Recovery coaching

If you’d like a quick glimpse of what recovery coaching with me involves,  there’s an overview here. To reach out with questions or to book a discovery call, you can email me (emily [at] hungerartist.org) or use the contact form. Or to join my coaching waitlist without having to email me, please complete this simple form.

What kind of coaching is this?

I get excited about recovery coaching because there’s so much discovery in it. I get to discover who you are and what you want for your life. You get to discover those things too—in more depth and detail than tends to happen without the help of the particular kind of relationship that coaching is. And then you get to take action in ways that align with what we’ve discovered, and as a way to discover more. 

Whatever kind of eating-related problem you have, however long you’ve had it, whatever diagnostic or other boxes you do or don’t feel you fit into—I’d love to meet you and find out whether we could do something exciting together.

I use the term ”eating disorder” because it’s a shorthand for some important ways of being unwell, but I’m here to help with any form of eating problem that feels worth solving to you. Indeed, I love “not too bad” as a starting point for coaching: You could so easily keep telling myself and other people that it’s all fine, but you’ve chosen not to settle for fine anymore. You want better. What more potent act of self-creation than that?

And if you’ve tried all kinds of things before and feel they haven’t worked, that’s great too. I mean, obviously in one sense it’s not—but we can and will use all the wisdom you’ve gathered in those efforts to guide us in this one. In this way, past failures become a source not of despair but of confidence.

If I could sum up my approach to pretty much everything in a single phrase, it would be one used by a close friend: “finding practical solutions to existential problems”. It’s you doing the finding, and it’s me being there to help you. One way we’ll probably do that is by interweaving the big picture with the little details; by getting really skilful in zooming out and back in again. We’ll also do it by paying attention to your body: to how your nervous system is showing up, right here on this call or in this quiet little time you’ve taken for some journaling.

Your body is where the magic of your mind and the vitality of your life are rooted. I love exploring the interplays between mind, body, and action—neither getting sucked too far into psychological complexities and neglecting the practicalities, nor being drab and dogmatic with the actions and forgetting what beauty they contain, for our bodily sensations and our mental life and all our other experiences. I love exploring the implications of the metaphors you find yourself using just as much as I love drilling down into the details of why your lunch habits have got so stuck and finding out what you feel in your body when you contemplate making a particular change. And I love putting them all together and seeing what new insights and possibilities arise.

We’ll co-design our ways of working together so that we have the right frequency of sessions and types of contact in between them. The aim is to make sure that you feel confident that you know what you’re doing and able to do it—and to give you the reassurance of knowing that I’m right here, as deeply invested in—and interested in—your recovery as anyone can be who isn’t you. Whether it’s in the form of the ideas and questions and reflections I’ll share in written form when you review your week, or in the way I listen and respond to you face to face during our conversations, this coaching is a wellspring for your self-knowledge and everything you decide to do with it.

Here’s a little video to give you a sense of what coaching with me involves. Until I create an updated version, please mentally translate my mentions of Skype to Zoom 🙂

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What has brought me to the point of being able to offer you this kind of coaching experience?

I’d like to highlight seven important paths that have led me to this work as I practise and understand it now:

