Facebook Linkedin-in

Trasi Freeman

I cannot fix you, because you are not broken! Sometimes when we are repeating the same destructive cycles and patterns of unhealthy behaviors, it can feel like a “broken” record, but you’re not. You are stuck in a pattern of learned behaviors, which is not conducive to your overall health. I can help you identify those patterns by rewiring the brain and instilling healthier habits. I have worked with the Seriously Mentally Ill to General Mental Health.

I’m Trasi! I’m an individual and couples therapist at the Arizona Connection Counseling. I have served the mental health community for nearly 10 years. My certifications include: Trauma Specialist, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Emotionally Focused Therapy, and Neuroplasticity.

I invite you to change your life by taking control of your thoughts and emotions and learning who you truly are. YOUR Best is Good Enough, and I want to help you become your best self, and learn to love yourself. Isn’t it time to heal your trauma, create new and healthier pathways, and unlearn behaviors that hold you hostage? Are you ready to break Free?!

Book an Appointment
Facebook Linkedin-in

Arizona Connection Counseling

Arizona Connection Counseling is a licensed counseling agency with a team of experienced and trained therapists throughout Arizona. We utilize a range of highly researched. clinically proven forms of therapy, including Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), EMDR, and more.
Existing Client? Login to Schedule

Dealing With…?

  • Sexual Issues
  • Relationship Conflict
  • Trauma & Self-esteem
  • Eating Disorders & Body Image
  • Infidelity & Betrayal
  • Communication Difficulties
  • Navigating Divorce
  • Parenting
  • Addiction & Compulsive Behaviors
  • Grief and Loss
  • Healthy Boundaries
  • Depression & Anxiety
Book an Appointment

Contact Us

Back-office Hours:
  • 8am-4pm Monday-Friday, excluding Holidays

© 2024 Arizona Connection Counseling. All Rights Reserved.

Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy

Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
  • Comfort, soothing, nurturance
  • Numbing, sedation, distraction
  • Attention, a cry for help
  • Discharge of tension, anger, rebellion
  • Predictability, structure, identity
  • Self-punishment or punishment of "the body"
  • Self-cleansing or self-purification
  • Protection or safety (through creation of a small or large body)
  • Avoidance of intimacy
  • Proof for self-blame instead of blaming others (for exampl, abusers)
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201703/eating-disorders-it-s-not-all-about-food