outside of your approved routine.

Restrict & Binge Cycle

Going through phases of strict eating or skipping meals, then feeling completely out of control around food later in the day, which is inevitably followed by deep self-blame and shame.

Fixation on "Clean" Eating

Feeling an obsessive need to only consume items that are perfectly pure, healthy, or organic, to the point where it ruins your social life or causes constant stress.

Body Image Distress

Allowing the number on a scale or the fit of your clothes to completely dictate your mood, your self-worth, and whether or not you deserve to enjoy your day.

How We Work Together

Here at the Psychotherapy and Healing Hub, our approach to body image and food concerns is down-to-earth and focused on finding you freedom from intense shame. We aren't here to weigh you or force you into generic wellness programs. Instead, we look at the whole picture to understand what purpose these food patterns are serving for you. Once we have understood these behaviours, we can work on addressing them.

In our sessions together, we:

Lower the fear and panic associated with eating, so you can share meals with others without a mental calculator running in the background.
Figure out what your food habits are trying to protect you from, such as a need for control or a distraction from stress or difficult emotions.
Move away from forced body positivity and work toward a realistic mentality where your worth isn't tied to your physical appearance.

Therapy Modalities Typically Used

Our Brighton therapists believe that healing your relationship with food requires a strategy that incorporates both your emotional needs and your daily habits. Some commonly used modalities for doing this work include the following:

Somatic Experiencing

Eating disorders and chronic dieting are rarely just about food. They are deeply tied to how our bodies handle stress, anxiety, and a lack of control. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, food habits can become a way to numb or manage that intensity. We help you learn to read your body’s physical signals, safely process stored stress, and find ways to feel grounded in your body.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

We work on accepting the reality that difficult thoughts about food or your body will pop up, while using ACT tools to make sure those thoughts don't stop you from living the life that you want.

Narrative Therapy

We look at where your beliefs about your body and food originally came from (whether that is family dynamics, diet culture, or past experiences). We help you separate your true identity from the unhelpful stories you've been told about your worth.

You don't have to spend the rest of your life negatively affected by eating behaviours. Let's work together to build a stable and comfortable relationship with food and your body.

Meet our Brighton Team

The therapists at Psychotherapy & Healing Hub support clients with a variety of areas of life. For more information on each therapist, please click on their picture or visit our team page.