135: Beyond the Body: What Eating Disorders Are Really About With Pam Skop

A Simple Therapy Podcast:

Honest Conversations on Therapy, Mental Health, Healing and Self-Growth.

In this episode of A Simple Therapy Podcast, Sindee Gozansky talks with Pam Skop, LMHC, CEDS, and founder of EveryBody Psychotherapy NYC, about eating disorders, body image, and what recovery actually looks like once you get past the surface. Pam’s own eating disorder went unnoticed through her teens and twenties, even in therapy, because no one ever asked her the right questions — an experience that now shapes how she trains therapists to check in about food and body with every client. Her central reframe: an eating disorder is not a weight disorder, and disordered eating usually isn’t a problem to eliminate so much as a protector to understand.

Together, they work through what that looks like in practice — simple, non-shaming intake questions modeled on how clinicians already ask about sleep, the role of curiosity over advice-giving, and why “you look so healthy” can land as harder than helpful. The conversation moves through the cultural pressure driving harder relapses right now, from GLP-1 messaging to 15-second social media clips to the perinatal period and bounce-back culture. Pam shares what healing can look like using deeper somatic and IFS-informed work of reconnecting people to their bodies.

00:49 – Meet Pam Skop

02:53 – Pam’s Personal Recovery Journey

05:19 – What Gets Missed, and How to Ask

10:23 – Redefining Recovery and Its Protective Roots

13:30 – Misconceptions About Bodies and Diagnosis

16:00 – Why This Cultural Moment Feels Harder

20:09 – What People Wish Others Understood

24:38 – Signs of Healing and Flexibility

26:01 – Somatic Work and Reconnecting to the Body

29:06 – Perinatal and Postpartum Body Image

36:42 – Nourishment and Resources for New Parents

39:02 – Building EveryBody Psychotherapy NYC