1. I would never have become a coach if it hadn’t been for my own decade-long experience of anorexia, including two recovery attempts that didn’t quite work followed by the one that did. I embarked on that final recovery journey in 2008, aged 26, and although completing recovery isn’t something one can easily put a date to, I would say that 2 or 3 years later I wasn’t recovering anymore, I was now working out how to live well. Trying and failing to do it twice, and on the third time succeeding, made almost everything I have done since possible, and taught me a hundred life lessons great and small. Because recovery gave me nothing less than my life back, I understand the existential stakes for you. I never take my responsibility as your coach lightly—but I do try to hold it with lightness.
2. I started thinking seriously about establishing a coaching business thanks to correspondence with blog readers over 12 years from 2009 (when I launched my Psychology Today blog) to 2021 (when PT sadly stopped hosting comments on all their blogs). I’ve learned a vast amount from writing blog posts and interacting with thousands of readers ever since the summer of 2009, a point at which the weight-restoration phase of my recovery was complete but lots of the less tangible work of recovery was still to come. The blog began life then as mostly a personal chronicle of the recovery process, before later growing to link the scientific evidence with personal experience, my own and my readers’. I’ve kept writing it ever since because eating disorders, as well as being important to target in their own right, have also turned out to be a strangely good entry point for tackling many of life’s most interesting questions, on everything from free will to anticipated regret. (Please note, though, that I’ve been writing the blog for much longer than I’ve been a coach; that blogging and coaching are importantly distinct; and that in the coaching context, I am focused on you, the individual whose life we’re working on making lovelier. It would be disingenuous to suggest that the ideas I explore as a blogger disappear when I’m working as a coach—but I do set them to one side. After all, everything we do is guided by your experiences and priorities, and the decisions are always yours, because the life-giving actions have to be.)
3. My academic research on eating disorders is the third context in which I’ve deepened and broadened my understanding of what can go wrong with eating, and how to get it to go right. My research activity has two main strands. The first focuses on what eating disorders really are, why standard treatments so often fail, and what’s needed to help things work better. You can read an intro to my major publication so far in this strand here); it focuses on behaviour as a powerful pivot point between psychology and physiology. I’m now working on a new contribution to this strand, arguing that the personal agency of the individual who is recovering needs to be foregrounded along with behaviour. Then the second strand is mapping out the connections between narrative reading and mental health; here’s an overview of the findings so far, which fed into a project combining my personal experience, my writerly activity, and my research in a pre-publication study to find out whether it was ethically responsible to publish my recovery memoir. (The book did pass the test; you can read more here.)
4. My academic training in the humanities—from a BA in French and German to a PhD and postdoc in cognitive literary studies and the health humanities—has taught me how to read, listen, speak, and write with precision and with care, and I’m more aware with every passing month of how crucial that is to giving the coaching experience the warmth, the trust, the intensity, and the truth that it needs to have if it’s to lead to good things.
5. My scientific training began during my PhD, as I began to incorporate scientific methods and insights into the study of literary reading experiences. It has attuned me to the value of evidence and ways of generating and interpreting it, and is a major element of the kind of thoroughgoing honesty that I try to cultivate in everything I do.
6. In 2023, having spent quite a while looking for a coaching course that felt right for me, I became accredited with the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC) at Senior Practitioner level by completing a course run by the brilliant Tom Battye. (You can view my certificate here.) Thanks to this course, I’ve deepened my theoretical and practical understanding of principles that are, at first glance, almost bafflingly simple: how crucial it is to ask open questions, to listen, for example, or to resist the ever-so-natural impulse to give advice. I now have a much fuller appreciation of the simplicity and equity that coaching can and should have as a methodology—an appreciation that makes me see the world differently, and that enriches what I do with each of my clients. I am not here to tell you what to do. I am here to help you find out what you want and what precisely you are prepared to do to get it. To help me keep learning how to be the coach who can play this role in your life, I continue to have regular supervision with Tom. I also meet for monthly co-mentoring sessions with GP-turned-health-coach Sally Bramley and with ADHD coach Dionysios Kyropoulos. And I work on my life/career ambitions with talented singer and coach Jennifer Davison. More recently, I’ve started to learn more about how to bring the body more directly into work with clients, via training courses with the non-profit Somatic Experiencing. All of this effectively prevents stagnation!
7. And then, finally, there’s all that I’ve learned and continue to learn from the coaching clients with whom I work. Their determination and their wisdom, and the transformations they bring about in their lives, move and inspire me and make me happy to be doing the work I do. And their honesty and their humour keep me humble.

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What is coaching actually like?

I find it hard to convey what the experience of coaching with me actually involves; a lot of the words and phrases like “weekly reviews”, “Zoom sessions”, and “shared-doc check-ins” feel pretty dry and corporate.

