Specialist online therapy across the UK
Eating Disorder Clinical Psychologist
Eating difficulties rarely arrive with a clear label attached. They build — through rules that made sense once, a list of foods that keeps getting shorter, a cycle that runs whether or not you've decided to be in it. By the time most people look for help, the difficulty has been part of daily life long enough to feel like character rather than something with a name and a treatment.
It has a name, and it has a treatment. This is the area I've spent longest in and know best.
Since 2006
Clinical Psychologist
8 years
in NHS eating disorder services
CBT-E
trained in the first-line evidence-based treatment
What I work with
Presentations I work with
- Anorexia nervosa
- Bulimia nervosa
- Binge eating disorder
- Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID)
- Other specified feeding and eating disorders (OSFED)
- Disordered eating that hasn't been formally diagnosed
- Body image difficulties
- Eating difficulties in the context of autism and ADHD
Adults, online, across the UK.
You do not need a diagnosis to get in touch. A significant proportion of the people I work with have never been formally assessed, and some have been assessed and told they didn't meet criteria for anything — which is a common experience for people with ARFID and binge eating disorder in particular.
How I work
Understanding first, then treatment
My starting point is understanding rather than instruction. Before anything changes, we build a shared picture of what the eating pattern is doing — what it protects against, what it manages, and what keeps it in place. That picture is almost always more logical than people expect and considerably less shameful.
Treatment then draws on approaches matched to what you're actually presenting with:
CBT-E
Enhanced cognitive behavioural therapy, the first-line evidence-based treatment for eating disorders in adults. Structured, collaborative, and focused on the mechanisms maintaining the pattern rather than on willpower. Read more about CBT-E.
CBT-AR
The adaptation developed for ARFID, covering sensory avoidance, fear of aversive consequences, and low interest in eating. I also wrote Beyond Safe Foods, a self-paced ARFID course for adults.
Schema Therapy
Where eating difficulties sit within longer-standing patterns that CBT alone doesn't reach.
Compassion-focused work
Where shame and self-criticism are doing as much damage as the eating itself, which is more often than not.
Neurodivergence-informed adaptation
Sensory needs, interoception, executive function and routine all affect eating, and treatment that ignores them tends not to hold. Where autism or ADHD is part of the picture, the approach is adjusted rather than applied unchanged.
Nothing here is a protocol applied to a diagnosis. Every piece of work starts with understanding, not a label.
Assessment
What assessment involves
One to two sessions, and nothing about your eating changes during them.
We talk about how the pattern developed, what it looks like now, what you can manage and what you can't, what's been tried before and how it went. You'll be asked to complete some questionnaires, which give us a baseline to measure against later.
At the end you should have something you may not have had before: a clear account of what maintains the pattern, and a plan you've agreed to. If I'm not the right person, I'll say so at this stage and help you work out where to go instead.
There's no obligation to continue after assessment.
Online therapy
How online therapy works for eating difficulties
Sessions are one hour, by video, usually weekly to begin with and spreading out as things stabilise.
Online work suits this better than people expect. You're in your own space, near your own kitchen, which matters when the work involves eating. There's no travel, which removes a barrier that stops a lot of people accessing specialist help — particularly in rural areas, where the nearest specialist service can be a long way off.
What online work can't do is monitor your physical health. Where that's needed, it sits alongside, through your GP.
Scope
Whether this is the right service for you
I want to be straightforward about what I can and can't offer, because a good outcome depends on this being the right setting.
Physical health sits alongside psychological work, not underneath it.
Eating difficulties affect the body as well as the mind. I ask that you're registered with a GP and willing for me to be in contact where it's useful. If your physical health needs active monitoring, that has to be in place alongside our work rather than instead of it.
When private online outpatient work isn't enough.
Some presentations need more than weekly sessions with one psychologist — regular physical health review, dietetic input, psychiatric involvement, a team around you. Where that's the case I'll tell you at assessment and help you find the right route. It isn't a rejection and it isn't a judgement about how serious your difficulty is.
NHS overlap.
I work within NHS eating disorder services alongside my independent practice. I don't accept private referrals from anyone currently open to, or waiting for, an NHS service in which I work. If that applies to you, get in touch anyway — I'll point you elsewhere, and nothing about your NHS care is affected either way.
This isn't a crisis service.
I don't offer emergency or out-of-hours support. If you need help urgently, contact your GP, call NHS 111, or attend A&E.
None of this is meant to put you off. Most people who get in touch are exactly who this service is for. But being told clearly where a service ends is, in my experience, one of the things that makes it possible to trust what's inside it.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Get in touch
Send me a short note about what's going on. You don't need it organised or well explained — a few lines is enough. I'll reply personally within three working days and tell you honestly whether I'm the right person.