Alongside Recovery: Eating Disorder Support for Families
Eating disorder support for families, partners and friends
Supporting someone with an eating disorder can feel frightening, confusing and exhausting. You may worry about saying the wrong thing or struggle to know what genuinely helps.
Alongside Recovery is a professionally facilitated online group being developed for parents, partners, family members and friends. It will offer a compassionate, non-judgemental space to develop greater understanding, respond with more confidence and care for your own wellbeing while supporting someone else’s recovery.
What we may explore: eating disorder support for families
Understanding eating disorders and the recovery process
Making sense of behaviours that can appear confusing or contradictory
Communicating without increasing conflict, fear or shame
Supporting recovery without unintentionally supporting the eating disorder
Responding to resistance and ambivalence while managing fear, frustration and helplessness
Establishing compassionate boundaries, protecting your wellbeing and recognising when more support is needed
Who is it for?
Alongside Recovery is for adults supporting someone affected by an eating disorder, whether or not that person has a formal diagnosis or receives therapy from AEDRA.
It is designed for:
• Parents and carers
• Partners and spouses
• Adult family members
• Friends and other significant supporters
A different kind of support
Eating disorders affect relationships and can leave supporters carrying considerable responsibility, uncertainty and emotional strain.
Alongside Recovery will combine compassionate support with accessible psychological and nervous-system-informed education. The aim is not to provide perfect answers, but to help you understand what may be happening and develop ways of supporting recovery that are informed, connected and sustainable.
About the facilitator
Alongside Recovery will be facilitated by Cate, an experienced integrative therapist and recovery coach specialising in eating disorders, trauma, anxiety and the ways the nervous system adapts to survive.
Cate’s approach translates complex clinical and neurobiological ideas into practical, compassionate support that people can understand and use.
Important information
Alongside Recovery will be a facilitated support and psychoeducational group. It will not replace individual therapy, medical care, specialist eating-disorder treatment or emergency support.
The group will not provide medical assessment or individual treatment for the person you support. If there are immediate concerns about someone’s physical safety or mental health, appropriate urgent or emergency services should be contacted.
Register your interest
If you would like to be kept informed about future Alongside Recovery groups, please complete the expression of interest form below. We will contact you as soon as new dates and registration details are available.