Break free from binge eating disorder
Specialised binge eating treatment and treatment for emotional eating, bulimia and negative body image
Expert Caring Binge or Emotional Eating Treatment
If you’ve been struggling with food as a way to cope with emotions, stress, or difficult situations, you're not alone. My approach focuses on helping you develop a healthier relationship with food, your emotions, and yourself.
At The Self Space Binge Eating Clinic, I offer personalised treatment based on the latest evidence and approaches to treating binge eating and emotional eating. As an experienced binge eating psychologist, I help you build healthier coping strategies.
Understanding Emotional and Binge Eating
Emotional eating occurs when food is used as a way to cope with negative emotions like stress, anxiety, sadness, or boredom. It often leads to overeating, cravings for comfort foods, and a sense of loss of control.
Binge eating, a more severe form of emotional eating, involves consuming large amounts of food in a short time, often followed by feelings of guilt, shame, or disgust. Both emotional and binge eating are patterns that can feel out of control and significantly impact mental and physical health.
Need an experienced, skilled and compassionate psychologist Bondi Junction or Sydney?
My Approach - Break Free From Emotional Eating
I offer comprehensive, personalised treatment to help you break free from emotional and binge eating patterns. My approach integrates multiple evidence-based therapies, including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Eating Disorders(CBT-E), Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Eating Disorders (DBT-E), and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), to address both the emotional triggers and unhealthy eating behaviors.
1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT-E)
CBT-E focuses on identifying and challenging the thoughts and beliefs that drive emotional eating. By addressing these thought patterns, CBT-E helps you break the cycle of overeating and develop healthier coping mechanisms.
2. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT-E)
DBT combines cognitive-behavioral techniques with mindfulness and emotional regulation skills. It helps you manage overwhelming emotions without resorting to food for comfort. DBT also teaches you how to tolerate distress and improve interpersonal relationships, reducing the emotional triggers that lead to binge eating.
3.Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT focuses on accepting difficult emotions rather than avoiding them. This therapy encourages you to focus on your values and commit to actions that align with your long-term goals, even in the presence of emotional discomfort. ACT can help you reduce the power of emotional eating triggers by fostering greater emotional flexibility and self-compassion.
4. Emotional Regulation Skills
Learning how to effectively manage stress and negative emotions is essential in overcoming emotional eating. We will teach you strategies to regulate your emotions in healthy, productive ways that don’t involve turning to food for comfort.
5. Nutrition Guidance
Alongside psychological treatment, practical advice on nutrition can support your healing process. Our experts can provide guidance on balanced eating, ensuring your physical health supports your emotional well-being. ever found yourself reaching for comfort food after a stressful day or when you're feeling down, you're not alone.
How can you overcome emotional eating?
Counselling for emotional eating with a trained and experienced emotional eating psychologist can help uncover the emotional triggers behind the behaviour and provide the tools needed to manage it more effectively. If untreated, emotional eating can become a more persistent issue, leading to an emotional eating disorder that can disrupt daily life. Recovery from emotional eating isn’t just about stopping the eating, but addressing the emotional causes and learning healthier ways to cope, helping you build a more balanced and positive relationship with food and your body.
If you’re ready to break free from binge eating, as an emotional eating psychologist Bondi Junction and Sydney,I can help. Reach out today to start your journey toward lasting change
Why is it important to work with an experienced emotional eating psychologist or binge eating therapist?
Emotional eating and binge eating disorders are are complex disorders and require evidence-based treatment. As an experienced binge eating therapist and emotional eating psychologist Bondi Junction and Sydney, I use evidence-based frameworks to give you the tools, skills, support, and emotion regulation strategies needed to break free from the cycle of emotional eating and binge eating to transform your relationship with food, your body, and yourself.
DBT-E and CBT-E are two powerful, evidence-based therapies that can help you overcome binge eating disorder. CBT-E focuses on changing the negative thoughts and behaviours around food and body image, helping you develop healthier eating habits. DBT-E, on the other hand, helps you manage difficult emotions and build emotional resilience, so you’re not turning to food to cope with stress or emotional pain.
