Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders

Your relationship with food carries stories—stories about how you learned to comfort yourself, protect yourself, and navigate a world that sometimes felt confusing or overwhelming. If you're struggling with eating patterns that feel bigger than willpower or logic, you already understand that this is about much more than food.

You might find yourself caught in cycles that feel impossible to break: restricting food to feel in control, binging to numb difficult emotions, or exercising compulsively to manage anxiety. Perhaps your eating patterns have become a way to express things you can't say, or to create predictability when life feels chaotic and unsafe.

These patterns didn't develop randomly. They're sophisticated responses to experiences that felt too big, too overwhelming, or too dangerous to manage any other way. Your eating disorder deserves to be understood with the same compassion you'd offer a friend who was doing their best to survive.

Understanding Why Food Became Complicated

Eating disorders often develop as a sophisticated way of managing experiences that our younger selves couldn't process differently. Your relationship with food may have become a way to:

Manage Overwhelming Emotions: When feelings started to become too big or you didn’t feel like there was enough emotional space for you, controlling food can provide a sense of agency and emotional regulation that feels safer than facing the emotions directly.

Communicate What Words Couldn't: Sometimes our eating patterns express things we couldn't say out loud—rebellion, pain, need for care, or desperate attempts to be seen and understood.

Create Predictability in Chaos: When life feels unpredictable or relationships are unstable, food rules and eating rituals can provide a sense of structure and control that feels necessary for survival.

Self-Soothe and Comfort: Food might have become your primary source of comfort when human comfort felt unavailable, unreliable, or came with conditions that felt impossible to meet.

Manage Perfectionism and Self-Criticism: Eating patterns might reflect internalised voices demanding perfection, or provide a way to punish yourself when you feel like you've fallen short of impossible standards.

Cope with Trauma For many people, disordered eating develops as a response to trauma—whether single incidents or ongoing experiences of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.

A Different Kind of Understanding

Many approaches to eating disorder treatment focus on changing behaviours around food—what you eat, when you eat, or challenging thoughts about eating and body image. While these strategies can be helpful as part of recovery, something important often gets missed: the deeper emotional patterns that created the need for these coping strategies in the first place.

What if, instead of focusing primarily on food behaviours, we got curious about what your eating patterns are trying to communicate? What if we explored what they've been helping you manage all these years, and developed new ways to meet those underlying needs?

This is where Schema Therapy offers something different. Rather than seeing your eating disorder as something to eliminate, we understand it as astrategy that developed for important reasons. Our work focuses on understanding these patterns with compassion while helping you develop new ways of caring for yourself that feel sustainable and authentic.

Working with Your Different Modes

In Schema Therapy, we understand that different parts of yourself show up around food and eating—the vulnerable part that needs comfort, the critical part that demands perfection, the protective part that uses control to feel safe. Each part developed for important reasons, and our work involves helping them collaborate rather than conflict.

Rather than trying to eliminate these parts of yourself, we learn to understand what each part is trying to accomplish and develop new ways for them to get their needs met that don't involve food or your body.

Learn more about eating disorder modes and how they develop →

Who This Approach Helps

This approach is particularly helpful for people who:

• Recognise that their eating issues are connected to childhood experiences or trauma

• Feel like their relationship with food is about more than food

• Want to understand the deeper meanings behind their eating patterns

• Are ready to explore how their past continues to influence their present

• Seek lasting change rather than symptom management

• Have tried traditional eating disorder treatment but continue to struggle with underlying patterns

Common Eating Disorder Patterns We Address

Anorexia Nervosa: Understanding how restriction became a way to manage overwhelming emotions, achieve perfection, or feel in control when life felt chaotic.

Bulimia Nervosa: Exploring the cycle of restriction and binging as attempts to manage emotions, self-soothe, and cope with internal criticism.

Binge Eating Disorder: Understanding how binge episodes might serve emotional functions—providing comfort, rebellion, or temporary escape from difficult feelings.

Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFED): Working with eating patterns that don't fit traditional categories but significantly impact your life and wellbeing.

The Recovery Process

Recovery from eating disorders is rarely linear. It involves developing a new relationship not just with food, but with your emotions, your body, and yourself. This process typically includes:

Early Phase: Safety and Understanding Creating emotional safety in the therapeutic relationship while beginning to understand how your eating patterns developed.

Middle Phase: Pattern Recognition Learning to recognise when different modes are activated and developing alternative responses to difficult situations and emotions.

Later Phase: Integration Developing a more flexible, compassionate relationship with food, eating, and your body that honours both your emotional and physical needs.

Why Choose Schema Therapy for Eating Disorders?

Schema Therapy offers several advantages for eating disorder recovery:

Addresses Root Causes Rather than focusing only on food behaviours, we explore the underlying emotional patterns that drive disordered eating.

Honours Your Intelligence This approach recognises that your eating patterns developed for sophisticated reasons—they helped you cope with difficult experiences.

Integrates Different Parts Instead of trying to eliminate parts of yourself, we help different parts work together more harmoniously.

Focuses on Lasting Change By addressing deeper patterns, Schema Therapy creates the foundation for sustainable recovery.

Trauma-Informed This approach understands how trauma affects the nervous system, attachment patterns, and relationship with the body.

Taking the First Step

If you recognise yourself in these patterns and are ready to explore a deeper approach to eating disorder recovery, I may be able to support you on that journey. This work requires courage—the willingness to explore how your past shaped your present and to develop new ways of caring for yourself.

Recovery is possible. You don't have to remain trapped in patterns that once served you but now limit your life. Through understanding your eating disorder with compassion and developing new ways of meeting your emotional needs, you can create a more peaceful, flexible relationship with food, eating, and your body.

Getting Started

I offer a 15-minute phone consultation to explore whether this approach feels right for your recovery journey. During this conversation, we can discuss your particular situation and determine if Schema Therapy for eating disorders might be helpful for your goals.

Important Note: If you're experiencing medical complications from your eating disorder, it's important to have medical support alongside psychological therapy. I work collaboratively with GPs, psychiatrists, and dietitians to ensure comprehensive care.

Ready to explore a different approach to eating disorder recovery?

Contact me to discuss how Schema Therapy can support your journey toward a more peaceful relationship with food, eating, and yourself.