Eating Disorder Therapy for Adolescents & Teens in Connecticut
Specialized virtual therapy for eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image concerns throughout Connecticut.
When food and body concerns start taking over, you may notice your teen becoming less and less like themselves.
Family meals have suddenly become stressful. Foods they used to eat without a second thought are now off-limits. They’re more critical of their body, and food seems to come with a growing list of rules.
Then you start noticing that it isn’t staying at the dinner table.
They’re pulling away from friends, missing out on things they used to enjoy, and somehow they just don’t seem quite like themselves anymore.
As a parent, it can be hard to know what to make of it. Is this normal teenage behavior? A phase? Should I be more concerned? Do I bring it up or will that make things worse?
You feel like you’re walking on eggshells around food and their body, trying to say the right thing while watching their world slowly get smaller.
Your teen deserves more room for friends, family, school, hobbies, spontaneous plans, and all the ordinary experiences of growing up. Therapy can help them begin loosening the rules and fears that have taken over while helping you feel more confident in how you support them along the way.
What Parents Often Notice First
Eating disorder concerns don’t always look obvious at first. You may notice small shifts in your teen’s relationship with food, their body, or their routines that are easy to brush off as typical adolescence until they start adding up.
Meals with the family become stressful, avoided, or suddenly much more complicated
Foods they used to enjoy disappear from their plate or become foods they “can’t” or “won’t” eat
They become increasingly focused on “healthy,” “clean,” low-calorie, or otherwise “safe” foods
You notice more checking nutrition labels, measuring portions, counting calories, or asking what is in food
Their clothing choices change, they seem increasingly uncomfortable in their body, or getting dressed becomes upsetting
They start avoiding restaurants, celebrations, sleepovers, or plans with friends when food might be involved
They seem more tired, cold, irritable, distracted, or withdrawn than usual
Conversations about food, exercise, weight, or their body quickly become tense or emotional
Their self-esteem seems increasingly connected to their appearance, weight, eating, or ability to follow certain rules
Any one of these changes doesn’t necessarily mean your teen has an eating disorder. But when several changes are happening together, becoming more rigid, or interfering with their health, relationships, school, or everyday life, it’s worth paying attention.
And you don’t have to know exactly what’s happening before reaching out. If something feels different and you’re concerned about your teen, that’s enough reason to start a conversation. A free 15-minute discovery call can be a low-pressure place to share what you’ve been noticing, ask questions, and talk about what support might look like.
There’s more to your teen than their eating disorder.
I’m here to support your teen, challenge them when they need it, laugh with them, and help them remember that their life gets to be about so much more than food and their body.
And when I say I understand how complicated recovery can be, I mean it. Alongside my clinical training, I bring lived experience of eating disorder recovery into this work, something that deeply shapes the compassion, patience, and understanding I bring into the therapy room.
Together, we’ll get curious about the rules, fears, and beliefs that have started taking up too much space. We’ll work toward helping your teen build a relationship with food, their body, and themselves that feels more flexible and compassionate.
Your teen may still have hard body image days, and that’s okay. Over time, those days can have less power over what they eat, what they wear, where they go, and how much of their life they participate in. There’s more room for friends, family, school, hobbies, new experiences, and all the ordinary parts of being a teenager.
You’ll learn how to support your teen with more confidence and less second-guessing. And your teen gets to make more room for who they are outside of the food rules, body checking, and constant mental noise.
Because there’s a whole lot of growing up and living to do beyond the rules.
Eating Disorders & Body Image Concerns I Work With
Anorexia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa
Binge Eating Disorder
ARFID
OSFED
Orthorexia
Disordered eating and chronic dieting
Food rules, fear foods, and anxiety around eating
Compulsive or rigid movement
Body image distress, body checking, and body avoidance
Eating disorders rarely exist on their own. Alongside changes in your teen’s relationship with food and their body, you may also notice them struggling with OCD, perfectionism, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, or difficult past experiences.
When additional support is needed, I can collaborate with eating disorder-informed dietitians, medical providers, psychiatrists, and other members of your teen’s treatment team so you aren’t left trying to coordinate their care on your own. The goal is for your teen to have a connected team working together to support both their physical and emotional recovery.
How I Approach Eating Disorder Therapy
Your teen’s body isn’t the problem.
Teenagers are surrounded by messages about what their bodies are supposed to look like. Social media, friends, sports, school, family, and diet culture can all reinforce the idea that their body needs to be smaller, different, or “better” in order for them to feel okay. In therapy, we’ll make space to question those messages rather than treating your teen’s body as something that needs to be fixed.
My approach to eating disorder treatment is weight-inclusive and informed by Health at Every Size® (HAES®) principles. Therapy won’t focus on shrinking your teen’s body, pursuing intentional weight loss, or treating the number on the scale as a measure of their health, worth, or progress. Instead, we’ll work toward helping your teen build a more trusting relationship with food, movement, their changing body, and themselves.
For adolescents with eating disorders, parents and caregivers can be a powerful part of recovery. When appropriate, I incorporate principles of Family-Based Treatment (FBT), an approach that helps families work together to support their teen’s nutrition and recovery while taking blame off both the teen and their family. FBT recognizes that your teen is not the eating disorder and that they may need more support around food and eating while recovery is taking hold. Over time, the goal is to help your teen gradually regain independence while strengthening confidence in both your teen and your family’s ability to navigate recovery.
