The aim of psychotherapeutic treatment is to teach patients to recognise their own feelings and body signals and to manage the real problems. In order to do this the psychotherapist must understand that these patients are unable to recognise their bodily needs and that people with eating disorders have learned to interpret the wrong signals as a need to eat.

The therapy must be directed towards getting the patients to experience how various feelings are expressed in compulsive eating, hunger or craving. Food abusers need to learn to recognise real hunger and separate it from other feelings. More. They also need to understand, and be aware of, how they function in order to manage their eating in a better way.