Dannielle B. Grossman is a California licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in Truckee, California. She also works by phone and FaceTime with clients throughout California. Danielle understands that food deprivation and fear responses around eating are at the core of all eating disorders and disordered eating patterns. She helps clients to truly get it that their struggles with food are not their fault and do not mean ANYTHING negative about them. It is a powerful and empowering shift when clients can observe that their patterns with eating are simply their brainbodies doing their job to ensure survival amidst real or perceived threats to getting the food they want or need. Then, the work of therapy is getting out of this chronic threat mode with eating by developing patterns with food that are based in full nourishment, unconditional permission to eat and an ability to honor all signals of hunger. Danielle’s work is based in compassion, an understanding of trauma and survival responses and current science in the fields of weight stigma and eating disorders.
Incredible podcast, thank you Tabitha and Danielle. I am currently in a PHP program and this segment really put my mind at ease to just eat and not resist the very thing that will help me recover. I would love to see more of her process for her patients to recover. Im unfortunately in WI, but any tips would be greatly appreciated.
1. Tabitha, I love your Podcast, and it helped me so much to actually recover. I had been in treatment centers for ten years, and nothing helped at all. No, my anorexia became worse and worse. But then I found your blog, your YouTube Videos, your Podcast. Now I am really far in my recovery process, and things are better than they have ever been. Enjoy your month than without the Podcast, but I will be so happy when you are back!
2. I think it is wonderful, what Danielle is doing. The world needs more therapists like her. I have been in treatment centers for so long, and I think it really made everything worse. I was always told that I have problems with managing my emotions, or that I would have a body image Problem. It all felt so not right. But now that I’ve found Tabitha and her blog, I understand a lot more. I would like that many therapy Provider would work with this approach. I Also have Peer Support here and this girl helps me so much more than all the doctor and dietitians I have talked to. I am so sad that I worked so long with meal plans and by talking about my childhood and all the things. What I would have needed all the time would have been empowerment. I would have need someone who just says it’s okay to be so hungry and eat so much. Someone who say that it won’t last forever, and helps me just to let go. I’m happy I found this website, and I hope that many therapists will use this approach one day!! Go on, danielle!!
I’d second that. And I try so hard not to get angry at the lack of good help on offer….thank god for tab!
I am right there with you ladies. From ages 12-35 I struggled with anorexia and inadequate help from treatment centers, therapists, RDs and psychiatrists. Today I can say I am walking (actually not walking but rather resting and eating) my way into FULL recovery. Thank goodness for Tabitha and all the work that she does. We are so lucky to have found out exactly what was wrong and exactly what to do to turn the anorexia off, restore our bodies and rewire our brains. Yay for the life that full recovery brings. Also yay for Danielle. She is so brave and her courage will help so many people.
I think to a point, every ED is different just as every sufferer is different. My ED began as a way to be ‘perfect’ at another thing, since I was a hugely insecure child, as a result of things that were happening to me and around me. It became about a lot of other things over the years. I’m 36 and I’ve had my anorexia since ae 13 and what I ‘use’ it for and what it’s ‘about’ have changed over the years, it’s been different with every relapse.
Certainly what’s the same is that starvation induces certain physiological responses that might be common to most people with the eating disorder but I think the underlying reason is not always just about food. The nutritional rehabilitation is hugely important of course, but I still think that unless you help the person with the reason they started their eating disordered behaviours, you won’t fix them.
Can someone here link me to the research on the biological approach?