Food Centered Therapy
You, like many people, may be struggling with your relationship to food. You may wish to break out of the diet-culture paradigm, but you are not sure how to do that while also balancing the needs of your body. You may be aware of the harms of diet culture and wish to unravel from it and experience relief from its grips, but it is hard to do that work alone, especially if it feels like everyone around you is still in it. You may struggle to incorporate foods that bring you joy without feeling guilt or shame afterwards or feeling like you have to do something to compensate.
Relationships to Self and Others
Your relationships may be complicated by conflicting approaches to food and eating. Whether it be your partner, your parents, your siblings, or your children, your experiences in these relationships may seem like a challenge for you when it comes to meal planning, shopping, and execution. You may often feel unsupported and misunderstood.
Neurodivergence can cause conflict in families regarding individual food preferences and choices, causing people to either avoid food instead of seeking foods that resonate or to lean into foods in a way that is also disconnected or without discernment. There is a p[art of you that seeks a sense of balance with food, but it feels like there are invisible barriers and it’s hard for you to identify the problem. Food issues can be multigenerational, and these cycles can stop with you.
What is a Relationship to Food?
We develop our relationships to food in the relationships within our home culture growing up and through messaging from greater dominant culture via the shows we watch, the ads we are exposed to in magazines and podcasts, on social media, or elsewhere.
In our work with food-centered therapy, we will identify your current relationships with food and body and explore how your relationship to food and eating developed. We will work together to help you find ways to be present in your life, to develop a relationship with food and body that feels better to you, a kinder inner voice that externalizes shame, and a more gentle, compassionate understanding of yourself.
We will work together to help you grow your relationship to yourself and your body. We will help you to cultivate this food-centered approach by linking to your past experiences and personal stories about food and the kitchen with your present moment experience. Cooking is a mindfulness practice that can help increase connection with the body. We will work together to help you to increase your capacity to procure and cook foods that resonate with you.
In food-centered therapy you will have an opportunity to establish and develop a deeper connection with yourself, increase and sustain meaning in your life, and expand your capacity for self-compassion.
This work can take place during individual sessions in my office or online via telehealth. For some clients we discuss food-centered work as it arises in session and for other clients it is we take are more focused approach. We will work together to create an individualized recipe for lasting changes. I will meet you where you are.
If you would like to explore working with me, fill out the contact form.
Announcing a new Counter Diet-Culture Support Group
Access support, tools, and inspiration – in community.
Starting January 2025
“The world begins at the kitchen table.”
- Joy Harjo