 As an eating disorder therapist & founder of The Eating Disorder Center, I was honored to be named as a finalist among 5 other therapists in The Best of Bethesda Awards under the category of Individual Therapist. I have devoted my career to helping teens & adults who are struggling with eating disorders to make peace with food, discover body acceptance, and practice self-compassion. I also specialize in working with individuals with eating disorders who have co-occurring OCD and/or mood disorders. My passion for this work came out of my own struggle-and eventually finding freedom from an eating disorder. I remember how exhausting it felt to be constantly thinking about food and my body, terrified of body changes, and fixated on compulsive exercise. Now, I am passionate about helping others to find the same freedom that I did. I went on to co-author the book ‘The Inside Scoop on Eating Disorder Recovery.” I have appeared on television raising awareness about eating disorders and recovery on NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, DC News Now, and PBS. I have also been interviewed by The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, CNN, US News & World Report, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Today Show, Seventeen Magazine, In Style Magazine, and Esquire Magazine. I was named as one of the top eating disorder therapists in the country by a leading eating disorder treatment center. My professional blog was named one of the top eating disorder blogs in the world from 2019-2024. I also have written many articles on eating disorders for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today. Outside of my work as a therapist, my proudest accomplishment is marrying the love of my life, Mark, and giving birth to our toddler son River. It would mean the world to me if you would consider voting for me under ‘Health and Wellness’ and then ‘Individual Therapists’ and Jennifer Rollin. You have to cast a vote in 5 categories for it to count. Vote HERE. Schedule a free 15 min consult for eating disorder therapy in MD, VA, DC, NY, FL, or recovery coaching worldwide. Click here. The Eating Disorder Center is a premier outpatient eating disorder therapy center founded by Jennifer Rollin. We specialize in helping teens and adults struggling with anorexia, binge eating disorder, bulimia, OSFED, and body image issues. We provide eating disorder therapy in Rockville, MD, easily accessible to individuals in Potomac, North Potomac, Bethesda, Olney, Silver Spring, Germantown, and Washington D.C. We also provide eating disorder therapy in Arlington, Virginia and virtually throughout Virginia. Additionally, we offer eating disorder therapy virtually in New York (NYC), Florida, and California. We provide eating disorder and EMDR trauma therapy in Rockville, Maryland and virtually throughout Maryland. We provide eating disorder recovery coaching via Zoom to people worldwide. Connect with us through our website at www.theeatingdisordercenter.com By: Jennifer Rollin, LCSW-C, Therapist & Founder of The Eating Disorder Center  She has just finished eating lunch when a voice in her head says, “just get another snack.” She finds herself in the kitchen eating one peanut butter and jelly sandwich after another. She feels as if she is almost in a trance. She moves on to eating from a box of cookies, washing it down with sips of cold milk in between. She is eating rapidly. She finishes the box of cookies and begins eating slices of cold pizza from a box on the kitchen counter. After she eats, she feels guilt, shame, and her stomach is hurting pretty badly. She feels sick and uncomfortable. Each time she binge eats, she tells herself it will be the last time. But it never is. She feels so trapped by this. She wishes she could stop binge eating, but she just doesn’t know what to do to end this tiring cycle. As an eating disorder therapist and founder of The Eating Disorder Center in Rockville, Maryland, I have so much compassion for how exhausting the cycle of binge eating can feel. While I could write a book on this-the following are 4 quick tips to help in your journey of overcoming binge eating disorder. 