It Takes a Village: A Systemic Approach to Healing Eating Disorders and Relationships

I have always been more interested in the space between people than in any one person alone. The way a family’s silence says more than words. The way one person’s pain is often the whole family’s pain, just presenting in a different way.

This is the heart of systemic therapy: the belief that we cannot heal someone without also tending to the relationships around them. Nowhere is this more true than in eating disorder recovery.

Where It Started

Family therapy was born in the 1950s, when researchers noticed something important: treating a person in isolation, while their family went unchanged at home, often wasn’t enough. The struggles weren’t only inside the individual. They lived in the patterns between people.

Over time, clinicians began applying this lens to eating disorders, recognizing that these struggles often reflect something happening in the family system, not as blame, but as context. This perspective continues to shape how I practice today.

“We cannot heal someone without also tending to the relationships around them.”

Why It Works

Research consistently shows that Family-Based Treatment (FBT) leads to better, longer-lasting recovery from eating disorders than individual therapy alone, especially for adolescents. When everyone in the family system is on the same page, healing has a higher success rate.

My approach isn’t about assigning blame. It’s about curiosity. When I work with a family, I’m paying attention to the whole picture. I look at who carries the worry, who goes quiet, where the tension lives. Real recovery usually means the whole system grows, not just the person who came in for help.

Join Our Community of Support

My supervisor Beth Carpenter, LMFT-S, LPC-S, CEDS-C and I run a virtual ED Parent Support Group every other Thursday at 12pm. If you’re a parent or caregiver of someone with an eating disorder, this group is for you. It’s a place to ask questions, share what you’re going through, and find others who understand. You don’t have to do this alone.

Working with Couples

This same thinking guides my work with couples. As a certified PREPARE/ENRICH facilitator, I work with dating, engaged, and married couples who want to understand their patterns and build something stronger together. Whether it’s a family in crisis or two people planning a life, I’m always asking the same question: how does this system work, and how can we help it work better?

I became a systemic therapist because I believe people heal in relationship. I remain one because I’ve seen that healing ripple outward, not just for the individual, but for the families and communities they’re part of.

If any of this speaks to you, I’d love to connect!

Keara Beck, LMFT-Associate
Marriage & Family Therapist Associate at Embodied Counseling
Supervised by Beth Carpenter, LMFT-S, LPC-S, CEDS-C, EMDR-T

Specializing in eating disorder treatment, systemic family therapy, and PREPARE/ENRICH for couples