If I were trying to communicate some of what makes this not blandly generic but beautiful and exciting and all about you, and thus capable of being something meaningful at a crucial juncture in your life, I might highlight things that I’ve found end up happening with clients:

• In conversation with you or when commenting on something you’ve written, I might notice a phrase (whether invented by you or by me) that resonates with you, like “eye to eye” or “not averting the gaze”, and letting it resurface when it might be a guide in a moment of difficulty
• I might pick up on how something you say or write chimes or contrasts with something from longer ago, so we can explore from there
• I might remind you, in my comments on your session summary, of a particular turn of phrase you used and hadn’t noted down, because I have a hunch it might matter
• We might laugh together at the absurdity of some big/little thing that’s feeling insurmountable
• I might make some slightly off-the-wall suggestion in case it opens up space for inventiveness and daring
• If perfectionism or anxiety is getting in the way of you doing our regular written reviews in a way that feels constructive, we might devise lower-stress ways of answering (or setting your own) review questions, e.g. by co-creating process instructions (maybe involving nice outdoor spaces, or a soundtrack, or alcohol!) or replacing the questions with freewriting prompts, or sharing audio files instead of written material
• I might create a new template or spreadsheet or other kind of tool to help you observe or experiment in a way that’s very particular to you
• We might get out of our chairs during a session and explore something that’s better explored standing or moving, or just to give your back or your hips or your shoulders more ease
• We might tune into something that’s going on in your body, revealed by a movement or gesture or deeper-than-usual breath—and that might or might not yield some metaphor that finds it way into future talks, writings, drawings…

As you may have noticed, a lot of this (but not all of it) is language-y. If you’re someone who thinks well in writing, if you appreciate attention to the details of the language you use as a reflection of who you are, if you find that a powerful little phrase can become a guiding light for you, then my coaching style may well be a good fit for you. It’s funny how my academic training in literary studies gave me such a thorough training in attending to what language is and does, and how satisfying it is to use that skill in a quite different way from what I ever expected, to help other people create beautiful changes in their lives.

More recently, I’ve become aware of the powerful ways in which paying attention to bodily things can create a foundation for these kinds of alive, alert, attentive, curious work with ideas and experiences and habits. These interactions of the body, the mind, and the daily behaviours can be transformative, and they’re all encouraged by working intimately with what’s happening for you at any given phase in their process of change. I try to hold the responsibility I have in this context lightly but with care, knowing that this is a potentially pivotal time in this life of yours, and that you have trusted in me to be there with you through some of it. 

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Find out more

If you’re considering coaching and are currently working with a doctor, therapist, or counsellor who has questions or concerns about what this kind of coaching is, you may like to direct them to my page for professionals.

If you’re a parent or partner or friend of someone with an eating problem and would like help with navigating the difficulties that come from balancing their needs with your own, we may be able to do good work together. You could check out my blog post “How to help someone with an eating disorder” for some starting points.

You can read more about what I offer in these coaching FAQs.

You may also like to read a paper I published in Frontiers in Psychology, setting out my perspective on what eating disorders are and how we should be treating them. The clue’s in the name: Eating disorders are disorders of eating, and true recovery never happens except by getting the eating sorted out.

Troscianko, E.T., and Leon, M. (2020). Treating eating: A dynamical systems theory of eating disorders. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1801.

Read my intro to the paper here, or the open-access paper itself here.

You might also like to take a look at a few of my blog posts that speak to the fundamentals of how I understand what it means to let go of an eating disorder. These include:

• The six seductions of anorexia
• Recovering from anorexia: How and why to start
• Recovering from anorexia: How and why not to stop halfway
• Is 100% recovery from an eating disorder possible?
• Questioning medical authority by accident
• 26 ways to be happy about getting fatter
• Connections between anticipated regret and anorexia recovery
• The gap between insight and action
• Who wants to be normal?
• “Letting yourself go” versus “letting go”

You can find the full blog archive organized by theme here.

Finally, I take my clients’ data privacy extremely seriously, and regularly review and test my information security knowledge and protocols. Please see my privacy policy (version 1.11, February 2025) for details of how I use and protect your data.

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Getting started

Please message me via the Contact page or by email (emily [at] hungerartist.org) if you’d like to know more about my methods and fees, or to schedule a free call to discuss how we can build a coaching program to get you healthy and happy—or whatever adjectives you would use to describe your endpoint, and your jumping-off point into the rest of your life. Alternatively, if you prefer to join my waitlist directly, you can do so here.

