Dr Susan Simpson on schema therapy and her new self-help book

This podcast is live 5 August, 2026

Eating problems are rarely just about food. They often do a job: easing pain, offering comfort, or giving a sense of control when other needs aren’t being met. Understanding what your eating is doing for you can help loosen its grip, and open up room for a fuller life and real connection with others.

In this episode, Beth sits down with Dr Susan Simpson, a clinical psychologist who has spent more than 25 years working with people with long-standing eating disorders. Susan uses a therapeutic model called schema therapy. Her whole-person approach also draws on self-compassion, working with the different parts of ourselves, and taking gentle, gradual steps towards change.

Susan has recently brought these tools together in a new self-help book, Breaking Negative Eating Patterns and Remembering Your True Self. She talks with Beth about what led her to write it, how the approach works, and how people can start using it in their own lives.

A note on framing: these self-awareness tools sit alongside treatment and support, not instead of them. The process of building self-understanding is always helpful in supporting recovery.

This episode is for anyone whose relationship with food feels like a struggle, especially those whose eating disorder has been part of their life for a long time. It will also speak to carers, and to clinicians curious about this way of working.

Susan Simpson LinkedIn 

Book: Schema therapy for eating disorders 

Susan Simpson: Schema therapy association 

Podcast: What’s the schemata? 

clinicians: join the butterfly professional database