Therapy for Anxiety & Eating Disorder Recovery in Silver Spring, MD
For high-achieving women who are hard on themselves—about their bodies, their work, and their worth.
Virtual sessions in NY, MD, DC & all PsyPact states · In-person in Silver Spring, MD
Signs you might benefit from therapy for anxiety, perfectionism, or eating disorder recovery
The standards are high, the inner critic is relentless, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, the relationship with food and your body got complicated too. Not a crisis. Just the background noise of a life built around performing at the highest level, and never quite feeling like it's enough.
You might be here because...
The inner critic is loud. You hold yourself to standards you'd never apply to anyone else, and it still doesn't feel like enough.
Perfectionism has gotten you far. But lately it feels less like a strength and more like a weight you carry everywhere.
Food and your body take up more mental space than you'd like — maybe not enough to call it an eating disorder, but enough to notice.
Body image still affects your mood and confidence, even when things are otherwise going well.
Anxiety shows up as overdoing, over preparing, or a baseline hum of tension that never fully turns off.
You're compassionate toward others and relentless toward yourself, and you're starting to wonder what it would feel like to close that gap.
You don't want to wait until things get worse to deserve support. You're ready now.
About Dr. Elizabeth Gordon — psychologist in Silver Spring, MD specializing in anxiety, perfectionism, and eating disorder recovery
A decade of expertise in what's underneath the surface.
I'm a psychologist specializing in anxiety, perfectionism, body image, and eating disorder recovery. Most of my clients are high-achieving women who hold themselves to impossible standards — in their work, their relationships, and the way they inhabit their bodies. They're functioning well by most measures. And they're exhausted in a way that's hard to explain to anyone who isn't living it.
My approach draws on CBT, psychodynamic, and ACT frameworks to get at both the patterns and the roots underneath them. I'm based in Silver Spring, MD and work virtually with adults in New York, Maryland, and all PsyPact states.
In the room (or on the screen) I tend to be warm and direct in equal measure. I take the work seriously without being stiff about it. I'm genuinely curious about how people make sense of their lives, and I'm not easily rattled by the complicated or contradictory parts. Clients often describe the experience as feeling both held and challenged — a space where they can say the thing they've been circling around for years and also have someone who will engage with it honestly, not just reflect it back. I care about this work, and I think that comes through.
Who is a good fit for therapy for perfectionism and anxiety in Silver Spring and New York?
High-achieving women ready to stop being so hard on themselves.
My clients are often high-achieving adults doing well by most measures and still stuck in patterns of self-criticism, anxiety, or a complicated relationship with food and their bodies. Many are in demanding careers — medicine, law, academia, finance, the arts. Many are graduate students or early-career professionals navigating the particular pressure of high-stakes environments. Some are in relationships; many are navigating life as single adults, including the unique weight that dating and social comparison can add to body image and self-worth.
They don't always arrive using the language of eating disorder recovery. But they're often relieved to work with someone who understands that history and can hold the whole picture — the perfectionism, the anxiety, the way the body piece fits in, without making any one part of it the only thing. You may have tried therapy before, read the books, done the work, and still feel like something hasn't shifted. That's often exactly where this kind of work begins.
You don't need a diagnosis or a crisis to belong here. You just need to be ready to look at what's keeping you stuck.
Where we might start...Therapy services in Silver Spring, MD — eating disorders, body image, and anxiety
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Eating disorder therapy
Recovery often continues long after behaviors improve — in the mental space food still takes up, the body that still feels like something to manage, the voice that hasn't fully gone quiet. Whether you're newly in recovery or years in and wanting to go deeper, we work to reduce shame and build a life guided by your values, not the disorder.
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Body image therapy
Body image distress rarely stays contained to what you see in the mirror. It shapes mood, limits choices, and quietly puts life on hold. Therapy helps you understand where those patterns came from and build a relationship with your body that isn't driven by fear or appearance-based worth — work that often connects to perfectionism and self-esteem in ways that go much deeper.
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Therapy for anxiety
Anxiety in high-achievers often doesn't look like panic. It looks like a to-do list that never gets shorter, standards that have become exhausting rather than motivating, and a sense that no matter how much you accomplish, it's never quite enough. We work on the thoughts, beliefs, and patterns keeping the cycle running — so anxiety becomes something you can respond to, not something that runs you.
