Body Image & Disordered Eating Therapy in Chicago
You don’t need an eating disorder diagnosis to deserve support with your relationship with food or your body. Whether you’re struggling with body image, constantly thinking about food or weight, caught in cycles of restriction or overeating, feeling guilty after eating, or simply tired of your appearance taking up so much mental space, therapy can help you build a more peaceful relationship with food, your body, and yourself.
Meet Our Body Image & Disordered Eating Therapists
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Alex Garcia, LPC
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Paichence Maze, LCPC
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Brenna Wells, MA
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Kayleigh Reed, LPC
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Paili Bachrach, LSW
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Olivia Palumbo, MA
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![Nicole Pratl, MSW Body Image Therapist Chicago]()
Nicole Pratl, MSW
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Denice Spencer, LCPC
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Lia Panos, Psy.D.
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![Chicago therapist Zana Van Der Smissen, LCPC with long red hair, wearing a green ribbed knit top, smiling, with gold hoop earrings, against a white background.]()
Zana Van Der Smissen, LCPC, PMHC
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Claire Sweetow, LCSW
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Isa Martinez Mulcahy, LCPC, R-DMT
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![Elle Kirby, LCSW Body Image Therapist Chicago]()
Elle Kirby, LCSW
Schedule Your 1st Appointment
Does food or your body take up more mental space than you want it to?
You may not have an eating disorder diagnosis—or even know whether what you’re experiencing “counts” as disordered eating. You might simply know that thoughts about food, weight, exercise, or your appearance are taking up too much of your energy.
You might:
Feel like your body is never “good enough,” no matter what you do
Spend a lot of time thinking about food, weight, calories, exercise, or your appearance
Feel guilty, anxious, or ashamed after eating
Restrict what you eat, skip meals, or follow rigid rules around food
Experience episodes of overeating or feeling out of control around food
Exercise because you feel like you have to, or to compensate for what you’ve eaten
Frequently check, criticize, compare, or avoid looking at your body
Avoid photos, clothing, dating, intimacy, social events, or other experiences because of how you feel about your body
Find yourself cycling between trying to control your eating and feeling like you’ve “failed”
Know intellectually that dieting or criticizing your body isn’t helping, but struggle to relate to food or your body differently
You don’t have to wait until these patterns become more severe to ask for help. Therapy can give you space to understand what’s underneath them and begin building a relationship with food and your body that feels less consuming.
You Don’t Have to Love Your Body Every Day
Healing your relationship with your body doesn’t necessarily mean learning to love every part of your appearance all the time. For many people, putting pressure on themselves to feel “body positive” can become another impossible standard to meet.
Therapy can instead help you move toward body acceptance or body neutrality—where your appearance doesn’t have to determine your worth, your mood, or what you allow yourself to do.
The goal may be less about looking in the mirror and thinking I love everything I see and more about reaching a place where thoughts about your body have less power over your life.
Body Image Is About More Than How You Look
Body image is the relationship you have with your body—how you see it, how you feel living in it, what you believe it says about you, and how those beliefs affect the way you move through the world.
Our relationships with our bodies don’t develop in isolation. Family messages, cultural expectations, gender, race, sexuality, health, disability, pregnancy and postpartum changes, aging, social media, relationships, and experiences of being judged or objectified can all shape how we learn to see ourselves.
When body dissatisfaction becomes consuming, it can begin to affect much more than how you feel when you look in the mirror. It can influence what you eat, how you exercise, what you wear, whether you let yourself be photographed, how comfortable you feel in relationships or intimacy, and how fully you participate in your life.
What Is Disordered Eating?
Disordered eating describes patterns of eating, exercise, or thinking about food and weight that may be distressing or interfere with your life—even when you don’t meet the criteria for a specific eating disorder.
It can include things like chronic dieting, restricting food, skipping meals, binge eating, emotional eating, rigid food rules, fear or guilt around certain foods, compulsive exercise, or feeling as though eating has to be “earned” or compensated for.
For some people, these patterns develop gradually and become so normal that they’re difficult to recognize. You may have spent years believing that constantly monitoring your food or criticizing your body is simply what you’re supposed to do.
You don’t need to know whether your experience qualifies as an eating disorder before reaching out. If your relationship with food or your body is causing distress or limiting your life, it’s worth talking about.
Body Image and Disordered Eating Often Go Together
Difficulties with food are rarely just about food. Restricting, binge eating, emotional eating, compulsive exercise, or constantly trying to change your body can become ways of coping with anxiety, perfectionism, shame, stress, trauma, a need for control, or feeling disconnected from yourself.
At the same time, living in a culture that places enormous value on appearance—and particularly on women’s bodies—can make it difficult to separate what you actually want from the rules and expectations you’ve absorbed over time.
