Eating Disorder support
Lived Experience & Eating Disorder Support: Peer Mentoring and Recovery Coaching
Practical eating disorder support through peer mentoring and lived experience recovery coaching.
peer support for eating disorders
Peer Mentoring as an Adjunct to Eating Disorder Treatment
Recovery from an eating disorder does not take place solely within clinical sessions. It is enacted in everyday contexts – meals, routines, social situations, and the stretches of unstructured time between appointments – where the strategies discussed in therapy are put into practice independently. For many people, this is precisely where the gap in support feels most acute.
At The London Centre, we offer a lived experience recovery coaching and peer mentoring service designed to bridge that gap. Led by Joanna Paschali, a recovery coach with over ten years of experience and her own recovery from anorexia, bulimia, and OCD.
1.25M
people living with an eating disorder
This service provides practical, compassionate, one-to-one support that sits alongside your clinical treatment as part of our specialist multidisciplinary team (MDT).
46%
of Adults feel unhappy about their appearance
Eating Disorder Support from Someone Who Has Experienced Treatment and Recovery Themselves
The Power of Lived Experience and Trained Expertise
A recovery coach who has sustained their own recovery brings a distinct and clinically valuable perspective – a detailed, practical understanding of what change actually involves, not from a textbook, but from having lived it. This includes recognising ambivalence, resistance, and fluctuation as expected parts of the process rather than signs of failure.
But lived experience alone is not what defines this service. Joanna’s practice is grounded in established frameworks including behaviour change theory, motivational interviewing, exposure-based approaches, and relapse prevention models. Her background in pharmacology informs her understanding of the clinical structures within which she works, and her coaching methodology provides a structured, goal-oriented approach to the practical challenges of recovery. The result is trained, evidence-informed support that is enriched, not solely defined, by personal experience.
Her own recovery from severe presentations means she can hold a realistic sense of possibility during periods of hopelessness, not based on reassurance alone, but on direct knowledge that eating disorder recovery is achievable.
A Structured, Evidence-Informed Approach
Recovery coaching at TLC is not just informed mentoring. It is a structured intervention informed by the same evidence base that underpins the clinical work happening across our team. Sessions draw on motivational interviewing techniques to work with ambivalence rather than against it, exposure-based principles to support gradual engagement with feared situations such as meals and social eating, and relapse prevention models to identify early warning signs and build sustainable coping strategies.
This framework means that the support Joanna provides is coordinated with your clinical treatment, reinforcing therapeutic goals, practising skills in real-world contexts, and feeding observations back to your clinical team with your consent.
A Support Companion for Real Life
Clinical sessions provide the therapeutic foundation for recovery. But the moments that often feel hardest, like sitting with a meal, navigating a social event, managing the urge to engage in a behaviour when you are alone at home, happen outside the therapy room.
Joanna’s role is to be alongside you in those moments: helping you apply what you are learning in therapy, building confidence through practice, and offering steady, informed encouragement from someone who genuinely understands the territory. This service is available for all ages. For children and adolescents, recovery coaching works alongside family-based therapy (FBT, FT-AN) and individual treatment, and can involve parents and carers in supporting recovery where clinically appropriate, providing families with practical guidance for the moments between sessions that often feel most challenging.
Support for eating disorders
Support That Meets You Where You Are
This service is flexible and tailored to what you need at each stage of your recovery. Support can include any combination of the following.
1-on-1 Support Sessions
Individual sessions of 45–60 minutes, delivered in person or online. These provide space to work through specific challenges, whether that is preparing for a difficult meal, processing a setback, developing coping strategies, or working on the practical and identity-related aspects of building a life beyond the eating disorder.
Sessions can focus on meal and behavioural support, real-time problem-solving, coping skills and relapse prevention, advocacy and communication (such as preparing for medical appointments), or functional and practical support with daily routines.
A Peer in Your Pocket (WhatsApp/Text)
Recovery does not follow a timetable. Between sessions, Joanna offers WhatsApp and text support: a brief, responsive point of contact for moments when you need grounding, encouragement, or a steady presence to help you stay on track.
This is not crisis support or a replacement for clinical care. It is a practical layer of connection designed to reduce the isolation that so many people describe as one of the hardest parts of recovery.
How an Eating Disorder Recovery Coach Aids Your Daily Routine
For those who benefit from more frequent structure, brief daily check-ins of approximately 15 minutes provide consistent support around meals, routines, and behavioural goals. These check-ins help to maintain momentum between clinical sessions and build the day-to-day confidence that sustains longer-term change.
Eating disorder recovery coach
Outcomes: What to Expect from Peer Support
Breaking the Isolation
Many people with eating disorders describe a profound sense of loneliness, not necessarily a lack of people around them, but the feeling that no one truly understands what they are going through. Working with someone who has navigated their own recovery can ease that isolation in a way that feels qualitatively different from other forms of support.
Relatable Strategies for Daily Life
Joanna’s support is grounded in the practical realities of recovery. Strategies are not theoretical, they are drawn from clinical evidence, lived experience, and an understanding of what actually works when you are sitting in front of a plate or resisting a compulsion at eleven o’clock at night.
Seeing That Recovery is Real
One of the most powerful aspects of lived experience support is its implicit message: recovery is not an abstract concept. It is something that real people achieve and sustain. During periods of hopelessness or ambivalence, which are a normal part of the process, this can be genuinely meaningful.
A Non-Judgmental Space within a Professional Clinic
What distinguishes this service from standalone peer mentoring organisations is its integration within TLC’s clinical structure. Joanna works as part of our MDT, which means her support is informed by and coordinated with your clinical treatment. Your therapist, dietitian, psychiatrist, and recovery coach are part of the same team, communicating with your consent to ensure that every aspect of your support is aligned.
This is not independent mentoring offered in isolation. It is a clinically embedded service within a specialist eating disorder clinic.
The Best of Both Worlds
A Supportive Bridge
For many people, recovery coaching serves as a bridge, between the insight gained in therapy and the daily practice of living differently. It can be particularly valuable during transitions: starting your therapy journey, increasing independence after intensive support, navigating return to work or education, or managing periods of heightened vulnerability.
This service is an adjunct to clinical care, not a substitute for it. It is not appropriate where there is significant medical or psychiatric risk without comprehensive clinical assessment and treatment in place.
Reach Out for a Friendly Chat
If you are interested in learning more about lived experience recovery coaching, for yourself or for someone you care about, you are welcome to get in touch. An initial conversation can help us understand what you need and whether this service would be a helpful addition to your support.
