Therapists working with Eating Disorders often spend session time discussing food and the management of food in the client's life. PICT regards food as a symptom and PICT therapists use specific techniques to utilise the unconscious mind and discover the root cause of the symptom/eating disorder. (Obviously, if a client comes for therapy and their health is in a seriously deteriorated state, medical intervention will be recommended and therapy will not begin until the client is stable.) Using the specific technique, the unconscious mind will present a time in the past (most often a childhood experience that is out of conscious memory) when the feelings that run the eating disorder behaviour started, but NOT when the eating disorder started.

From that point forward, therapeutic work will be focused on resolution of the childhood experience. For some clients there will be more than one past experience that is connected to the eating disorder behaviour, in those instances, further exploration through the unconscious and further resolution work will be done.

Commonly, clients experiencing an eating disorder will have been children who were given little choice - their parents were either very domineering giving the child little or no space to breathe and be natural or very weak and the child had to take responsibility for self and perhaps siblings as well. In both cases the child had no power, no sense of self. When that powerless reality has been established it becomes a part of the person's belief system and consequently, how the person relates to the world. Eating disorders is one type of symptom that reflects feelings of a lack of power or sense of self in life, and people can end up taking power over the only thing they have left - their body. Clients will not usually have conscious knowledge of any of this, but as information about the kinds of childhood experiences that underpin eating disorders is explained by a PICT therapist, clients will often have an 'Aha!' moment - a moment when their life experiences start to fit together.

Because of the lack of appropriate information, comfort, love and support during childhood many people use food in adult life as a comfort. Obesity and Bulimia are two conditions that can reflect this, whereas, Anorexia can sometimes reflect a cutting off of comfort because the person feels undeserving.

Some clients (often those who have had other types of therapy) may want to spend time talking about and focusing on food, rather than dealing with issues from childhood. A PICT therapist will explain that s/he is prepared to assist them to resolve the feelings that run the behaviour and will also acknowledge that looking at those feelings may seem scary. Clients are assured that it will not be as difficult as they may fear and that addressing and resolving those old feelings will allow the client to have real power in their life, not just the illusion of power that the eating disorder has provided.

Resolving the root cause of eating disorders allows the person to automatically return to a natural state, the state where food takes its appropriate role in their life. Once resolution takes place there is no need to repeat mantras or positive statements, no need to 'do' anything except enjoy feeling and being natural again. Obviously, it is in anyone's best interest to choose a healthy food life style - with unconscious negative material out of the way healthy choices are much easier to make.