Family Based Therapy – Child, Adolescent & Caregivers
Using the leading approach for eating disorder treatment in children and adolescents, I work with you and your child to maintain or return to their physical health by reducing eating disorder behaviors and reinforcing parent support—not only around food, but as co-regulators of your child’s emotional distress.
Family Based Therapy (FBT) is a modality of care specifically designed for children and adolescents with diagnosed eating disorders of Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Despite a child’s chronological age, often their inability to feed themselves adequately due to the “illness mind” requires parents to take control of the child’s eating and food choices. While many parents often feel blamed or “to blame” for their child’s illness, FBT believes parents are the best resource—and the best agent of change—for the child’s recovery. In using the core tenants of FBT, I will work with you and your child to:
- Reduce guilt or blame placed on either the child or the parent for the development of the illness.
- Target eating disorder behaviors directly, using a present-future focus, in order to interrupt symptoms and maintain physical health.
- Externalize the illness and rediscover a set of core values that are unique to your child’s authentic and healthy self.
- Explore and improve parental alignment around the management of eating disorder symptoms.
- Improve emotion regulation skills for your child via practical strategies.
- Empower caregivers to “parent with confidence” and be agents of change for their child via skill-building and direct coaching.
You are the expert on your child. I hope to work with you to better “know” the mind of your child and to help mend their relationship with food, their body and the world around them.
Medical clearance from your child’s Pediatrician may be required to pursue FBT services at this level-of-care.
“It is those of us who have been broken that become experts at mending.”
– steve maraboli
Mind & Mend 