victoria schonwald

When I began comparing Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian peer-workforce guidelines, I expected them to describe roughly the same way of working. They did not. Both value lived experience, hope, connection and recovery, but they do not necessarily position the lived-experience worker in the same way. The Aotearoa guidance leans strongly towards mutuality, autonomy and non-clinical relationships. The Australian eating-disorder guidance is more explicit about role boundaries, supervision,...

There is a question I hear from exhausted, desperate families more than almost any other. Why won't they just eat? It sounds so simple from the outside. Food is there. The consequences of not eating are known. Everyone wants recovery. So why does every meal feel like a war zone, and why does nothing seem to get through? The answer lies not in willpower, motivation, or love. It lies in neuroscience, and specifically in what happens to a brain that doesn't feel safe. We Cannot Learn When We...

A starved brain cannot self-regulate. A stressed body cannot digest. And a child sitting at the dinner table with an eating disorder is experiencing both at once — not as a choice, but as neuroscience. The nervous system state of the people around them is information their threat-detection system is reading constantly. Your calm is not just emotional support. It is functional medicine. Here is the science behind why — and what it means for mealtimes.