About 100 miles from WacoAdults 18+In person in Austin
Co-occurring eating disorder treatment for Waco adults carrying depression, anxiety, or OCD alongside food.
Empowered Treatment provides co-occurring eating disorder treatment for adults at our Austin center, about 100 miles from Waco, treating anxiety, depression, OCD, and trauma in the same plan as the eating disorder. For a Waco adult who has been seeing one provider for mood and another for food, or nobody at all, that means one team in Austin, then a careful handoff to the providers you keep at home.
about100miles
About 1.5 to 2 hours each way by car. I-35 south the whole way, traffic-dependent through Temple and Round Rock.
Other Texas cities we serve, by distance
- 30 hrsa week in partial hospitalization: supported meals, groups, therapy, dietitian, medical and psychiatric care
- 9 hrsa week of group programming in IOP, plus weekly individual and dietitian sessions
- 1 housein Hyde Park, alongside PHP or IOP, with shared meals and a room of your own
- 18+adults only, with every hour of care in person at our Austin center
When food and mood are tangled, treating one at a time rarely works.
Eating disorders seldom arrive alone. An eating disorder and anxiety often feed each other: anxiety can make eating feel unsafe, and restriction can sharpen anxiety in return. Depression flattens appetite and routine, while the isolation of an eating disorder deepens the low mood. Obsessive thoughts can attach themselves to food rules, and trauma can sit underneath bingeing, purging, or restricting as a way of managing what feels unbearable.
In Waco, care for these often gets split. A psychiatrist in one office manages medication for depression, a therapist at Baylor or in private practice works on anxiety, and the eating disorder either goes unnamed or gets referred somewhere else. Each provider sees a piece. Our guide to co-occurring disorders at our Austin center explains how the pieces interact.
Integrated care keeps nutrition, meal support, and medical safety central while treating the rest alongside. If you are not sure whether an eating disorder is part of what is happening, eating disorder treatment for Waco adults is a good starting point.
Signs the other struggles are steering the eating disorder.
These patterns suggest the eating disorder and another condition need treating together rather than in separate offices:
- Rituals have moved onto the plate.Counting bites, checking labels again and again, or needing food arranged a certain way before you can eat.
- Low mood sets the menu.On the worst days you barely eat, or you binge to feel anything, and both make the next day heavier.
- Panic lives near the table.Your heart races before meals, and avoiding food has become a way to avoid the anxiety.
- Old memories surface with hunger or fullness.Body sensations around eating bring back things you would rather not feel, and the eating disorder helps you not feel them.
- Medication alone has not touched it.An antidepressant or anxiety medication helped some, but the eating disorder kept going.
- Your providers each hold one piece.Each one sees part of the picture, and nobody is holding the whole plan.
One team holding the whole picture, with psychiatric care built in.
Instead of three offices and three versions of you, there is one team looking at the same week of your life from three angles (therapy, nutrition, and psychiatry) in PHP or IOP at our Austin center.
Psychiatric evaluation and medication management
Our psychiatric providers review what you are taking now, how food intake affects it, and whether anything should change, then follow you through the program.
Exposure and response prevention for food rituals
When OCD has attached itself to eating, ERP helps you resist the checks and rituals step by step, inside the same plan as your meals.
Trauma-integrated care, carefully paced
Our trauma-integrated eating disorder treatment works with trauma once eating is stable enough to hold it, using approaches such as EMDR.
Daily skills for anxiety and low mood
CBT and DBT skills practiced in groups, so you have tools for the hard hours that are not food.
Bingeing tied to low mood has its own page, binge eating disorder treatment for Waco adults.
From Waco to one team in Austin, then back to your own providers.
The center is about 100 miles from Waco, about 1.5 to 2 hours on I-35. When co-occurring conditions are severe, the eating disorder PHP for Waco adults is often the right level, and it usually pairs with our transitional housing in Hyde Park, where evenings are spent with other people rather than alone with your thoughts. The eating disorder IOP for Waco adults can be a commute for some, once mood and eating are steadier.
- A first callTell us about the eating disorder and whatever comes with it. Nothing is too much to mention.
- A benefits checkWe can check your benefits before you decide, including coverage for psychiatric care within PHP or IOP.
- Records, with your consentWith your written permission, your current Waco providers send notes and medication history before you arrive.
- Assessment in AustinA full picture of eating, mood, anxiety, and trauma, and a plan that treats them together.
Inside our center on Spicewood Springs Road, Northwest Austin.
Your Waco providers get the whole picture back.
When you leave, your own Waco psychiatrist, therapist, or primary care doctor should know what changed: medications, diagnoses, what helped, and what to watch. With your written permission, we send that summary and talk with them directly when it helps.
Privacy matters here, especially if depression or trauma is part of the story. Our page on confidentiality in eating disorder treatment explains what is shared, with whom, and only with your consent.
If you need support between appointments in McLennan County:
- 988 Suicide and Crisis LifelineCall or text 988, at any hour, if depression or a crisis feels like too much.
- Texas Health and Human Services: Mental Health and Substance UseStatewide crisis lines and a county lookup for the public mental health authority across the Waco area.
More for Waco adults, in one place.
Everything for Waco: every service, the drive, the house →Or find your Texas city →
- Co-occurring eating disorder treatment for Waco adultsAnxiety, depression, OCD, or trauma treated alongside the eating disorder.This page
- Eating disorder treatment for Waco adultsThe full picture: levels of care, the team, and how adults decide what fits.→
- Eating disorder PHP for Waco adultsThirty hours a week of structured care at our Austin center.→
- Eating disorder IOP for Waco adultsNine hours a week of groups, plus weekly individual and dietitian sessions.→
- Binge eating disorder treatment for Waco adultsBinge eating treated as an eating disorder, not a failure of willpower.→
What Waco adults ask before they call.
Straight answers to the questions we hear most. If yours is not here, call and ask it.
Checking, counting, and rituals have moved onto my meals. Is that OCD you can address here?
Yes, and if you are staying in Austin, the shared table at our Hyde Park house becomes one of the places you practice loosening those rituals. Exposure and response prevention helps you resist the checks and counting a step at a time, first at supported meals and then at dinner with housemates, while your dietitian keeps meals on track. Our psychiatric providers can weigh whether medication belongs in the plan, and with your written permission the ERP plan goes to your Waco therapist so the work continues at home. Our article on OCD rituals around food explains the overlap.
Does trauma work start right away, or after eating steadies, for a Waco adult staying in Austin?
Usually after eating steadies enough to hold it. Living at the house in Austin gives you support in the evenings, which helps when trauma work stirs things up. Your therapist paces it with you, starting with stability and skills, then moving into approaches like EMDR when you are ready. The timing is decided together, not on a fixed schedule.
Can the Baylor counseling center send records with my consent?
Yes. With your written consent, the Baylor counseling center or any Waco provider can send records to our team, which helps the assessment reflect what has already been tried. You choose what is shared and can limit it. Ask the counseling center how they handle release requests; we can provide the forms they need.
Will my Waco employer be told I am being treated for depression as well as an eating disorder?
Not by us without your written permission. If you need leave paperwork, you decide with us how much detail it includes, and diagnoses are not shared beyond what you agree to. Your Waco employer’s HR office can explain what their leave forms require, and our confidentiality page explains how your information is protected.
Bring all of it to the first call, the food and everything around it.
A confidential conversation about the eating disorder, the mood or anxiety that comes with it, and what treatment from Waco would look like.