VIRTUAL THERAPY IN LOS ANGELES
Therapy for Body Struggles
HERE'S THE TRUTHIf there's one thing I know about being human, it's that we all exist in bodies.
Sounds simple enough, but for many of us (myself included), having a gentle, compassionate, and harmonious relationship with our bodies doesn’t come naturally. We’re raised inside systems– especially Western, white-cishet-patriarchal ones– that tell us from a young age that our bodies are projects to manage, control, and “optimize.”
We grow up believing that we should be able to determine what our bodies can do, how they feel, and especially how they look. And we're sold a story that if we do that -- if we can be fit enough, strong enough, beautiful enough, sexy enough, insert-adjective-here enough -- we can also be deserving enough of respect, success, love, or anything else we could possibly desire.
KNOWING ≠ FEELING
Why is living in a body so hard?
Even when we intellectually reject those expectations, when we start to clarify our own values and can articulate why they’re oppressive and where they came from– disentangling from them emotionally and practically can be incredibly hard.
Because knowing something isn’t the same as feeling free from it. Many of us wholeheartedly believe in the beauty of body diversity while still feeling that it would be near impossible to let go, even slightly, of those things that have been promised to us if we can just be disciplined enough to achieve them.
When left unchecked, those pursuits can snowball into obsessions, occupying more and more brain space until there's little room for anything else. Preoccupation with controlling our bodies can lead to any number of concerns from anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem to interpersonal challenges and physical health complications.
Sound familiar? If you’ve tried to loosen your grip on body or food rules and it’s still hard, I would love to help.
WHAT I CAN HELP WITH
Body Image Concerns
My approach to body-related distress depends very much on your specific situation. Sometimes body concerns focus on size and shape, but they can include much more.
Sometimes they look like:
Struggling to manage chronic illnesses and changes in ability
Coming to terms with your relationship to aging
Transforming experiences and performances of gender
Discovering elements of your sexuality and sexual history and how those things impact how you approach new and existing intimate connections
Dealing with wellness culture pressure and “clean eating” stress
Feeling disconnected from your body entirely
My Approach to Body Struggles
No matter the exact flavor of your body struggles, I use a harm-reduction lens to help you better understand how these attitudes have helped you adapt to your context.
In doing so, we will also deepen your awareness of what you truly believe and care about and how you might be able to slowly let go of these creative adjustments that are no longer serving you.
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For those of you dealing with anything on the disordered eating spectrum, from food anxiety to compulsive exercising to a previously diagnosed eating disorder (ED):
I’ve worked with both teens and adults in eating disorder treatment at the partial hospitalization/intensive outpatient (PHP/IOP) level of care. I am intimately familiar with the various kinds of support out there if you are struggling with your relationship to food and/or exercise. I can help assess your needs and recommend an approach to your treatment, running the gamut from working directly with me (possibly with the collaboration of other care team members such as your general practitioner and/or a registered dietitian) to bolstering you through a higher level of care (like PHP/IOP or residential treatment) until you are ready to "step down" to outpatient work.
My understanding of the ins and outs of ED treatment also makes me a great fit for those currently getting ready to discharge from higher levels of care, but still wanting attuned assistance in your recovery. My approach to this work is weight-inclusive, weight-neutral, and aligned with Intuitive Eating principles. I use a holistic systemic lens, wanting to help you better understand how your context impacts everything you are currently experiencing. I believe that disordered eating is so much more than a set of behaviors to curb, and I don't believe in a punitive shame-based method to healing. I want to meet you where you are and help you make gradual shifts that feel sustainable and authentic.
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I am acutely aware that y'all are statistically even more likely than cis folks like me to contend with challenging feelings related to how you experience your bodies. If you're totally cool with your body, that rocks and I love that for you. If you're not though, you are by far not the only one. I have had the privilege of working with trans clients all along the spectrum from "you're the first person I've said this out loud to" to longtime out and very active in their LGBTQ+ communities.
And look, I fully get that you might prefer to work with a trans and/or queer therapist. If that's the case, absolutely more power to you and I'd be happy to give you some referrals. But especially if you're part of the unfortunately pretty big overlap in the Venn diagram that is trans and nonbinary people and people with disordered eating, and you want to work with someone especially attuned to balancing both of those parts of you, I may just be a great fit.