Eating Disorders

Eating difficulties can develop as a way to manage emotions or regain control. Therapy helps you understand these patterns and build a healthier, more compassionate relationship with food and your body. 

Understanding Eating Disorders

Eating disorders can develop for many reasons — often as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions, regain control, or manage difficult experiences. They are not simply about food or weight, but about the thoughts, feelings, and underlying distress that shape your relationship with eating and your body.

You might find yourself restricting food, binge eating, purging, or experiencing intense guilt around eating. These behaviours can feel all-consuming and difficult to change — but recovery is possible, and therapy can help you work towards it at your own pace.

Main Symptoms

Eating disorders can look different for everyone, but common experiences may include:

  • Restricting, bingeing, or purging food

  • Obsessive thoughts about weight, body image, or control

  • Feeling guilt, shame, or anxiety around eating

  • Difficulty recognising hunger or fullness cues

  • Low mood, irritability, or isolation linked to eating habits

  • Physical effects such as fatigue, dizziness, or disrupted sleep

Impact Eating Disorders Can Have

Eating disorders can have a profound impact on physical health, emotional wellbeing, and relationships. They can take up significant mental space, making it hard to focus on anything else. Many people describe feeling stuck — torn between wanting to change and fearing what that might mean.

Therapy offers a compassionate and confidential space to explore these difficulties safely, without judgment.

How Therapy Helps

Therapy for eating disorders helps you understand what maintains unhelpful cycles and build healthier coping strategies.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) are often used to:

  • Identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts about food and self-worth

  • Understand emotional triggers and learn alternative ways of coping

  • Reconnect with your body’s natural signals for hunger and fullness

  • Build self-compassion and a more balanced sense of identity

At Shire Therapies, our accredited therapists work sensitively and collaboratively, focusing on safety, understanding, and gradual change. We recognise that recovery is a process — therapy moves at a pace that feels right for you.

Take The Next Steps

You don’t have to face this alone.

Book a session or Contact us to find out how therapy can help you move forward with confidence.