Contact us today to learn more about how an emotional eating psychologist in Bondi Junction or Sydney can support your recovery journey.
At least 50% of individuals with Bulimia Nervosa or Binge Eating Disorder experience full recovery with proper treatment.
Source: Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists out
How does binge eating disorder differ from emotional eating?
Emotional eating often serves as a coping mechanism for underlying emotional distress, and for many, it evolves into binge eating disorder (BED). When food is used to numb or soothe difficult feelings like stress, anxiety, or past trauma, it can lead to the uncontrollable binge eating patterns characteristic of binge eating disorder (BED). Addressing both emotional triggers and emotional eating behaviours is key to the treatment of emotional eating and breaking free from emotional eating.
How Therapy with a Binge Eating Psychologist Can Help You Take Control of Binge Eating
If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed by your relationship with food, therapy can be a powerful tool in helping you regain control. At The Self Space Binge Eating Clinic I offer personalised treatment plans based on the latest evidence and approaches to treating binge eating disorder. As an experienced binge eating psychologist I am here to listen, offer guidance, and help you build healthier coping strategies.
I understand how difficult it can be to talk about binge eating, and I am committed to providing a confidential, non-judgmental environment where you can be open about your struggles. Regardless of your size, shape, or where you’re at in your recovery, I accept you as you are and will work with you to improve your physical and emotional health.
Why Can't I Stop my Binge Eating? Isn’t It Just About Willpower?
Overcoming binge eating isn’t just about "willpower." In fact, it takes immense willpower to keep dieting or trying to control eating patterns. The reasons behind binge eating are much more complex—rooted in past experiences, emotions, stress, genetics, and biochemistry. Many people with Binge Eating Disorder have learned to use food as a way to cope with trauma, stressors and difficult emotions. As an experienced binge eating psychologist I have seen that to truly make lasting change, it is to address deeper emotional needs, rather than just focusing on food and eating habits.
With the right eating disorder treatment with a Binge Eating Psychologist at our Bondi Junction or Sydney CBD Eating Disorder Clinic recovery is possible.
What is Binge Eating Disorder ?
Binge eating often serves as a coping mechanism for underlying emotional distress, and for many, it evolves into binge eating disorder (BED). When food is used to numb or soothe difficult feelings like stress, anxiety, or past trauma, it can lead to the uncontrollable binge eating patterns characteristic of binge eating disorder (BED). Addressing both emotional triggers and emotional eating is key to the treatment of emotional eating and binge eating.
Common Signs of Binge Eating Disorder
Consuming Excessive Amounts of Food in Short Periods: Eating unusually large portions of food in a short span of time, often more than would be considered typical or necessary.
Loss of Control During Eating Episodes: A feeling of being unable to stop eating once an episode has begun, even when the individual is aware they are full or not hungry.
Eating in Secret or Discreetly: Hiding or eating alone to avoid others noticing the excessive consumption of food, often due to embarrassment or shame.
Frequent Episodes of Eating When Not Physically Hungry: Consuming large quantities of food in response to emotions such as boredom, stress, sadness, or loneliness, rather than to satisfy physical hunger.
Rapid Eating or Eating Without Mindfulness: Eating quickly or absent-mindedly, often while distracted (e.g., watching TV, working), without truly tasting or enjoying the food.
Feelings of Shame, Guilt, or Disgust Post-Eating: Experiencing intense negative emotions like guilt, self-loathing, or disgust after binge episodes, which can lead to further emotional distress.
Preoccupation with Food and Eating: Obsessing over food, calories, dieting, or weight, often leading to cycles of restriction, bingeing, and feelings of powerlessness around eating.
Significant Weight Fluctuations: Notable, frequent changes in weight, either due to repeated episodes of binge eating or extreme dieting attempts to compensate.
Emotional Eating and Coping with Stress: Turning to food for emotional regulation, such as using eating as a way to numb or cope with feelings of anxiety, sadness, or trauma.
Feelings of Extreme Hunger Between Binge Episodes: Experiencing intense, uncontrollable hunger or cravings, often after a period of food restriction or dieting.
