Understanding Binge Eating Disorder: How Therapy Can Help Break the Cycle
If you’re struggling with binge eating, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken.
Binge eating can feel like a never-ending cycle: a moment of relief, followed by shame, guilt, and a vow to "do better tomorrow." It can feel like food is in control of your life. And when self-discipline or dieting doesn't help, you might start to believe the problem is you.
But that’s not true, and healing is possible.
Our culture puts a lot of pressure on control, discipline, and "willpower." And when those things don’t seem to work, it’s easy to blame yourself. It can start to feel like something is wrong with you, not the system.
But Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is far more common than most people realize. It can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender, or background. And it’s not about a lack of willpower, it’s about emotional pain, coping, and patterns that once made sense, even if they don’t feel helpful anymore.
In this article, we’ll explore what BED is, how it impacts people, and how therapy for eating disorders can help break the cycle and support long-term healing.
What Is Binge Eating Disorder?
Binge Eating Disorder is one of the most common and most misunderstood eating disorders. Many people live with it silently, without anyone around them realizing it.
BED involves episodes of eating large amounts of food in a short period of time, often accompanied by a sense of losing control. Afterward, people frequently experience deep shame, guilt, or a desire to hide.
Unlike other eating disorders, BED doesn’t involve purging, overexercising, or extreme food restriction. The bingeing itself and the emotional toll that follows are what define the disorder.
Key features of BED include:
Feeling out of control during binge episodes
Eating past the point of physical fullness
Eating alone or in secret due to embarrassment
Feeling intense guilt or shame afterward
BED is often rooted in emotional triggers, not physical hunger. Stress, sadness, anxiety, and loneliness can all lead to using food as a way to self-soothe. And while bingeing might offer short-term comfort, it’s usually followed by self-judgment and a renewed desire to “get it together,” often by restricting or dieting.
But strict food rules usually make things worse. Deprivation increases the urge to binge, and the cycle continues.
If this sounds familiar, please know: it makes so much sense. You are not broken. Bingeing may have become a way to cope when nothing else felt available, and while it may not be working anymore, it came about for a reason.
How Therapy For Eating Disorders Can Help Break the Cycle
When you’re stuck in the binge-restrict-shame loop, it can feel like there’s no way out. But healing is possible, and therapy can be a powerful part of that process.
Working with an eating disorder therapist can help you identify the emotional patterns that trigger binges, reduce their intensity, and find new ways to care for yourself that don’t involve turning to food.
Identifying Triggers and Understanding Emotions
Therapy offers a safe space to explore the emotional roots of your behavior. Often, binge eating is tied to feelings like anxiety, grief, fear, or anger. A skilled eating disorder therapist can help you understand what’s happening beneath the surface and give you tools to respond in a different way.
Over time, the emotional charge behind those triggers can lessen. You may even find that some of the triggers fade completely.
Breaking Free from Diet Culture
Many people with BED feel stuck in the cycle of dieting and bingeing. You might try to “fix” the bingeing by cutting out certain foods or setting rigid food rules. But this often backfires, restriction increases the desire to binge, and the cycle repeats.
Therapy can help you unlearn diet culture and reconnect with your body in a more supportive, compassionate way. It’s not about giving up on health, it’s about stepping away from shame and control as the drivers of your relationship with food.
Therapeutic Approaches That Can Help
There are many types of therapy that can support healing from BED. You don’t need to know exactly what you need right away the most important thing is working with someone who makes you feel safe and understood. Here are a few approaches eating disorder therapists may use:
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
This approach helps you explore past emotional wounds, including trauma, that may be linked to your eating patterns. By understanding what’s underneath the behavior, you can begin to shift it from the roots.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR supports you in processing painful or traumatic experiences without having to relive them. It’s especially helpful if binge eating developed as a way to cope with overwhelming events from the past.
DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy)
DBT teaches skills for managing big emotions, tolerating distress, and staying present. If bingeing feels like your only way to cope when things get intense, DBT can help you build new, more supportive tools.
Somatic Healing
This approach focuses on reconnecting with your body. BED can create a lot of disconnection, and somatic work helps you build a safer, more peaceful relationship with your physical self.
Harm Reduction
Harm reduction takes a non-judgmental, gradual approach to healing. There’s no “perfect” recovery path, just steps toward less harm, more choice, and more compassion.
You Deserve a New Way Forward
Living with BED can be incredibly exhausting, not just because of the eating patterns, but because of the shame and self-blame that come with it. It takes so much energy just to get through the day when you’re constantly feeling like you’ve failed.
But you don’t have to keep doing this alone.
Working with an eating disorder therapist at Therapy With Lizzie can help you understand your patterns, meet your emotional needs in new ways, and begin a more compassionate relationship with food and your body.
You’re not broken. You’re coping. And there is another way, one rooted in care, curiosity, and connection. You deserve support. You deserve peace. You deserve to feel at home in your body again.
Take the First Step Toward Healing with Therapy for Eating Disorders in Burlington, VT
You don’t have to face binge eating disorder alone—compassionate support is available. Therapy with Lizzie offers a safe, nonjudgmental space to explore your relationship with food and begin your journey toward lasting change. Reach out today and discover how therapy for eating disorders in Burlington, VT, can help you reclaim balance and peace. Follow these three simple steps to get started:
Reach out to schedule a free consultation.
Meet with me, Lizzie Werner-Gavrin, an experienced eating disorder therapist.
Start reclaiming your balance and peace.
Additional Online Services I Provide Throughout Vermont
Healing from an eating disorder is a personal and powerful journey, and having the right therapist can make all the difference. In addition to therapy for eating disorders to help you manage binge eating disorder, I support adults working through anxiety, life stress, and emotional overwhelm. At Therapy With Lizzie, you'll find an inclusive, affirming space to explore your identity, process past trauma, and reconnect with the person you’re meant to be, with care and compassion every step of the way.
