Marie’s Story

I first went to see Jess during my final year at university. I was experiencing anxiety, depression and a bad patch of my eating disorder, triggered by stress due to my coursework and exams. I had been diagnosed, nearly two years before, with Binge Eating Disorder but had never looked seriously into getting help. I had struggled with food, body image and weight since I was little, and at times, didn’t see an end to it all.

Over the course of 20 sessions, whether they were in her garden office, or over FaceTime, I began to rebuild my mental health and approach towards food and eating. The first step was to get my eating under control. After this we began to look at why I was struggling with my relationship with eating and food. These discussions were tough and very upsetting, but Jess made me feel so comfortable to show and say exactly how I was feeling, going through plenty of packets of tissue in the process.
Jess is a wonderful listener and gives an outside perspective on areas of your life that you are struggling with. She helps to re-frame them to become more manageable, and gives very reliable and helpful advice. With a wealth of knowledge and experience of the problems faced by someone with an eating disorder, Jess helped me understand my feelings and what triggered my difficult relationship with food and how to heal.

I am so grateful to Jess and the time spent working with her. My life now is so different. I am so much happier and in control of my eating. My body image is totally transformed, and I find myself loving and appreciating my body more and more each day. Even when I go through difficult and stressful times and find myself over-eating, I tell myself its okay and to move on. Before I would have spent hours, even days, weeks, beating myself up and being so hard on myself. She didn’t just help with my eating, she helped with my perfectionist nature, low self-esteem, low body image and the relationships with my friends and family. Jess is approachable, kind and warm, and I bet could help anyone with any type of mental health problem, be that eating disorders or otherwise. I honestly can’t thank Jess enough, not only for supporting me through my final year at university, but also for giving me tools to deal anything that might come my way in the future.