Meet Arden James (He/Him)
If you've landed here, something probably feels off. With food or your body… maybe your relationships or how you move through the world. It could be all of the above. You might be telling yourself you should just figure it out on your own. That your struggles aren't "serious enough" to let someone else in for support. That men don't experience eating disorders or struggle with their bodies. I see it differently, and I won't pretend otherwise.
The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny them, the more they grow. You don't have to keep running from what's underneath or white-knuckle through it alone. Let's find it, together.
I work with people navigating complicated relationships with food and their bodies. The quiet and messy struggles you or the people around you might not fully understand. Maybe they are easy to name or label… or maybe they don't have a name. Sometimes that's an eating disorder and sometimes it isn't. Either way, it belongs here. These aren't food or body problems. They're emotional ones, and the emotions underneath are almost always about connection and the lack of it.
My work also goes deeper into trauma, burnout (the life kind, not just the career kind), neurodivergence, addiction and recovery, and how the disconnection from yourself and others often ends up quietly (or maybe loudly) running the show. I offer an affirming space for the LGBTQIA+ community and for anyone living outside the box society has traditionally told you to fit into, including kink communities and relationship-diverse folks.
I also believe deeply in the power of group therapy. A group is like a sandbox… a place to try new things, practice showing up differently, and explore patterns without the stakes that exist in the outside world, where a hard conversation can cost you a friendship, a job, or someone you love. Real change often happens not from insight alone, but from being truly seen by others because we are hurt in relationships and find healing in relationships.
I'm a Latino male in a larger body, a parent, and someone who spent 20+ years in corporate IT, long enough to know burnout, expectations, and unhealthy coping from the inside out. My lived experience shapes how I work. So does my refusal to tell half-truths. I'm warm, but I'm honest, and I focus on speed bumps, not full detours, in how we shift patterns. I see clients virtually or in-person at our Decatur and Sandy Springs locations.
When I'm not working, I'm losing power struggles with my teenagers and two dogs, moving through a yoga practice, chasing good music and food, and surviving Atlanta's weather and its legendary traffic, usually in mismatched socks and a fresh pair of colorful sneakers... just not the same pair twice in a week.