We’ll also look at the environment your teen is recovering in, such as the comments about bodies, food rules, social media messages, comparison, pressure to look a certain way, and other influences that can make recovery harder. Together, we can help your family challenge harmful messages and create a home environment that supports a different relationship with food and bodies.
Your teen doesn’t have to love their body every day to recover. The goal is to help them learn to respect it, care for it, and keep living their life even on the days when liking their body feels hard.
The How
Here’s how we’ll start making things feel a little less complicated:
1. Understand What’s Going On:
We’ll get curious about how the eating disorder has been showing up in your teen’s life, from food rules and body worries to changes around meals, movement, emotions, school, or relationships. We’ll also help your teen begin to recognize the eating disorder as something they’re experiencing, not who they are.
2. Challenge the Eating Disorder’s Rules:
Together, we’ll start questioning the food rules, body beliefs, fears, and routines that have gained more control over your teen’s life and practice responding in ways that support recovery instead of the eating disorder.
3. Build New Ways to Cope:
If restricting, controlling food, exercise, body checking, or other eating disorder behaviors have become ways of coping with stress, difficult emotions, perfectionism, uncertainty, or feeling out of control, we’ll help your teen build other ways to navigate the hard stuff.
4. Bring Recovery Into Everyday Life:
Recovery doesn’t only happen during therapy. We’ll work toward more flexibility around food, less checking and comparing, and greater freedom to participate in everyday life. Parents and caregivers may be actively involved in helping their teen practice recovery at home, including providing additional support around meals when appropriate.
5. Build a Team Around Your Teen:
Eating disorder recovery often requires attention to both physical and emotional health. When needed, I’ll collaborate with eating disorder-informed dietitians, medical providers, psychiatrists, and other members of your teen’s treatment team. Parents and caregivers are an important part of that team, too, and we’ll work together to help you feel more confident supporting recovery at home.
6. Help Your Teen Get Back to Being a Teen:
The goal isn’t for your teen or your family to do recovery perfectly. It’s for the eating disorder to take up less and less space, leaving more room for friends, family, school, hobbies, experiences, independence, and figuring out who they are beyond food and their body.
Eating Disorder FAQs
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Nope! Your teen does not need a formal eating disorder diagnosis to receive support. I work with adolescents experiencing eating disorders, disordered eating, body image concerns, food anxiety, rigid eating patterns, and other concerns around food, movement, and their body.
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This is common. Your teen may genuinely feel that nothing is wrong, feel protective of their eating disorder behaviors, or be scared about what treatment might mean. They don’t have to walk through the door already motivated for recovery. We can start by building trust, understanding their perspective, and meeting them where they are while still taking concerns about their health and well-being seriously.
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Yes, parent and caregiver involvement can be an important part of adolescent eating disorder recovery. How involved you are will depend on your teen’s age, needs, medical status, and treatment plan. This may include parent sessions, family sessions, support around meals, or helping you learn how to respond to the eating disorder at home while still respecting your teen’s growing independence.
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Your teen deserves a space where they can feel comfortable talking openly, and parents also need to know about significant concerns affecting their child’s safety and treatment. At the beginning of therapy, we’ll talk clearly about confidentiality, its limits, and how communication with parents will work so both you and your teen know what to expect.
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Sometimes outpatient therapy isn’t enough to safely support recovery. If I believe your teen would benefit from a higher level of care or additional services, I’ll talk with you about my concerns and help you understand potential next steps. The goal is always to help your teen receive the level of support they need, not to keep them in outpatient therapy when something more intensive would be appropriate.
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Eating disorders can affect both physical and emotional health, so additional providers are often an important part of treatment. Depending on your teen’s needs, I may recommend working with an eating disorder-informed dietitian, pediatrician or other medical provider, psychiatrist, or additional specialist. With appropriate permission, I can collaborate with your teen’s providers so their care is connected.
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That’s okay, and it’s common. Eating disorders can exist alongside OCD, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, low self-esteem, trauma, and other emotional concerns. Your teen is more than a collection of eating disorder symptoms, and our work can make space for the bigger picture of what they’re experiencing.
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Yes. You cannot determine whether someone has an eating disorder or how much they are struggling by looking at their body. Eating disorders and disordered eating can occur across body sizes, and concerning behaviors and thoughts deserve attention regardless of whether there has been an obvious change in appearance or weight.
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Virtual therapy can be a good fit for some adolescents and families, depending on the teen’s needs and level of care. During the consultation and assessment process, we can discuss whether virtual outpatient therapy is an appropriate fit or whether your teen would be better supported by another type or level of treatment.
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Supporting someone you love through an eating disorder can be confusing, frustrating, and scary. Parent involvement can include helping you understand the eating disorder, navigate difficult moments around food, respond to symptoms without reinforcing them, and feel more confident supporting recovery at home. You shouldn’t have to figure out how to help your teen entirely on your own.
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The discovery call is an opportunity for you to briefly share what you’ve been noticing, what you’re concerned about, and what kind of support you’re looking for. We can talk about whether my practice may be an appropriate fit for your teen and what the next steps would look like. You don’t need to have everything figured out before reaching out.