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A few final thoughts from me

• In many recovery processes, the initial decision is the hardest part. Once it’s been made for real, the rest is not necessarily easy (though some of it can be delightfully so!), but it is now doable.
• The relief that comes from having made the decision to commit to this is often a powerful experience. Even more powerful is the relief that comes from knowing, by the end, that “recovery” is finally off your existential to-do list, because you’ve done it. Now it’s time to start living. Of course, that is not easy either, but its difficulties are a hell of a lot more interesting than the ED kind.
• About half the people I’ve worked with didn’t have an acute eating disorder anymore when we started our work together. And most of those had wasted a lot of time before we got started because of their feeling that they didn’t qualify as having a real eating disorder. One of the very most dangerous tricks that eating disorders play is to convince their hosts that life with a low-level eating disorder or disordered eating is as good as it gets. You do not have to be on the brink of death to want something better, nor to do what’s needed to get it. If you don’t even quite think of what you need to do as recovering, because you’re not sure what you’d be recovering from, I may still be able to help. You could think of what we do as “food coaching” or “mind-body coaching”, or whatever framing feels right for you.
• Getting from problem-oriented mode to solution-oriented mode can be hard. It’s kind of mysterious that it often takes us so long to get to the point of being ready to stop complaining about what’s wrong and start putting it right. We all do it. But stopping talking about it and starting doing something about it tends to feel pretty damn good. And it begins with paying real attention to what exists, so that the solutions that emerge are grounded in your reality, as well as attuned to your ambitions. Thus you can bridge, or leap, the insight/action gap—and perhaps realize that it’s more a crevice than crevasse.

There’s an image I keep thinking of when I reflect on what I’m doing and not doing as a coach. It was something I saw in downtown Santa Barbara one summer’s afternoon. Here it is:

There’s such a profound reassurance in someone saying she can read our palms and tell us everything. But that reassurance is so dangerous. None of us really need advice; we need the wisdom to do and be what is right for us. And this wisdom comes not from the lines on our hands, but from our thinking feeling bodies in their beautiful messy entireties.

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What do my clients say?

Some of my clients have kindly given me permission to share reflections on their experiences of our coaching work, to help you understand what working with me is like and what it could do for you. Here are their words.

I can honestly say that coaching with Emily is one of the best things I’ve ever done. I would never have reached the point I am at now without it—I have freedom and ease in life and it’s truly wonderful.

It hasn’t all been easy, however Emily was there for those times to help me through which was invaluable.

Before contacting Emily I had years and years of being either in the depths of anorexia or in semi-recovery, pretending to myself and everyone else that I was well and had no issues with food and eating. More recently I have been leading a reasonably fulfilling life working, enjoying hobbies, and eating out occasionally yet knowing, when I was honest with myself, that I had a legacy of hang-ups and habits that proved I was far from recovered. I was weary of the circular episodes of desperately trying to address lingering behaviours, full of hope, only to be too afraid to follow through, apprehension and fear taking over at the crucial point.

I had great hopes about coaching with Emily. Of all that I had read about recovery nothing was as meaningful or real to me as Emily’s blog posts; I knew if anyone could help it was Emily. I was also very apprehensive knowing the process would most likely mean some difficult challenges and uncomfortable feelings. It had to if I was to address all that needed addressing.  

I had read the helpful information on Emily’s website about coaching but still I wasn’t quite sure what to expect or what it would really feel like. After the first session I knew it was exactly what I needed. I felt excited about the changes we discussed and planned I would make during the coming week, all of which Emily patiently coaxed from me, so in effect they were my choices with helpful guidance from her when I was veering towards less healthy choices or struggling to identify what was needed. 

As coaching progressed I made more changes than I ever thought possible, and some that I didn’t know I needed to make. To unearth the habits I hadn’t recognised was both frightening and liberating. Frightening because I could see how blind anorexia had made me; liberating because I knew that by addressing them I would feel so much freer. I also knew my weight would increase and it was about this I was most hesitant, fearful even. Nevertheless, there was part of me that was curious and a little excited to see what would happen. I could easily have fallen at this hurdle if Emily hadn’t been there to encourage and gently but persistently stand firm in promoting nothing but forward momentum. I appreciated the occasional prod when I needed it—when I was dithering.

