Courtney Dowdell LCAT, CEDS, RDT/BCT

I support teens navigating anxiety, identity, relationships, school stress, body image, and eating concerns. My creative arts therapy training helps me connect beyond talk therapy and build genuine trust. Regular parent meetings provide structure, guidance, and support for the family while keeping the teen’s voice at the center and giving them space to develop trust, autonomy, and a stronger sense of self. My background includes work in child/adolescent psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital.

As a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS), I treat adolescents and adults across the eating disorder spectrum, including anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, ARFID, OSFED, and disordered eating. My approach is evidence-based, weight-inclusive, and centered on the whole person—not only the diagnosis. I collaborate with dietitians, physicians, families, and other members of the treatment team. I also train and consult with clinicians developing their expertise in eating disorder care.

I help clients explore body image with curiosity rather than shame. Our work may address body distress, comparison, perfectionism, identity, as well as the cultural messages that shape how bodies are experienced. Using a weight-inclusive frame combined with creative and embodied approaches, I help clients build trust in themselves and develop a relationship with their bodies rooted in respect, flexibility, and freedom.

My humanistic approach begins with seeing you as a whole person. I believe the therapeutic relationship can become a place where you feel genuinely known, respected, and challenged with care. Therapy is collaborative and shaped around your individual story, values, and strengths. I bring warmth, honesty, curiosity, and steadiness while trusting your capacity for growth, meaning, and a more authentic relationship with yourself.

Depth therapy looks beneath the immediate symptom to explore the patterns, relationships, beliefs, and experiences that may be shaping your inner life. Together, we may attend to unconscious patterns, symbolism, creativity, dreams, identity, and questions of meaning or spirituality. I am interested not only in what is happening, but in what it may be communicating. This approach allows us to honor what helped you survive while making room for greater awareness, choice, and lasting change.

Experiential therapy moves beyond talking about an experience and creates opportunities to encounter it differently in the room. Drawing from creative arts therapy, drama therapy, embodied practices, imagery, and mindfulness, I help clients access feelings and insights that words alone may not reach. These practices are always collaborative. Together, we can explore new ways of relating to your body, your emotions, your story, and the different parts of yourself.