Friends, I currently have a few companioning spots open for 2026. Sign up for a free call here. If you have any questions about working with me, kindly email me.
Emotional Support to Soften Your Bond with Food
When we’re struggling, often what we most need is emotional support: a place where we can be listened to with warmth, where we can know we make sense, and where we can kindle hope for healing.
This is something different than therapy, trauma healing, or coaching, although it’s a wonderful complement to these kinds of support. I call it companioning.
Companioning is for you if you want gentle, grounded support to help you feel less worried, more strengthened and more clear as you heal your relationship with food. I can help orient you to the path of healing and the many doorways you walk through along the way.
Companioning is especially helpful if you've struggled to find places where you can be truly heard. I like the way Focusing founder Eugene Gendlin says this:
Most people have no one who will hear and receive their own inward experience just as it is....Everyone wants to edit it, change it, improve it, put his or her meaning onto it....When people experience being listening to....there is visible relief... a free space inside."
As Sarah Peyton reminds us, there is nothing more calming to the brain than being understood. This is what we do together: fully receiving you, hearing what needs to be heard so the 'free space' inside can speak. This 'free space' - what you may think of as the body's wisdom - will help guide you to the needs that live underneath the food and places of inner protest that need support. As these places are heard, and as our fears are calmed, our behaviors with food can change.
How companioning works
As a companioning client, we meet by zoom where you'll have lots of time to be heard and to ask questions - to sort through your experience so it makes sense to you, and to be gently encouraged and supported.
We may do some collage or other creative exercises together that help care for the emotional brain. We may do a brief meditative exercise together. I may guide you to some tools that can help your particular needs. And I may also share some attachment science basics to orient you and bring insight to your experience.
No matter what particular piece you need, our work together will support you in gaining clarity and understanding about how food serves you and ways you can come alongside these protectors with wisdom and compassion.
How to begin
If you're interested in becoming a Companioning client, let's meet by zoom for 30-40 minutes where we can get to know each other and you can see if we're a good fit. You can see my openings and sign up for this free meeting here. You may also want to get to know me - learn more about my approach here.
Companioning calls are offered at $100. I typically meet with clients once a week or every other week. Sometimes my Companioning spots are full, in which case I maintain a waiting list - you'll be notified once a spot opens up for you.
My promise to you
Legally and ethically, it's important that you understand my skills and promises to you as well as the limits of my expertise. I want you to get the right support for you! Likewise, if we reach the limits of my expertise, I promise to let you know so you can get the support you need elsewhere.
Companioning calls are offered to adults who are wanting emotional support, listening, and practical support in healing their relationship with food. I can offer referrals if you want support for a teen or child.
I've been trained in attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology, addiction treatment, trauma, group facilitation, and meditation, and offer these calls as an educator, writer, and teacher. However I'm not a licensed therapist or mental health professional.
My training has come from the following organizations:
- Abby Seixas, Finding the Deep River Within facilitator and group facilitator training
- Bonnie Badenoch - The Heart of Trauma training, Therapy as Spiritual Practice training
- Focusing: Modules 1 and 2, Untangling
- PCPSI - The Heroic Impulse of Addiction with Liam O Mahony
- PCPSI - Nurturing the Heart with the Brain in Mind, a year long intensive in interpersonal neurobiology with Bonnie Badenoch
- The Church of Conscious Harmony - group facilitation and Centering Prayer
- The Neufeld Institute - attachment theory and developmental psychology (Intensive I, Intensive II, Making Sense of Alarm, Making Sense of Alpha, Making Sense of Adolescence, The Alarm Spectrum, Making Sense of Resilience, Making Sense of Hypersensitivity, Play and Emotion, 5 Steps of Emotional Maturation, Making Sense of Emotion)
- The Orphan Wisdom School - grief, village making, animism, and community
- Various in person and online seminars on addiction, attachment, and relational neuroscience
I'm honored to sit alongside you and to be a part of your journey, to witness and support your healing. I take to heart these words from Bill Plotkin, which were taught to me by my friend Rosemerry: "Are you willing to listen with the ears of your heart to the other voices of yourself speaking?" It is with this reverence that I come to meet you, and to hear your story.
With warmth, Karly