Anorexia nervosa
Restrictive eating that shapes daily life around what is avoided. Adults with anorexia often present quietly, sometimes for years, before treatment is sought.
Focus Area Focus
Eating disorder therapy.
Care for clients navigating anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, orthorexia — and the presentations that don’t fit neatly into the diagnostic categories.
Eating disorders are almost never really about food. They are almost always about the nervous system’s search for control in a body or environment that once felt uncontrollable.
The clinical literature on eating disorders is unambiguous that these are among the most lethal mental health conditions — and simultaneously among the most under-recognized at both ends of the age spectrum: in the children whose ARFID or early restriction is dismissed as a phase, and in the high-functioning adults, particularly women in their thirties and forties, whose disorder does not look like the adolescent picture the field was originally organized around. Our work holds two things at once: the specific behavioral protocols that stabilize eating patterns and nutritional status, and the deeper work of understanding what the disorder has been trying to accomplish — often trauma, often perfectionism, often a nervous system that learned young to control what it could when it could not control what it needed to. We work with clients across ages, adjusting family involvement, pacing, and modality to the developmental stage in front of us.
Areas of focus.
Bulimia nervosa
The cycle of binge and compensatory behavior — often carried in private for years, with real medical and emotional cost. Effective treatment addresses both the behavior and what it is regulating.
Binge eating disorder
The most common eating disorder, and the most under-treated. Recurrent binge episodes without regular compensatory behavior. Often occurs alongside depression, anxiety, or trauma.
ARFID & orthorexia
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder and orthorexia (rigid “clean eating” that has become disordered). Under-recognized in adults; responsive to specialized care.
Body image & disordered patterns
Sub-clinical patterns that don’t meet formal diagnostic criteria but consume significant time, energy, and emotional bandwidth — and often benefit from the same clinical approaches.
How we work.
Not just about food
Effective eating disorder treatment addresses the eating behavior directly — and simultaneously the underlying function it is serving. Both together, never one at the expense of the other.
The nervous system’s search for control
Restrictive and compulsive eating patterns often function, in a trauma-informed frame, as a nervous system’s attempt to manufacture a sense of control in a body or environment that once felt dangerously uncontrollable.
Integrated: trauma, family, and body
National research consistently finds elevated rates of trauma among adults with eating disorders. Treatment that ignores this — or addresses it too early — often produces symptom substitution rather than genuine recovery.
Ready to reach out?
Book a free 15-minute consultation with Enid Wilson, LMFT. For help finding the right fit or to speak with the clinical director, call or text (916) 990-2326 or email [email protected].
Telephone
(916) 990-2326
Email
[email protected]
Research Cited
- “Association between childhood maltreatment and OCD comorbid with eating disorders.” Journal of Eating Disorders, 2024 (N=562).
- “Eating Disorders and Trauma.” National Eating Disorders Association, research summary citing National Women’s Study, NCS-R, and NESARC.
- “Child Trauma Experiences and Dissociative Symptoms in Women with Eating Disorders.” PMC, 2020.