DBT and Eating Disorders

How DBT Can Help Treat Eating Disorders

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, or even disordered eating that doesn’t quite fit a label, you’re not alone. Many people develop complicated relationships with food, exercise, and their bodies as a way to manage emotional pain, anxiety, or a deep sense of being out of control.

In those moments, restriction might feel like safety. Binging might feel like relief. Overexercising might feel like the only way to cope.

Eating disorders are never just about food. They're about survival, and in that way, they make sense.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers a gentle, skills-based approach to healing. It helps you build a more stable emotional foundation, so you don’t have to rely on behaviors that ultimately harm you to feel okay.

What is DBT?

DBT is a structured therapy model that combines cognitive-behavioral tools with mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. It was originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder, but it has been adapted and studied for a wide range of struggles, including eating disorders.

What makes DBT unique is its balance between change and acceptance. Instead of focusing only on symptom reduction, DBT meets you with compassion and helps you understand what’s underneath your behaviors, then gently guides you toward building new, more sustainable skills.

How Eating Disorders Become Coping Mechanisms

Eating disorders often show up in response to emotional pain, trauma, or overwhelm. For some, controlling food feels like controlling chaos. For others, bingeing offers a temporary escape from shame or numbness. These behaviors can be soothing in the short term—but over time, they start to control you.

DBT helps you step out of that cycle: not by shaming you, but by honoring the function those behaviors have served. It says, “Let’s understand what’s going on, and let’s find another way.”

How DBT Supports Recovery

DBT focuses on four main skill sets. Here’s how each one supports healing from eating disorders:

1. Emotion Regulation
Eating disorders are often rooted in emotional dysregulation. DBT teaches you how to identify what you’re feeling, reduce emotional vulnerability, and respond to emotions without spiraling into self-destructive behaviors.

2. Distress Tolerance
When urges arise, whether it’s the urge to restrict, binge, purge, or overexercise, distress tolerance skills help you pause and ride out the discomfort. You’ll learn how to manage urges without acting on them, and how to soothe yourself in the moment without resorting to old patterns.

3. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is about noticing what’s happening in your body and mind, without judgment. DBT teaches you to become aware of your triggers, body cues, and thought patterns. It also helps you slow down enough to make conscious, values-aligned choices.

4. Interpersonal Effectiveness
People with eating disorders often struggle with boundaries, people-pleasing, or feeling misunderstood in relationships. DBT provides communication tools that help you ask for what you need, say no, and build relationships that feel emotionally safe.

You Are Not Broken. You’re Coping.

If you’ve been stuck in a loop of shame, secrecy, or self-criticism around food or your body, DBT offers a path forward. One rooted in compassion, not control. One where you don’t have to earn your worth through how you look or what you eat.

And you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Curious about how DBT-informed therapy could support your relationship with food, your body, or yourself?

Let’s talk. Click here to schedule a free consultation and see if this kind of work might be a fit for you.