Brighton and Hove Eating Disorder Treatment and Therapy

You might be experiencing a complicated relationship with food that has become a bit of a habit which makes you feel uncomfortable eating around other people.  You probably think about food a lot of the time and worry about how it is affecting the size and shape of your body.  You may have personal strategies for eating such as waiting to eat until you can safely purge afterwards or you might limit food during the day, having really strict days after eating more than you’d like on other days.  Or you may have less control and find that once you start eating it becomes compulsive, especially if you are worried, feeling low or triggered by something or someone.  And even if you console yourself with the promise of a new start the next day, you repeatedly find yourself turning to food as a comfort, to manage the stresses of life.  Perhaps you are an excellent dieter and find it easy to lose weight for a special occasion or a holiday for example – only to be miserable a few months later when you notice the weight is back on and maybe more too.

Treatment for Eating Disorders in Brighton and Hove varies according to your food-related behaviour.  It also considers the impact of other people in your life because it is likely that they are so worried about your eating behaviour, that they have lost sight of “you.”  Advice and guidance can be offered to close friends and family members to help them learn how to connect with you again and to see you as separate from your eating disorder.

************************

Anorexia Counselling and Treatment in Brighton and Hove

If you have lost a lot of weight, it is likely that a doctor or specialist service may be monitoring your weight and encouraging you to follow a specific eating plan.  Individual therapy will offer you educational information about the effects of starvation as well as offering you food facts to enhance your knowledge about the nutritional value of different foods.  Hove based counselling and treatment will help you to make sense of how your eating disorder has developed as well as exploring the way it may have become a coping mechanism for you.  Gentle support will help you to feel less overwhelmed by your eating disorder and to identify ways in which you can be yourself again with more choice.





For an eating disorder treatment assessment, click here. 

************************

Hove counselling and treatment for Purging

If you have developed a pattern of eating a lot and then making yourself sick afterwards, it is possible that you are experiencing a sense of “high” after vomiting, which you are drawn to.  As purging through vomiting is addictive in nature, treatment will focus on helping you to reduce this.  As the biochemical effects of vomiting create food cravings, it is likely that you are bingeing and purging several times when you start eating, so your control over food may well be increased if you start to limit vomiting. It is likely that this pattern has become a way of coping in your life, so treatment will encourage you to learn to use food as a medicine from which you can feel more settled emotionally as well as being able to switch off from obsessive bouts of bingeing and purging. 

As you work with a therapist, you may start to realise why you have needed your eating disorder and through non-judgemental support and kindness, you may find healthier ways to manage difficult aspects of life.

************************

Bingeing & Overeating Counselling and Treatment in Brighton and Hove

You may set yourself future weight goals or a date for starting a new diet because these help you to switch off from your apparent inability to stop eating or to control eating.  You probably think about food most of the time and you really like your favourites.  When you are miserable, upset, fed-up or lonely, food is always reliably there for you, as your best and trusted friend.  Letting go of this dependency is frightening at some level perhaps because you find it so difficult to do so.  And you often become angry and frustrated with yourself because of how your body looks with the extra weight you so easily gain in-between dieting.  You feel stuck in a rut, miserable and hopeless.  You desperately want to change and have more control over food and yet you repeatedly find it so difficult and keep on lapsing into bad habits.  You wonder sometimes if it is possible for you to ever be different. This food compulsion affects many people and creates high levels of unhappiness, low self-esteem and poor self-confidence. 

Compulsive eating disorder therapy understands this and will help to build your self-esteem and confidence as you work to understand the underlying reasons for your eating behaviour.  Overeating counselling  and therapy in Hove will help you to learn to use food more effectively so that you can satisfy your body’s need for fuel and experience increasing periods of switching off from food.  You will discover that your body is able to regulate your weight naturally within a personal range when you provide it with a nutrient dense diet and complementary lifestyle behaviours such as walking a bit more and sitting down less. Your eating disorder therapist will help you to look at small and simple ways in which you can begin to make changes in your daily routine so that you adopt a “diet for life” as opposed to repetitive diets for weight loss.  You will be offered an explanation of why these types of diets don’t allow people to maintain weight loss and coached in considering alternative ways of managing your lifestyle so that you can find increasing personal control and happiness.