As the weeks went by more and more positives became apparent, more than I knew existed, all because I was eating more. It was a beautiful evolution into properly living. I have energy, confidence, excitement and, above all, I am far more healthy. I have gained far more than I could ever have imagined. This is the effect of eating well that I had never considered, and I am not sure I would have believed it if anyone had told me because I thought I was living a good life before.  

I feel so very fortunate and privileged to have been able to have coaching with Emily: yes, she has extensive knowledge of anorexia, yes she has personal experience, yes she can question and challenge, but it is her innate ability to interpret what is happening based on a jumble of confused information from me and come up with a logical, manageable way forward resulting in tangible progress that makes her special.  It has been invaluable to be able to share my difficulties and fears with Emily, to celebrate the successes and to have someone who is, well, just there. I now have a new kind of freedom, ease, and confidence that I didn’t know existed. This is helping my life to open up and the future feel more expansive, holding all sorts of opportunities. The whole thing has been hugely positive—Emily, thank you!

(Sue Whiteley, 65)

Except swimming with dolphins I tried almost anything in my despair to get recovered from anorexia nervosa. Anorexia is a persistent illness, but it’s not a chronic disease that one is doomed to have for the rest of one’s life. At least thirteen years of disordered suppression didn’t leave a lot of sparkling vividness in my person and life. I read Emily’s supportive blog articles for a couple of years before reaching out for personal coaching. With her competent, dedicated, heart warming, individualised and joyful help I was able to work through the harsh undergrowth that the illness reared. I am not bought and paid for this: Dude, reach out, reclaim your life, love, be bold, do it, not later, now.

(female client, 38)

I have struggled with an eating disorder for over 10 years, and I have tried many different treatments and therapies, but nothing seemed to work for me. I felt hopeless, ashamed, and trapped in a cycle of restriction and compulsive exercise that was destroying my health and happiness.

When I decided that enough was enough, I decided to reach out to Emily for help. I was skeptical at first, but I was desperate for a change. I’m so glad I did, because it was the best decision I ever made. Working with Emily has been pivotal for me to kickstart the “doing” part of recovery. For years I’ve grappled with wanting to get better, but never taking the action to actually recover. Emily essentially served as the catalyst I needed to get better, both physically and mentally, and helped finally dissipate my years-long cognitive dissonance of knowing better but not doing better. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with her as I gain my life back, and would highly recommend her to anyone struggling with disordered eating.

(female client, 28)

I first encountered Emily through her Psychology Today blog in the early days of my attempts to recover on my own. I read my way through the blog – an incredible resource in itself – but hesitated to contact Emily because I felt I wasn’t “sick enough” to need recovery coaching. As a woman in her late 40s who had restricted for a relatively short time, I may not have had a medically diagnosable disorder but I also knew that my restrictive eating and compulsive exercise habits had me in a stranglehold and I could see no way out. Finally, one phrase on her coaching page made me reach out: “I really don’t care whether you feel you fit the anorexic stereotypes…”  Her assurance that she was willing to work with anyone struggling with disordered or problematic food behaviors, no matter the severity, gave me the confidence to reach out.

What appealed to me most about Emily was her combination of lived experience, academic training, and research orientation. Additionally, her coaching didn’t seem to adhere to “a method” but was instead a customized approach to each client. In my case, my personal learning style centers heavily on reflective writing and thinking, and so my coaching experience was designed around that. Emily’s careful reading of my entries was evident in her comments that were both sensitive and empathetic, while also offering constructive suggestions. Having her as a supportive guide through this process was central to the perspective shifts I needed to undertake in order to change my unhealthy habits.

