What We Treat – Therapy for Eating Issues and Unhealthy Eating Habits
Do you think about food more than you want to? Meals come with stress, shame, or guilt. You’re caught between control and chaos—and you’re tired.
If you’re struggling with your relationship to food or your body, even if your experience doesn’t fit the criteria for a clinical eating disorder, it still feels disruptive or distressing.—or if you’re stepping down from a higher level of care—Serenium Wellness offers compassionate, outpatient therapy for disordered eating and unhealthy eating habits that honors your lived experience and supports long-term healing.
What Are Eating Issues?
Eating issues can take many forms and don’t always fit neatly into a diagnosis like anorexia or bulimia. They might show up as:
- Emotional eating or using food to cope with stress, anxiety, or sadness
- Binge eating—feeling out of control during eating episodes, followed by guilt or shame
- Obsessive focus on “clean” or “healthy” eating (sometimes called orthorexia)
- Chronic dieting or yo-yo eating patterns
- Body image distress, self-criticism, or compulsive exercise
- Fear of weight gain or rigid food rules, even without full restriction
- Eating habits linked to trauma, perfectionism, or anxiety disorders
You may not identify with everything above, but still feel like food and body image dominate your mental space—or undermine your wellbeing. If this resonates, you’re not alone—and you deserve support.
When Eating Issues Are Linked to Mental Health
Disordered eating patterns often emerge as coping mechanisms. For many people, eating struggles are closely connected to:
- Anxiety or OCD-like behaviors around food, health, or control
- Depression, emotional numbness, or low self-worth
- Trauma or complex PTSD, especially where food became a source of comfort or control
- Perfectionism, people-pleasing, or high-achieving tendencies
- Body dysmorphia or chronic body dissatisfaction
- ADHD, especially with executive functioning challenges and impulsive eating patterns
At Serenium, we treat eating issues not as a failure of willpower—but as a symptom of deeper emotional patterns that can be explored and shifted in outpatient therapy, once safety and stability are in place.
Not in Crisis—But Still Struggling?
We specialize in working with individuals who:
- Have mild to moderate disordered eating patterns, but don’t need residential or IOP levels of care
- Are stepping down from a higher level of care (PHP/IOP) and want continued outpatient support
- Are functioning in day-to-day life, but struggling with distress, anxiety, or guilt around food or body
- Want to explore the root of their eating issues in a safe, sustainable way
You don’t need to be in crisis to deserve help. We meet you where you are and help you move forward from there.
Our Approach to Eating Issues
Our outpatient therapy for eating struggles integrates evidence-based tools with deep emotional support, including:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for disordered eating patterns and body image
- Emotion-Focused and Psychodynamic Therapy to explore deeper causes like shame, trauma, or attachment wounds
- Mindfulness and somatic awareness to reconnect to hunger, fullness, and embodied cues
- Self-compassion and narrative therapy to rewrite internal scripts around food, weight, and worth
- Collaboration with dietitians or prescribers when appropriate (we can refer to trusted professionals)
We help you build a more peaceful relationship with food—not through rigid control or restriction, but through curiosity, emotional regulation, and self-trust.
Who We Work With
We support adults, teens, and young adults navigating eating issues in the context of:
- Anxiety or OCD
- Trauma or PTSD
- Perfectionism or burnout
- ADHD
- Depression
- Life transitions (college, pregnancy/postpartum, breakups, etc.)
We are a safe space for all body sizes, genders, and cultural backgrounds. Our goal is not to fix you, but to support you in healing your relationship with food and yourself.
Ready for Outpatient Care?
If you’ve completed IOP or residential treatment for an eating disorder, or if you’re not in crisis but know your food habits and body image need attention, Serenium offers a stable next step. We’ll help you sustain the progress you’ve made—or begin the healing process for the first time, safely and gently.
Let’s Rebuild Your Relationship With Food
You don’t have to keep doing this alone—or wait until it gets worse. Whether you’ve been struggling for years or are just beginning to notice the patterns, outpatient therapy for disordered eating can be a powerful step toward freedom and peace.
See the vast list of insurance we accept, check out our caring staff of therapists, join our monthly newsletter, give us a call or fill out the form below to set up your first session.
Our team will speak with you to find the best therapist for what you need and based on your availability. We offer in person sessions in New Jersey in Brick, Eatontown, Manalapan, and Cranford, as well as virtual sessions. If after a few sessions, you’re not feeling like your therapist is the right fit, we are happy to find someone who is from our staff of over 150+ therapists.
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