1. Find a HAES-informed eating disorder therapist who specializes in treatment of binge eating disorder. I cannot stress this tip enough. Seeking specialized therapy for binge eating disorder can truly be a game changer when it comes to recovery from binge eating disorder. Unfortunately, a general therapist will most usually not be equipped with tools, strategies, and experience with clients in recovery from binge eating disorder to best help you. One of the many strategies I use with clients is called the PAUSE skill. Living with binge eating disorder can take up your time, money, energy and shrink your life’s happiness-it is well worth investing in a therapist specializing in binge eating disorder if you are able to access it. To connect with a binge eating disorder therapist on my team at The Eating Disorder Center click the link here. 2. Explore the functions underneath your struggle with binge eating. It can be helpful to start to look at the role that binge eating is serving in your life. With a therapist (or starting on your own) you can start to explore the ways that binge eating feels like it is serving you and the ways that it is not serving you. For instance, for some clients binge eating may provide a feeling of “calm,” a distraction from coping with life stressors or boredom, a way to cope with trauma, experiences of oppression, or an attempt to regulate difficult emotions. Through binge eating disorder therapy, you can start to explore more values aligning ways to get your needs met. Therapy can also help you to both heal your relationship to food and your body, as well as address any underlying issues such as trauma, low self-worth, relational stressors, or difficulty coping with emotions. 3. Start to notice your relationship to food outside of binge episodes. Many clients who are binge eating are also engaging in either physical restriction (I don’t eat or I limit how much of something I eat) or emotional restriction (I eat the thing but I tell myself I’m bad for eating it or that my diet starts tomorrow). Restriction can be one big trigger for binge eating (evolutionarily we relied on binge eating to survive in periods of famine). So, it's important to also address with a therapist and a dietitian your relationship to food overall-not just what is occurring during episodes of binge eating. Sometimes the foods that folks are binging on are foods that they do not “allow” or “give themselves permission” to eat otherwise. So it’s also important to get curious about the foods that you are binging on and see if you are emotionally or physically restricting those foods. 4. Practice self-compassion both for your struggle with binge eating as well as following a binge eating episode. Beating yourself up for binging and/or engaging in compensatory behaviors following a binge only serves to keep the cycle going. It’s so important to recognize that binge eating disorder is NOT a choice. You are not choosing to struggle with binge eating and it is not simply a matter of an issue relating to “willpower.” Rather, willpower has nothing to do with it and binge eating disorder is a serious mental illness that no one would choose. It’s also important to note that binge eating is often a resilient response to past trauma, life stressors, relational conflict, experiences of oppression, depression, anxiety and coping with difficult emotions. It’s helpful to practice compassion for the ways that cope-even if it feels like it is no longer serving you. Overcoming binge eating disorder is possible! At The Eating Disorder Center, we have had great success in helping clients to recover from binge eating disorder or struggles around binge eating. With therapy and utilizing time outside of therapy to engage with tools and skills, recovery is possible! You deserve to reclaim your life from the exhausting cycle that is binge eating disorder. The Eating Disorder Center offers HAES-informed therapy with top therapists specializing in the treatment of binge eating disorder. Many of our team members have personally recovered from eating disorders, in addition to their years of clinical experience. We also offer 1-2 session diagnostic evaluations if you are wondering if you might have a diagnosis of binge eating disorder. Click here to be connected to an eating disorder therapist specializing in binge eating disorder. We offer a free 15 min consultation to see if it’s a good fit! Schedule a free 15 min consult for eating disorder therapy in MD, VA, DC, NY, FL, or recovery coaching worldwide. Click here. The Eating Disorder Center is a premier outpatient eating disorder therapy center founded by Jennifer Rollin. We specialize in helping teens and adults struggling with anorexia, binge eating disorder, bulimia, OSFED, and body image issues. We provide eating disorder therapy in Rockville, MD, easily accessible to individuals in Potomac, North Potomac, Bethesda, Olney, Silver Spring, Germantown, and Washington D.C. We also provide eating disorder therapy in Arlington, Virginia and virtually throughout Virginia. Additionally, we offer eating disorder therapy virtually in New York (NYC), Florida, and California. We provide eating disorder and EMDR trauma therapy in Rockville, Maryland and virtually throughout Maryland. We provide eating disorder recovery coaching via Zoom to people worldwide. Connect with us through our website at www.theeatingdisordercenter.com
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