One of the most valuable elements of our coaching interaction was the emails summarizing each of our Zoom sessions. Particularly in the early weeks, my thinking felt so muddled and my emotions so heightened that I often felt unable to clearly articulate what I was experiencing or what I wanted to be different. I often came out of the sessions feeling I had spoken nonsense, but then Emily’s recap email would arrive and I would see that she had not only identified and articulated what I was struggling with but that we had come away with a plan of how to experiment with changing those things. While these were often very small changes, they were still often highly challenging to the way I had been living. They were much easier to undertake knowing that I only had to try them for one week. In many cases, to my surprise, they were changes that made such a huge difference in my day-to-day experience that they became permanent.

At the end of our coaching session, I am truly freed from the way I was living in regards to food and exercise. An unexpected bonus was that the method of experimentation Emily introduced to me allowed me to start exploring experimentation in other areas of my life that feel rigid, burdensome, or otherwise “just not right.” While it may sound like an exaggeration, I absolutely believe that Emily’s coaching changed my life – perhaps not in big, dramatic ways but in small, subtle ways that changed both the feel of my life and restored the sense that I have agency over my life. 

(Catherine Bloomquist)

I wanted to share my experience working with Emily in the hope that it will help someone else asking the question will this help me? A bit of background about me: I had a long history of ED and had gotten through a large portion of recovery (refeeding, weight gain, exercise normalisation, challenging all my food rules and eating everything, the 10 mo – 14 mo exhaustion window, etc) on my own and was really grappling with what I called the last bit of the infection that needed to be drained down to the last drop. I was determined that the only way out was through, but I seemed to get stuck in this “rewiring” for some of the deepest beliefs I held.

I chose Emily because she wrote so beautifully about this phase, about pushing past the last piece of discomfort. In particular, I had just been weighed for my annual physical (which was something I had of course done annually) and was really shocked to see that I had gained 3kg. Now that shouldn’t be a big amount, but I had tipped from the top end of normal into overweight, and that was really a surprise to me. I also knew, deep in my heart, that not all of my behaviours were serving me. For example, I could see that I had a pattern of wanting to eat at night if I was really stressed.

I started working with Emily with some very clear goals of what I wanted to work on and some really clear challenge areas: self-criticism, getting caught in negative loops particularly when stressed, family member criticism, etc. In addition, I love to look good (of which I continue to not be ashamed!), and that felt really at odds with a lot of the materials that I had used to try to unpick the rewiring that were freely available.

Emily’s approach is fantastic. She very kindly, patiently, and gently guided me to the answer that I knew myself by asking the right questions. She challenged me to get curious about the deepest, ugliest beliefs that I had and to start to challenge them myself. Some of these are decades old. I had many of the tools to do this work, but she gave me the confidence and a language to start to deliver along with some much needed accountability. I had mostly recovered on my own, and having her took me through to what I would describe as the end of the journey.

I don’t think that there is a time where working with Emily wouldn’t be appropriate even though I was quite late in my journey. In fact, I imagine that she would be superb at appropriately encouraging the mini challenges that feel like mountains and really are hills that you climb in the early phases e.g., I am going to eat whatever I want today and if that’s just Oreo’s then so be it.

As a last note, and because it was very important to me, Emily is kind, warm, and gentle; she has a fantastic temperament and was a breath of fresh air for me compared to others that I had encountered. I think it is precisely her non medicalised / non dogmatic but extremely professional and personalised approach that served me so well.

(female client, 32)

Emily helped steer me past a point of transition I had been inching my way towards for years and years– years that proved to me time and again the unsustainability of my disordered eating– and steadfastly in the direction of change, growth, and, I think, embodied pleasure of a quality I had not yet encountered in my 31 years of life on earth. I learned so much from working with someone who shared in my experience of anorexia. But Emily is not just “someone.” Her capacity to think with me about  the cognitive and behavioral features of what keeps my anorexia in place was invaluable. Her approach was rigorous and practical but also beautifully personalized. I saw for the first time how the illness abided in deeply ingrained patterns of thought and action. I don’t think I would have been able to grasp at some of the behavioral changes I’ve since achieved without Emily’s guidance, and the attention, care and reflection she applied to my process. Keeping eating diaries, reading over them together, and teasing out where disordered patterns had lodged themselves were key. Emily’s questions radiated sensitivity and really got me excited to learn more about my particular experience of anorexia, guiding me inwards, where real transformation seemed to lie.