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Therapy for depression
Depression in high-achievers often doesn't look like sadness. It looks like going through the motions — functioning, delivering, staying on top of things — while feeling strangely far from your own life. We work to understand what's underneath that flatness, ease the weight of it, and reconnect you with a life that feels more present and more yours.
You do not have to wait until things get worse to deserve support. You only have to be willing to be curious about whether life could feel different.
If you're here, something in you is already looking for change.
Online therapy for adults in New York, Maryland, and beyond
As a PsyPact provider, I'm able to work with clients virtually across most U.S. states — including DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and many others. Many of my virtual clients are based in New York City, including graduate students and faculty at Columbia University and other academic institutions, as well as professionals in demanding fields who want support from a therapist with deep expertise in the intersection of perfectionism, anxiety, and eating disorder recovery.
Virtual therapy offers the same depth of work as in-person sessions. I use a secure, HIPAA-compliant video platform, and sessions are typically 45 minutes. If you're based outside of Maryland or New York, you can check whether your state is included in the PsyPact agreement — most U.S. states now participate.
Many people come to virtual therapy with some skepticism, wondering whether something will be lost without being in the same room. It's a fair question, and worth taking seriously. What I've found, working virtually for several years with clients across a range of concerns, is that the depth of the work isn't diminished. The same attunement, the same quality of attention, the same ability to notice what's being said and what isn't — these translate. For many clients, particularly those with demanding schedules or who prefer the privacy and convenience of working from their own space, virtual sessions actually remove barriers that would otherwise get in the way of consistent, sustained work. The therapeutic relationship builds just as fully. The sessions go just as deep.
Questions People Ask Before Reaching Out
Things you might be wondering late at night…
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Possibly, yes. CBT is effective for a lot of things, but for patterns that are deeply rooted — perfectionism that started early, a relationship with food that's been complicated for years, self-criticism that feels like part of your personality — it sometimes addresses the surface without touching what's underneath. My work draws on psychodynamic and ACT frameworks alongside CBT, which means we look at both the patterns and where they came from. Why the inner critic sounds the way it does. What the rules around food have been protecting. That layer often makes the difference between managing symptoms and things actually shifting.
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No. Understanding the past is useful when it sheds light on the present — when knowing where a pattern came from helps you stop being run by it. That's different from spending every session excavating history for its own sake. In practice, we follow your lead. We might spend a session on something that happened this week and another tracing a pattern back to understand it better. The goal is always practical: less stuck, less hard on yourself, more able to live the way you actually want to.
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This is probably the most common thing I hear, and it's worth addressing directly. Functioning well doesn't disqualify you from support. It often just means the struggle is invisible to everyone around you, which can make it lonelier. The fact that you're keeping up doesn't mean the mental effort isn't real or that it's sustainable.
Many of the people I work with have been "fine" for years — hitting every mark, holding it all together — while privately exhausted by the standards they can never quite meet. You don't have to be in crisis to deserve help. You just have to be tired enough to want something to change.
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Yes. You don't need a diagnosis to work on your relationship with food or your body. A lot of people I see sit somewhere between disordered eating and a full eating disorder — in a space where food takes up more mental space than they'd like, where there are rules that feel rigid and exhausting, where the body is something to manage rather than live in. That's worth taking seriously. The label matters less than whether it's affecting your quality of life. If it is, it's enough.
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This one comes up more than you might think, especially among high-achievers. The short answer: no. Therapy doesn't flatten ambition or sand down drive — it tends to make both more sustainable. What often changes is the relationship to the anxiety that's been running the engine. The goal isn't to care less. It's to stop being so exhausted by the caring. Most clients find that as the self-criticism softens and the pressure loosens, they actually become more effective — not less — because they're not spending so much energy managing the inner critic.
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A few possibilities. Therapy works best when the approach fits the person and the concern — and not every therapist is trained to work with perfectionism, body image, and eating disorders together. If previous therapy felt surface-level, or like it focused on coping skills without going deeper, that's a real limitation of some approaches. My work tends to go underneath the symptoms — understanding where patterns came from and what they're protecting, not just managing them session to session. It might be different. It might not be. The consultation is the right place to figure out whether the fit is there before committing to anything.
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Then we talk about that. Ambivalence: feeling pulled toward change and also resistant to it, is not a sign that you're not ready for therapy. It's often the most honest response to a genuinely difficult thing. You don't have to have it figured out before you reach out. The first conversation is low-stakes. If it turns out the timing isn't right, or something else needs to be in place first, we can talk about that too. There's no contract and no pressure.