Social Withdrawal or Avoidance: Avoiding social events or situations where eating or food is involved, due to embarrassment, fear of judgment, or anxiety about food-related behaviors.
Physical Discomfort Following Binge Episodes: Experiencing physical symptoms such as bloating, stomach pain, or fatigue after overeating, which may be ignored or downplayed.
Compulsive Exercise or Dieting After Binge Episodes: Engaging in extreme exercise or dieting behaviors to "compensate" for binge episodes, often driven by guilt or a desire to lose the weight gained from overeating.
Preoccupation with Body Image and Weight: Excessive focus on body image, weight, or size, often leading to feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, and body dissatisfaction.
History of Dieting or Weight-Related Struggles: A background of chronic dieting, weight fluctuations, or prior eating disorders, which may have led to the development of binge eating behaviors.
Reach out today to start your recovery journey with binge eating treatment in Sydney or Bondi Junction
FAQs
How do I know if I have Binge Eating Disorder?
BED has a number of symptoms, but the bottom line is feeling out of control in your relationship with food. A person with BED may try to change their eating behavior (typically many times), but will ultimately return to old patterns unless they seek treatment.
People with BED come in all shapes and sizes. You cannot tell by looking if someone has BED. Eating patterns vary as well. Some people binge eat, but others may “graze”, never really finishing eating, or they may eat a relatively small amount of food, but feel tremendous guilt and shame regardless of the amount consumed. Most with BED also have periods of significant food restriction or dieting. For most people, BED involves both bingeing and restriction, often occurring in an endless cycle.
Why can’t I stop bingeing? Isn’t it just a question of willpower?
Binge Eating is often as much about restriction as it is about binge eating. It takes extraordinary willpower to keep trying to go on diets or make changes to eating patterns. If willpower were the only issue, this problem would have been solved long ago.
The reasons behind binge eating are always complex, and are about both past and present stressors, biochemistry, and genetics. Often, people have a long history of using food to meet needs other than hunger, including distraction from life, soothing big emotions, and dealing with depression or anxiety. To change eating habits permanently, these needs must be met in new ways. Otherwise, the person will revert back to binge eating as soon as a stressor occurs.
What does "recovered" from binge eating disorder mean?
Recovered means eating and moving in response to body needs most of the time. Your body’s needs will vary day to day.
It means eating to check out will become rarer and rarer, with less and less food, for shorter and shorter episodes.
It means one episode will not, by default, lead to another.
It means an episode will get your attention right away; you will have better skills to address the binge, and be able to learn from the experience.
Recovery is a journey, not a destination. You will recover at the rate that is just right for you!
Who is at risk for developing binge eating or BED?
Many factors are at play in the development of BED, and the combination is unique to each person. A list of common causes includes:
Family history of eating disorders, depression, alcoholism, or OCD
Intense family or personal concern with weight and appearance
Difficulty identifying and/or expressing feelings
Family atmosphere that limited emotional expression in significant ways
Significant emotional trauma or loss
Tendency to be a “people pleaser,” too often putting others’ needs before one’s own
Difficulty setting limits with others
High degree of perfectionism or “black and white” thinking
Genetic predisposition to experiencing feelings particularly intensely
Strong tendency toward self-soothing and dissociation (“checking out”) behaviors
Mood disorders, including anxiety disorders, depression and bipolar disorders
Significantly negative or distorted body image
A diagnosis of ADHD (thirty percent of people with BED also have characteristics of ADHD)
What do people with Binge Eating Disorder use food to do?
There are many uses for bingeing, and everyone uses food to meet needs other than hunger sometimes. But if this becomes a pattern such that your peace of mind is compromised, there may well be an underlying eating disorder. Some common uses of food for people with BED include:
Distraction (from feelings, from others, from feared situations or stressors)
Reward
Escape
Rebellion (from dieting, from other’s needs, from the “rules”)
Slowing time/Avoiding a scary/stressful issue or problem
Cherishing yourself by allowing yourself any food you crave
Setting a my “space” boundary or alone time
Soothing loneliness
Soothing anxiety, fear, shame, grief
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