Emily also helped to affirm the small victories, naming them and encouraging me such that my resolve to get better finally outweighed the pull of my knee-jerk reaction to existential stress, which had so long been starvation. She also taught me that incremental behavioral shifts are what ultimately matter. Nothing is too small to count. Just gaining as much weight as I did through our work together has set off so many other desired changes in my day-to-day. I feel like I’m finally undergoing the growth spurt I never allowed myself.  

(Laila)

I first heard Emily on Chris Sandel’s Real Health Radio podcast, and while I’m not sure if it was what she said or how she said it, I immediately had a sense that she ‘got it’ in a way that I don’t think I had experienced with anyone else before. I was feeling very stuck and hopeless at the time (after 15 years of anorexia and a couple of failed recovery attempts in the early years, it felt very much like just part of my life), however I had got to a point where I was aware that I couldn’t carry on as I was, but I was unsure of whether to take steps towards recovery or retreat into the eating disorder. I wasn’t sure if I wanted help, but somehow knew that if I did, Emily would be the best person to give it to me. …

Why I sought out coaching: I was desperate.
Why I sought out you: because of that brilliant article you wrote for Psychology Today [Recovering from anorexia: How and why to start.]
I value your approach because you take the whole person into account. Also, in all of our conversations and email exchanges I always had the feeling that you were fully present, were in no rush to be elsewhere or were thinking about something else, and that you really took the time to address everything from the reviews etc. You thereby communicated that this was important to you too.
I learned so many things! Above all, I learned that there is hope, that I might actually be able to do this and be fully anorexia-free one day. Before, I was actually convinced that this wasn’t possible. And you changed that.
On my walk with Artemis just now I also realized how your coaching has helped change my perspective on certain things like “what is healthy?”. I think that’s really significant. I can now think about health in a different, broader way regarding my whole lifestyle (food, exercise, relationships, enjoyment etc.). I think that’s huge.

All this reflecting and thinking is time consuming and sometimes uncomfortable/depressing/revealing/embarrassing. But it’s really worth it. Whenever I felt reluctant to truly address the questions and think about stuff, I reminded myself that this is one of the most important things I’m doing right now (besides parenting Adrian as best I can from afar 🙂)
Because you were anorexic and went through recovery yourself, I know that I can ask you even the most stupid sounding things. And it’s really helpful to know that when I am uncertain about something I can check in with you in one of the many ways that you made available.
It seems to me that you are very flexible and respond to a specific person’s needs. Example: I’m not very techy and the HabitShare app wasn’t user friendly for me, so we didn’t pursue that and instead you made other venues available.
And again, I was surprised and appreciate the fact that you take a whole person approach.

(Gabriela Muller, 53)

Just some wrapping-up comments on our one-off coaching session and subsequent 4-week coaching block. As you know, I was very apprehensive about getting in touch—but I’m very glad we got these sessions arranged. You did much more than I had anticipated and you adapted things as necessary to guide me to getting as much benefit as possible—always with sensitivity, care and wisdom.

Overall, the month was intense (hard but necessary work), but what made me smile most as we progressed was how individual you made it feel—everything was specific and relevant—even though you were starting from little background knowledge of me. I felt able to be honest, albeit with some discomfort, without feeling judged; once in the open, just as matter of fact, then the problems could be addressed. 

I hoped to come away from the coaching block with practical changes (and I did, thanks!). But actually, the stand-out thing I learned is the need to recognise how much my thinking is hindering recovery. The techniques you suggested to work on this, and all your other notes, will be invaluable. I’m keeping in mind the option for further coaching, but in the meantime your encouragement has given me confidence to tackle more myself.

Many thanks again.

(female client in her 50s)

It is the most empowering form of recovery, actually enjoyable, having a light in your mind finally turned on, tailored to illuminate your own thoughts, by the most understanding and helpful coach I could have imagined.

(female client, 24)

The exercises and weekly summaries (which i keep to refer back to) have revealed many thought patterns and behaviors that i never questioned or analyzed before. Not to be dramatic, but I’m living on a deeper level. Physically, i’ve had glimpses of how much better i will feel when i’m recovered – and the glimpses have helped me believe that those changes will happen.