Therapy gives you space to become curious about these patterns rather than judging yourself for having them. Together, you and your therapist can begin understanding what the behaviors are doing for you, what keeps them going, and what might help you develop new ways of responding to your emotions and your body.
Outpatient Therapy for Disordered Eating & Eating Disorder Recovery
Balanced Awakening provides outpatient therapy for body image concerns, disordered eating, and eating disorder recovery. You do not need to have an eating disorder diagnosis to work with us, and many of our clients seek support before their relationship with food or their body reaches a more severe level.
Eating disorders can also affect physical health and sometimes require more intensive or multidisciplinary treatment. Your therapist will help determine whether outpatient therapy is appropriate for your current needs. When additional support is needed, we may recommend working alongside a physician, registered dietitian, or specialized eating disorder treatment program to make sure you have the level of care and support you need.
How Body Image & Disordered Eating Therapy Can Help
Therapy can help you understand the beliefs, emotions, experiences, and patterns that have shaped your relationship with food and your body. Rather than giving you another set of rules to follow, your therapist can help you become more curious about what’s happening and develop ways of responding that feel more flexible, compassionate, and sustainable.
Depending on what you’re experiencing, therapy may help you work toward reducing food and body preoccupation, challenging rigid food or exercise rules, coping with difficult emotions without turning against your body, building body acceptance or neutrality, navigating perfectionism and self-criticism, and feeling more present in relationships and everyday life.
Our therapists will meet you where you are. You don’t have to arrive already knowing exactly what you want your relationship with food or your body to look like.
Body Image & Disordered Eating Therapy FAQs
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In the first two sessions, your therapist will ask you questions about your life currently, your history, and what you might hope to get out of therapy. From there, you and your therapist will discuss goals for therapy. Sessions can focus on whatever you’d like the most help with at the time, whether they be about how you feel about your body, facilitating self-love, or gaining more power over your eating behaviors.
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Our therapy rate for the first two sessions is $250. After that, 55 minute sessions are $225.
Most of our therapists are in network with United Healthcare/Optum, BCBS PPO and Aetna insurance.
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Yes! We offer virtual therapy sessions as well as in-person. Sometimes it’s easier for clients to engage in therapy virtually, especially when they are juggling work, school, or family life at the same time.
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Therapy can help you develop a more peaceful, flexible relationship with food and your body. Depending on what you’re struggling with, therapy may help you:
Reduce the amount of time and mental energy spent thinking about food, weight, exercise, or appearance.
Challenge rigid food rules and all-or-nothing thinking around eating.
Better understand patterns like restricting, overeating, emotional eating, or compulsive exercise.
Learn new ways to cope with difficult emotions, stress, perfectionism, and self-criticism.
Move toward greater body acceptance or body neutrality, without pressuring yourself to love how your body looks every day.
Develop more self-compassion and trust in yourself.
Feel more present and engaged in relationships, activities, and the parts of life that matter to you.
The goal isn’t to achieve a “perfect” relationship with food or your body. Therapy can help these concerns take up less space so you have more room to live your life.
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No. You don’t need an eating disorder diagnosis—or even know whether what you’re experiencing “counts” as disordered eating—to reach out. Many people come to therapy because thoughts about food, weight, exercise, or their body are taking up more mental and emotional space than they want. Therapy can help you explore these patterns before they become more severe, as well as support you during eating disorder recovery.
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Disordered eating can look different from person to person. It might include frequently dieting or restricting food, skipping meals, feeling guilty or anxious after eating, binge eating or feeling out of control around food, following rigid food rules, exercising to compensate for eating, or spending a lot of time thinking about food, weight, or your body.
You don’t need to experience all of these—or meet the criteria for an eating disorder—for your concerns to be worth addressing.
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Our therapists provide outpatient psychotherapy for disordered eating, body image concerns, and eating disorder recovery. Whether outpatient therapy is appropriate depends on your individual needs and the severity of your symptoms. Because eating disorders can affect physical health, some clients may also need support from a physician, registered dietitian, or specialized eating disorder treatment program. We can help determine whether our outpatient setting is an appropriate fit and recommend additional support when needed.
Body Image & Disordered Eating Therapy Blog Posts
What Our Clients Are Saying
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During our first session Hannah was proactive in creating a plan of action to properly diagnose me and address my concerns. Detailed. Office is beautiful. Love the decor, relaxing ambiance and free tea.
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She was very kind and thorough during intake and the entire office looks like something out of a lifestyle magazine.
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The office is lovely and welcoming, the in-take paperwork helped me prepare for what I wanted to talk about and gave me a starting point.
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Dr. Yang is warm and empathic, and made me feel comfortable from the very beginning.
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Emma has been very supportive through major life changes for me. Her sweet and gentle nature made it easy for me to feel safe to open up to her. I am very grateful for her support and kindness.
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It was my first visit and she made me feel so safe. I opened up right away!
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