Trauma-Informed Eating Disorder Therapist in Friendship Heights
Are you anxious or self-critical?
Do you struggle with food?
Does your history make it hard for you to acknowledge your worth?
Katie Zweig is a heart-led therapist who helps clients to begin to challenge their assumptions about their own self-worth and loveability.
Many people do not feel deserving and worthy because of difficult histories, media messaging, and other factors. Katie supports and encourages her clients to question the way that they think about themselves and what they deserve in life.
Anxiety and Perfectionism Treatment
Even when it’s only running in the background, anxiety can have a profound effect on well-being. Do you deal with:
-
-
-
-
-
-
- panic attacks
- over-thinking social situations
- worrying about bad things that could happen
- caring too much if people like you
- over-preparing for work or school
- feeling restless and amped-up
- trouble concentrating
- difficulty sleeping
- stomach issues
-
-
-
-
-
Even one or two of these symptoms can have a terrible impact on quality of life. And, they are highly highly treatable with the right help!
As an integrative therapist, Katie uses a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and internal family systems (IFS) to help clients to heal self-criticism. Rather than just talking about the problem, Katie uses guided meditation and exercises to help to re-wire your neural network at the most basic level.
Eating Disorders Treatment
Do you feel like food has become a bigger part of your life than you want it to be? Do you feel ashamed of your eating patterns? Do you yo-yo diet?
Sometime people have difficulty with food that has more to do with their feelings than the food itself. If this sounds like it might describe you, Katie Zweig would likely be a good fit.
She works from a HAES, non-diet perspective to help people with disordered eating find freedom from compulsive rituals and relentless self-criticism. Katie understands that eating disorders are 100% about the food – and 100% not about the food. She helps you to heal your relationship with your self first, and then supports and encourages you as you naturally find your way towards a healthier way of nourishing your body.
Treatment for Emotional Eating/Compulsive Overeating
- Do you sometimes eat in order to feel numb?
- Is it hard to listen to your body about when you are hungry or not?
- Do you find yourself continuing to eat even when you feel full?
- Are you uncomfortable in your body?
- Do you sometimes hide the way you eat?
- Does the way you eat make you feel sad or ashamed?
Emotional eating is a form of disordered eating that does not get the attention that it should. It is different than binge eating disorder (BED) because a person with emotional eating does not have all of their food in one go. Instead, they often turn to food when they have uncomfortable feelings, difficult interpersonal reactions, or other problems. Food often helps people to feel calm in the moment, but then after the food is gone the hunger remains.
Katie helps people who have emotional eating to understand what is happening to them in a non-judgmental and compassionate way. This issue is not about discipline or willpower. It is about self-worth and self-love. Katie helps people to see the connections between the way that they feel and the things that they do with food. As you learn to manage feelings in a way that truly works for you, sustainable changes in eating patterns often follow.
Health at Every Size (HAES) Therapy
Being a Health at Every Size (HAES) therapist means that Katie believes that people can be truly healthy in any size body. She believes in respect for all body types and for all people, regardless of the body they are living in.
Read this article by Katie Zweig for more information about Health at Every Size and the importance of choosing a HAES therapist.
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) Treatment
Binge eating disorder, also known by the acronym BED, is an eating disorder in which a person eats a rather large quantity of food over a rather short period of time. It is different than compulsive overeating and emotional eating in that the binges are discrete episodes. When the person is not bingeing, they are either eating as most of us typically would or not eating enough to fuel their body, setting them up for the next binge. For more information about this, see our blog on the binge-restrict cycle. People often report feeling zoned out or dazed during bingeing episodes, and often they wrestle with feelings of guilt and remorse afterwards.
Katie approaches BED with a scientifically embedded stance. She helps clients to understand the biology of the binge and to recognize that not eating enough between binges can often cause the binge to happen. Katie also works with people to understand the emotional drivers of BED. Many people crave a feeling of numbness, freedom or fullness and Katie helps people to understand the root of these needs so that they can be addressed more healthily.
Psychotherapy for Self-Criticism
Is there a nagging voice in your head all of the time, telling you that whatever you do isn’t good enough? Do you ruminate over slight mistakes? Do you have trouble living in the moment? Do you second-guess every decision you make? Do you worry about perceived failures more than is good for you?
One of Katie Zweig’s areas of specialty is helping people to find freedom from self-criticism. She uses a skillful blend of approaches based on parts theories such as Internal Family Systems and Jungian Analysis, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and attachment theory.
Psychotherapy for Social Anxiety
Social anxiety and self-criticism often go hand-in-hand, but social anxiety is it’s own issue. People with social anxiety feel profoundly ill at ease in situations where they might feel that they are the center of attention or that they are unsure what to do.
They often imagine that people are thinking all kinds of negative, critical and judgmental things about them.
Katie is particularly skilled at helping people with social anxiety to feel at ease in at therapy. As people learn to be more comfortable in the therapeutic space, with Katie’s support and encouragement you also become more comfortable interacting with people in the outside world.
Therapeutic Approach
Whether working with adolescents or adults, Katie believes in a collaborative relationship. She views self-acceptance and self-compassion as fundamentally important treatment goals. Katie is an eclectic and integrative therapist who draws from various therapeutic approaches in order to tailor her work to the needs of the client, the given task and the moment.
Katie’s repertoire includes practices from Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and mindfulness.
Training and Background
Katie Zweig began her career as an eating disorders recovery coach, providing people who are struggling with disordered eating real-time support as they go about their daily lives. She thoroughly enjoyed this work, but felt that she wanted to have more skill and expertise in order to help her clients to make changes that are more lasting and sustainable.
To this end, Katie pursued her Master’s degree in counseling at Lewis & Clarke college, where she focused her studies on adult mental health where she also earned an Eating Disorder Certificate verifying her expertise in this area.
Previous to joining Monarch, Katie completed her clinical internship at Food is Not the Enemy, an outpatient practice on the west coast that is also focused on the treatment of eating disorders. Katie provided outpatient therapy for people struggling with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and yo-yo dieting until she found herself needing to return to the DMV area.
Appointments Available
Katie is currently offering late afternoon and early evening appointments. She is available over telehealth or in-person at our offices in the Friendship Heights office of Chevy Chase, MD.