You're not losing your child. You're fighting for them.
Specialized, evidence-based eating disorder treatment for adolescents — covered by your insurance, delivered virtually anywhere in California.
In-network with Dr. Habashy: Aetna · Carelon · Cigna · Oscar. Don't see your plan? The 15-minute consultation is free regardless of insurance. Out-of-network superbills provided for PPO reimbursement. HSA/FSA accepted.
The standoff at the kitchen table
You've heard “I'm just not hungry,” “I already ate,” “I'll have something later” so many times the words have stopped sounding like sentences and started sounding like a door closing. An eating disorder isn't a phase, defiance, or something they'll outgrow. It's a serious illness that hijacks the part of the brain that should be telling them they need food — and the longer it runs unchecked, the deeper the hijack goes.
But here is what nobody told you at the pediatrician's office: parents are not the problem. Parents are the most important resource throughout treatment.
An evidence-based path that actually works
Family-Based Treatment (FBT, sometimes called the Maudsley Approach) is the treatment with the strongest published evidence base for adolescent eating disorders. It works by giving you — the parent — both the authority and the tools to support your child's recovery and help restore their physical and emotional well-being, while a clinician walks alongside you teaching what to do, what to say, and how to stay grounded when the illness pushes back.
What the research says
In NIMH-funded randomized clinical trials, approximately half of adolescents with anorexia nervosa achieve full remission with FBT by the end of treatment, with effects largely maintained at one-year follow-up — outperforming individual-focused therapy roughly two-to-one. (Lock J, Le Grange D, et al. Archives of General Psychiatry, 2010. Stanford / University of Chicago.)
What this will actually feel like
You learn to separate the illness from your child. The eating disorder will say cruel things in your child's voice. You'll learn to hear the difference, and how to stay loving to them while refusing to negotiate with it.
You build the distress-tolerance skills the moments require. Refeeding is hard. You'll learn how to stay regulated when they're escalating, how to hold limits without losing connection, and how to keep showing up after a hard meal.
You're given the playbook for the long arc. Phase 1 focuses on weight restoration with you in charge. Phase 2 returns control over eating to your child at a clinically-paced rhythm. Phase 3 addresses the developmental work the illness interrupted — identity, relationships, who they're becoming.
You and your child learn skills you keep. Coping, communication, regulation, and the ability to recognize early warning signs — these don't end when treatment ends. Specialized eating disorder treatment that's actually covered by insurance is genuinely rare in California; Grounded Therapy is one of the few practices doing both.
Dr. Jessica Habashy, PhD
Licensed Clinical Psychologist · CA PSY36582
Dr. Habashy specializes in evidence-based eating disorder treatment across the lifespan — anorexia, bulimia, ARFID, OSFED, and binge eating disorder. She trained at UCSD's Eating Disorders Center (one of the country's leading FBT training sites) and in Stanford-area private practice, and works with manualized FBT, CBT-E, DBT, and ACT. She works virtually with families and individuals across California, with particular care for first-generation, LGBTQ+, and culturally marginalized families whose experiences have often been dismissed in conventional treatment.
The conversation you've been afraid to have.
No commitment, no intake forms — just a conversation about what you're facing and whether FBT is the right next step. In-network: Aetna · Carelon · Cigna · Oscar; out-of-network superbills + HSA/FSA accepted.