When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder, it Can Feel Like They're Speaking a Language You Were Never Taught.
Between Sessions Teaches You that Language.
You are doing everything, and it still feels like you are outside the door.
You drive to the appointments. You pay the bills. You research at midnight and try the thing you read and watch it land wrong.
Every instinct says fix it. Take the pain away. Make it stop.
But with an eating disorder you cannot recover for them. You can only stand near it.
I am a parent too. I know what it costs to watch your child hurt and not be able to lift it off them.
When Your Child is Diagnosed, the Care Rightly Centers on Them.
Therapists, dietitians, doctors, all focused on helping your child heal.
And meanwhile, you're the one holding everything together at home, often without anyone explaining what's actually happening or how to help.
You deserve support too.
Not instead of your child's care, but alongside it.
Because when parents understand what's going on beneath the eating disorder, recovery has a much stronger foundation.
I have watched clients move faster than anyone predicted. Time and again the difference was a parent who genuinely understood what they were facing.
Not a parent who followed instructions correctly.
A parent who understood what was underneath the behavior, and could respond to a moment nobody had prepped them for.
A parent who understands changes what recovery looks like.
I had to learn this language too…
I’m a therapist and a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist–Consultant (CEDS-C). I’ve worked with people experiencing eating disorders since 2013, and my consultant credential qualifies me to supervise mental health and medical providers as they work toward their own eating disorder certification.
But I didn’t start out understanding eating disorders. I haven’t had one myself. When I began this work, much of it felt like a foreign language. I recognized some of the words, but I didn’t yet understand all the ways an eating disorder could shape a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
So I sought out more education after school. I spent hours upon hours learning about eating disorders, the diagnoses that can occur alongside them, and how they affect the way a person thinks, feels, and relates to the world. I studied how an eating disorder develops, how it changes a person over time, and what helps them recover.
That language, once unfamiliar to me, is now one I use every day. I’m telling you this because I remember what it was like to encounter it for the first time. You may be wondering how you’re supposed to understand something you’ve never experienced yourself. You might hear your child say something that makes no sense to you, or watch them struggle with something that seems simple from the outside. It can feel as though everyone else knows what’s happening while you’re trying to catch up.
But you don’t need firsthand experience to learn. You can come to understand what an eating disorder does, why your child’s behavior may seem confusing, and what kind of support helps them move toward recovery. You don’t have to learn everything at once, and you don’t have to figure it out alone.
This language is learnable.
Therapist, Certified Eating Disorders Specialist Consultant, and host of Eating Disorders Unfiltered.
Candace David
Built for the Hours You Are Actually In.
Every month
a Skills Lab, a professional-to-professional interview with a provider whose work touches recovery, and two Office Hours where I answer your questions.
Available at midnight.
Your treatment team is not there at 2am. This is. Watch one thing, walk away with something you can use tomorrow.
Education, not therapy.
Which is why it costs less than one more appointment, and why you do not need a referral to start.
$47 a month.
Everything unlocks the day you join.
Cancel anytime.
When the language stops feeling foreign
You stop guessing at what a hard moment means and start recognizing it.
You can tell the difference between the eating disorder and your child, and you know which one you are talking to.
You become the steady presence your child can lean on.
You will always be the expert on your own kid. Between Sessions teaches you the language so you can do what you have wanted to do the whole time.
Between Sessions is here whenever you are ready.
Everything here is education and support for parents. It is not therapy, and it is not a replacement for your child's treatment team.