How to Choose the Right Eating Disorder Therapist For You
Eating disorders are complex, and eating disorder treatment is not an experience you can navigate with just anyone. Your eating disorder therapist is a key part of your recovery, so the vibes have to be right, and you should feel safe, heard, and seen by your therapist. Here’s how to choose an eating disorder therapist who is right for you.
Find someone you can relate to
If you feel that parts of your identity separate you from others with eating disorders, it may be helpful to find an eating disorder treatment center and therapist who understands your background or comes from a similar one. Consider race, culture, gender identity, sexuality, religion, and other factors when conducting your therapist search, and ask about their experience supporting someone with the intersection of identities similar to yours.
Look at their specializations
When you use a tool like Psychology Today to search for therapists, many providers’ pages have long lists of issues that they treat, so it’s hard to know what they actually specialize in. It’s unrealistic for any therapist to be competent in working with such a wide range of issues and identities.
Focus instead on what a therapist specializes in. What’s the central theme of their profile, and does it resonate with you?
Do they specialize in eating disorders and the underlying issues you’re struggling with? Healing begins when we work on the issues that caused us to turn to our eating disorder in the first place. Sometimes a therapist who also specializes in trauma, anxiety, relationship, or body image issues in addition to eating disorders will be helpful in your recovery.
Conduct an informational interview
Once you have a list of eating disorder treatment centers and therapist options, it’s time to start scheduling consultations. Most eating disorder programs and therapists provide an initial free consultation to find out more about the program and discuss what you’d like to work on. This is an ideal time to ask questions and find out what you can expect when working together.
Try 3 sessions before making a decision
Unless it’s the best or worst session ever, it’s usually pretty hard to tell if a therapist is a good fit after one appointment. Three sessions should be enough to help you make a decision.
Your therapist should be empathetic and meet you where you are at, but also convey hope about your recovery as you set realistic goals. The conversation should flow. You should feel safe, seen, and heard in your sessions.
Here’s what a few of Kindful Body’s eating disorder therapists had to say about finding the right therapist:
“I feel people have found the right therapist when they have a sense of ease and comfort in sharing, feel a sense of trust in being wholly honest, and experience just the right amount of healing humor.” —Meghan Montgomery, LPCC
“New clients should find a therapist that makes them feel at ease but challenged throughout the process.” —Samantha Young, LPCC
“Tell them about things you’ve done on your own or with your last therapist that worked well and not-so-well. A therapist should not only make you feel comfortable enough to talk about these things, but also make you feel safe enough to share about what you’re struggling with that you may not be comfortable sharing with others.” —Ashley Ellis. LMFT
Each therapist on the Kindful Body Eating Disorder Treatment California Team has an introduction video on their profile page as well as a blog that describes their background, therapeutic approach, and views on the current trends in the field of eating disorder treatment.
If you’re in California and would like to explore working together, we can help determine which eating disorder therapist would likely be the best fit for you during your initial free 15-minute consultation. We can then set up another free 15-minute consultation with that therapist to make sure you click.
Contact us here to schedule your free 15-minute consultation. Our specialties include emotional eating, binge eating, eating disorder therapy, online eating disorder therapy, teens and college eating disorders, and eating disorder treatment in California.
We have eating disorder therapists online in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Mateo, and across California.
