I highly recommend therapy - especially seeing a therapist that is certified to perform EMDR therapy. While a lot of different therapy modalities can help, if you feel that your BED may be caused by trauma EMDR therapy is really the gold standard treatment.

I still struggle day to day, but I'm nearly 3 years in to treatment and it's been night and day. My therapist got me to a place where I was comfortable with food again, and he actually encouraged me to do some things that seemed incredibly counterintuitive at the time from what I had read online.

One example would be he helped me see that the unknown was causing me to binge. I'd eat something and ignore the calories because I was scared and didn't want to know, which would cause me to binge more. Now I calorie count and keep track and it really helps me. Almost like shining the light on the boogey man and realizing the small handful of chips isn't 4000 calories. For others that could be terrible advice because they would obsess over it, but for me it was what I needed to feel stable.

A lot of the advice works for some and not others, so having a professional help me figure out the emotional side so I could tackle the day to day side was massive.

I'd "handled" my BED on my own for nearly my entire life. Huge swings in weight, a lot of self hate, and many moments of lost happiness were the results for me. It took finally sitting down and admitting I needed outside help before I saw lasting improvement.

You can do it!