The exercise that changed the way i look at and think about other people has had the greatest impact on how i relate to the world, and how i think about (or stop thinking about) myself. Besides making me feel more open to people and the world in general, it has helped me put aside a lot of shyness.

The coaching was just what i needed – a thoughtful, probing, and especially challenging exploration of what I’m doing and why. You made me think so much!

(female client, 57)

Personally I couldn’t have asked for someone, or a coaching experience better: sensitive and empathic to my needs, yet critical to some of what I spouted and so gently, encouragingly nudging my thoughts and actions towards better outcomes. I really appreciated the critical thinking, that challenged my own thought patterns (even when I thought mine were rational and cogent, only to realise later they were formed in part by years of disordered thinking). Further to seeing the bigger picture and working with that – be that work, family, relationships. ED infests every aspect of life, and to work with you who was not only acutely aware of that, but was willing to explore other aspects of my life to see how these could be enriched once freed from the grips of ED thinking’s – work, family and a new found love life – I was hugely appreciative of. Finally, that while coaching began with being answerable to you (or, that I felt I needed to be answerable to you, to ensure the best possible chance of recovery) increasingly you enabled me to be answerable to myself in a positive way regarding food, eating, and recovery generally. That, towards the end, I had ownership of this, I could in fact do it. And did.

(male client, 40)

Honestly Emily, it has been the best thing I have ever done. You have been incredible and I can’t thank you enough. I have learned so much—not just food/exercise related, but also about who I am outside the confines of the roles of wife/mother/daughter/doctor and how I want to live my life.

(female client, 39)

Working with Emily was one of the best decisions i have made in terms of my recovery. Her advice and guidance really allowed me to progress in my recovery.

(NL, female client)

Given how many years I’d devoted to contemplating my eating disorder, I found it remarkable that through my work with Emily I was able to question my convictions and behaviors around food and body in ways I hadn’t before. She helped me get to a place where I found it difficult to see the eating disorder as meaningful or necessary in my life. It becomes very hard to long for something when it seems totally futile, and I really came to know and accept the futility of the ED.

For years I was able to convince myself that I could still carry out a relatively normal life and achieve what I wanted while living in a disordered way, but via the exercises and reflective tasks I did with Emily, I revealed for myself the fact that this notion was false, and that even if I was able to enjoy periods of success and stability, I would still always be living a half life at best. This was hard to acknowledge but is ultimately what has pushed me into the final stages of recovery, something I doubted I’d ever be capable of accomplishing. Emily’s extensive knowledge, experience and expertise allowed me to trust the process completely, and my immense respect for her as a person, teacher and coach helped me to continue forward when things became difficult. It may sound dramatic, but working with Emily was a life changing experience and I’ll be forever grateful for the opportunity.

(Jessica P)

Following our discussion in which I felt heard and understood, Emily sent a very thorough email, summing up the main points of our discussion, laying out what we agreed upon as steps towards full recovery, and suggestions as to how to achieve them. Broader interests and life goals were also discussed and how the pursuit of full recovery puts these into motion too. The email was so thorough, well-thought-out and clear and the tone was very encouraging and hopeful, which was what I needed. Having a clear plan in place was most helpful, and although it was up to me to do the work, I felt Emily was behind me all the way. Any questions I had after were answered thoughtfully and clearly. Emily helped me put my own review and check-in system in place, empowering me to make small and big changes to my day to day life and to steer my life in the direction I want. This has been so helpful and definitely something I will continue to do.

I would encourage anyone to work with Emily. Her empathic, kind and understanding approach along with her knowledge, experience and clarity about the work of recovery is so evident and really helped and continues to help me in my own life.

(Martha, 39, one-time recovery consult client)

Emily’s insight and experience has been more beneficial than words could ever do justice. Having had many forms of treatment in the past, Emily’s unique approach, support and wisdom, have finally allowed me to develop a life that I look forward to living. Something I had almost given up on after 12 years of Anorexia.

(ES, female client, 29)