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Eating disorder therapy for anorexia
Anorexia treatments and therapies based in London. We take anorexia seriously & will work with you to help you understand & overcome your disorder.
Eating disorders explained
Eating disorders can be explained as a negative attitude towards food, severe enough to change the person’s eating habits. Someone suffering from an eating disorder may develop an obsessive habit to monitor their weight and body shape, gaining an unhealthy relationship with food and exercise which may cause damage to their health.
The most common eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is when a person attempts to maintain a very low weight. This is achieved through lack of eating or over-exercising. Bulimia is diagnosed when a person attempts to control their weight by inducing vomiting after binge eating.
Other eating disorders can take the form of binge eating, emotional eating, food addiction, food aversion, and overeating. At Pinnacle we take each disorder seriously and our specialist eating disorder therapists will work with you to help you understand and overcome your disorder.
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"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
Anorexia in more detail
Anorexia is a serious eating disorder and mental health condition. Those suffering from anorexia will have a distorted image of their bodies, thinking they’re fat even when they are underweight. They will try to keep their weight as low as possible, this can be through not eating or by exercising too much. In some instances, it is both. These actions can make them very ill as they will eventually start to starve.
Anorexia is most common in young women, it usually starts in their mid-teens but it does affect both men and women, and of any age.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
What are the symptoms and signs of anorexia?
● Missing meals, eating very little or avoiding foods you see as fattening
● Believing you’re fat when you’re underweight or a healthy weight
● Taking supplements or medicine to reduce hunger
● Taking medicine such as laxatives or diuretics
● Periods stopping in women who have not yet reached menopause, or not yet started them in younger women/ girls
● Feeling dizzy or lightheaded, hair loss, dry skin
● Making yourself sick after eating
● Over exercising
● If you are under 18, your weight and height being lower than expected for your age
● If you’re an adult, having an unusually low BMI
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
Our approach to treating anorexia
We offer help for people with different eating disorders, in particular anorexia. An eating disorder is a sensitive subject and we take the utmost care with our clients. Our aim is to create a safe environment where you can be yourself. Mostly we use talking therapies to treat anorexia, the primary therapies being Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)[LINK] and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).[LINK]
We understand that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and that each of our clients is different and has their own set of unique needs and circumstances.
Recovery from eating disorders is a slow process, by using CBT and EMDR we can help you come to terms with your situation and set goals and positive outcomes.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
Client success stories
Case Studies, Therapy, Trauma
Anger, Anxiety, Case Studies, Children
Case Studies, Communication, Counselling
Case Studies, Workplace Wellbeing
An anorexia treatment case study
Rachel, aged 33, was concerned about her loss of appetite. Frequently, she would feel nauseous and she was also becoming increasingly anxious about the types of food that she would eat. This had led to a significant weight loss and loss of confidence.
She described the situation as being “like a vicious circle” whereby the less that she ate, the more weight that she lost and the more that she felt self-conscious about her eating habits with family and friends. The resulting anxiety prompted her to feel even more nauseous and less inclined to eat.
After an initial consultation session, we were able to identify that the symptoms had first emerged towards the end of a very difficult relationship with a former boyfriend. She described how he had often commented about her weight and been controlling of her eating. By processing this period in her life via counselling, Rachel was able to make greater sense of what had been happening to her over the course of the last two years. This understanding, coupled with the practical techniques which she learnt via the counselling, helped her to gradually regain control of her anxiety and to begin to experiment with food again.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
Using CBT for anorexia
CBT is particularly effective in treating eating disorders. CBT is about looking at the relationship between your thoughts and feelings, and how they make you ‘default’ to certain behaviours. It’s seen as a different kind of ‘talking therapy’ that aims to solve a person’s current problems. In effect it helps you become your own therapist, where you use the skills you have learned.
By using CBT as an anorexia treatment, we can help make you aware of what your own defaults are: sometimes they help us, sometimes they don’t – CBT helps you recognise those different responses for what they are.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
How does CBT help?
CBT teaches you how to break out of those default patterns to become more resilient in situations you may find uncomfortable or stressful by identifying where you respond negatively and then challenging those negative thoughts with alternative, positive ones.
CBT is a way to rewire the software of your brain, rehearsing troubling situations in your mind in order to create alternative ways of thinking when that situation arises again. In effect, you’re creating new mental circuitry by challenging and changing old responses that feel hardwired in, but aren’t.
With CBT therapy, your therapist acknowledges that there may be behaviours that you cannot control through rational thought. Rather, these harmful coping strategies are as a result of prior conditioning from the environment and other internal or external stimuli.
By taking (what can feel like) insurmountable tasks and teaching you how to apply a pragmatic and objective viewpoint to these issues, CBT gradually changes the way you look at everyday challenges.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
Using EMDR for anorexia - what is EMDR?
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing) therapy was originally developed to treat post-traumatic stress disorders, including experiences of war. It is highly effective for trauma but has since been found to have far reaching applications for many different types of disorders, such as anorexia.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
How does EMDR therapy help treat anorexia?
Some people don’t want to talk about what is troubling them, particularly those suffering from an eating disorder such as anorexia; it can be difficult to ’open up’ and explore why they are feeling this way. Some people don’t fully know. That’s not a problem with EMDR because it enables us to work blind to the actual issue: sometimes we work with people and treat them without needing to discuss any of the specifics.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
EMDR in more detail
Imagine watching a film back in your mind of an incident or trigger which made you anxious, and then pausing it at the worst moment: the part that really encapsulates the trauma or upset you felt. That’s what we get our patients to do, replaying it in their mind. We ask them to notice something in the past, and then notice something in the present. We call it bilateral stimulation.
We do this because the part of our brain that processes that event, the reptilian part of our brain, doesn’t know how to handle the incident or trigger and can’t store it as a memory. EMDR helps to change that.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
What actually happens in an EMDR therapy session?
Imagine watching a film back in your mind of an incident or trigger which made you anxious, and then pausing it at the worst moment: the part that really encapsulates the trauma or upset you felt. That’s what we get our patients to do, replaying it in their mind. We ask them to notice something in the past, and then notice something in the present. We call it bilateral stimulation.
We do this because the part of our brain that processes that event, the reptilian part of our brain, doesn’t know how to handle the incident or trigger and can’t store it as a memory. EMDR helps to change that.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
What can you expect from an anorexia clinic session?
We take your needs seriously and offer the utmost confidentiality at all times. Our private eating disorder therapists are here to create a safe space where you can talk freely. The sessions are tailored to suit your needs with each session lasting from 30 minutes to an hour; we usually recommend a course of around 6 to 12 sessions.
"Play therapy is really effective in helping younger children who lack the emotional literacy to articulate how they feel. It gives us a way to frame what's going on in their heads and play it out in front of us."
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
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If you’re still unsure whether you need us or not then simply send us any questions you may have via the enquiry form on the right.