If food has become one of the main ways you cope with difficult emotions, you’re not alone.
You may find yourself eating when you’re stressed, lonely, anxious, bored, angry, or exhausted — even when you’re not physically hungry. You may promise yourself that tomorrow will be different, only to find yourself repeating the same pattern again.
And afterward may come the guilt.
Why did I do that again? Why can’t I control myself? What’s wrong with me?
If you’ve spent years cycling between trying to control your eating and feeling as though your eating is controlling you, it can be exhausting.
As a Registered Clinical Counsellor (RCC) with almost 30 years of experience, I help adults understand what’s underneath their relationship with food and develop more compassionate, sustainable ways of responding to themselves.
I offer in-person counselling in Victoria and video and telephone counselling throughout British Columbia.
I’ve Been There, Too
This is an area that’s particularly close to my heart.
When I was younger, I struggled with eating disorders, and I’ve also done my own work around emotional eating and my relationship with food.
I know how much mental and emotional energy food can consume — and how frustrating it can be to understand intellectually what you’re doing while still finding yourself repeating the same patterns.
My experience doesn’t mean that your relationship with food will look exactly like mine. Everyone’s story is different.
But it has given me a deep respect for how complicated these struggles can be and how important it is to approach them with curiosity and compassion rather than more shame.
Combined with almost 30 years of counselling experience, that personal understanding has strongly shaped the way I work with clients around food.
How Counselling Can Help
Our work isn’t about creating another set of rigid rules for you to follow.
Instead, we may work on:
- Identifying the emotional triggers behind your eating
- Recognizing patterns of restriction, overeating, guilt, and shame
- Finding other ways to soothe yourself when you’re stressed or overwhelmed
- Becoming more aware of physical hunger and emotional hunger
- Understanding how anxiety, sensitivity, perfectionism, or people-pleasing may affect your relationship with food
- Learning to tolerate difficult emotions without immediately needing to escape them
- Reducing harsh self-criticism after eating
- Developing greater self-compassion
- Finding ways to experience comfort, pleasure, and reward that don’t always revolve around food
The goal isn’t perfection.
It’s to help food become one part of your life rather than something that dominates it.
Moving Beyond Shame
One of the most painful parts of struggling with food is how quickly it can become a judgment about who you are.
I’m weak.
I have no self-control.
I should be able to fix this.
Shame usually doesn’t help us change. More often, it becomes part of the cycle.
In counselling, we’ll work toward understanding your behaviour rather than attacking yourself for it.
That doesn’t mean giving up on change. In fact, I’ve found that meaningful change becomes much more possible when we stop treating ourselves as the enemy.
Free Resources to Help You Get Started
If you’d like to learn more before deciding whether counselling is right for you, I have several free resources available.
You can watch my Emotional Eating/Food Addiction playlist on YouTube, where I talk about many of the patterns I see around food and emotional eating.
You can also sign up for my newsletter and receive my audio program, Making Peace With Food and Our Bodies, free.
A Note About Eating Disorders
My counselling practice focuses on emotional eating and problematic or compulsive patterns around food. I do not provide treatment for serious eating disorders.
If you’re experiencing anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating disorder, or another eating disorder requiring specialized treatment, it’s important to work with professionals who specialize in eating-disorder care.
For specialized support in British Columbia and Canada, you may find these resources helpful:
- Island Health — Eating Disorders Treatment — Vancouver Island, including services for South Vancouver Island/Victoria. Island Health
- Vancouver Coastal Health — Eating Disorders Program — outpatient assessment and treatment programs for youth and adults. VCH
- Looking Glass Foundation — BC-based counselling, peer support and recovery resources. Looking Glass Foundation
- National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) — Canada-wide information, resources, referrals, helpline and live chat.