Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.

It's not what you're eating that's the problem, it's what's eating "at" you.

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Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.'s style

Why Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D. chose to be in the helping profession

I chose this profession because I know what it’s like to struggle with food, and I know there is hope for lasting change. When I was five years old, I came to believe my thighs were too big, even though I was a completely normal-weight child. From a young age, I started to see myself through a lens of “too much,” and by the time I was a teenager, my life revolved around food, calories I ate, calories I burned, and the weight I was and the weight I was going to be someday.

I was always on a restrictive diet, and eventually my willpower failed. I would binge and sometimes purge, and I came to see myself as the poster child of eating disorders. Food felt like the problem, but it also felt like something I couldn’t escape. On the surface it looked like it was about eating, but underneath it was something much more complicated and painful.

In college I went to therapy for anxiety, but I never disclosed my struggles with food. I was too mortified to say the truth out loud, even to my therapist. And yet, when I left treatment, without ever having spoken about food, all of my eating disorder behaviors were gone for good. That experience changed everything I thought I understood about myself.

Food was never the real problem. It was the solution to something deeper, my perfectionism, self-criticism, and self-doubt. In therapy, I began to change my relationship with myself, and as that shifted, everything with food changed too. It showed me that healing does not always start where we think it does.

Looking back, I can see why I believed I was “too big” at age five. My family often told me I was too loud, too dramatic, too emotional. I internalized that as being “too much,” and that belief eventually attached itself to my body. This is why understanding the unconscious is so important when it comes to transforming our relationship with food and self.

Binge eating is not actually about food; it is a response to something deeper. I chose this profession because I wanted to offer others what therapy gave me: the chance to look beyond what you eat to why you eat, to gently work through what keeps you stuck, and to finally feel free.

Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.'s approach

I consider myself a detective of the mind, partnering with clients to solve the mystery of the symptom or behavior that brings them into treatment. From my perspective, binge eating or bulimia is not the core problem, but a response to something deeper. Until what is underneath is addressed, no diet, meal plan, or behavioral strategy can create lasting change.

Many people who struggle with food believe there is something wrong with them and that they need to fix themselves. I am inspired by Michelangelo, who was asked how he turned huge blocks of stone into statues. He said he did not turn stone into statues, he freed the statue from the stone. In my work, we chip away at what keeps a person stuck so they can more fully become their truest, most genuine self.

I use a psychoanalytic approach that helps people look beyond what they eat to understand why they eat. Rather than focusing on calories, restriction, or willpower, I help clients uncover the emotions, patterns, and lived experiences driving their relationship with food. Alongside insight, I also offer practical ways to respond differently in real time. When you begin to make peace with yourself, you naturally begin to make peace with food.

As a psychoanalyst, I am often asked what psychoanalysis actually is and how it is different from other forms of therapy. Many people picture Freud quietly listening while a patient lies on a couch, but contemporary psychoanalysis has evolved significantly. Comparing Freud’s era to today’s psychoanalysis is like comparing a Model T Ford to a Tesla. They are related, but the depth, tools, and understanding have changed dramatically over the last century.

Psychoanalysis, also known as depth psychology, is not a single technique but a broader framework of theories and approaches. The goal is to help people live more freely and authentically by understanding why they behave in self-defeating ways or why they sometimes act against their own best interests. From there, we work to create new ways of relating to oneself and others that feel more aligned and sustainable.

While many forms of psychotherapy focus primarily on symptom relief, psychoanalytic treatment goes deeper. I often think of it like emotional gardening. If you simply pull out a weed, it will grow back. To create lasting change, you have to get to the root. In this work, the “weed” is what brings someone into treatment, and we focus on the emotional roots beneath it.

Those roots are often hidden from awareness, buried in the unconscious. Even when something is unconscious, it still shapes beliefs, behaviors, and expectations in powerful ways. By bringing these patterns into awareness and working through them, we begin to transform how a person experiences their present and their relationships.

The experience of psychoanalysis is also deeply personal and collaborative. Analyst and patient work together, much like detectives of the mind, to understand what is driving current struggles and to build a new way of being. Over time, this process allows people to move toward a more authentic, grounded, and fulfilling life.

What you can expect from sessions with Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.

In sessions with me, you can expect to be heard, understood, and gently guided toward insights that may not be accessible on your own. We will not be focusing on calories, meal plans, or what you should or should not eat. The work is not about control or restriction, but about understanding what is happening beneath the eating itself.

Instead, we explore what is going on underneath the behavior. For example, one client often talked about how uncomfortable her clothes felt, only to discover she was actually feeling trapped and constrained in her career. Another woman believed sugar was her personal crack, but came to realize what she truly needed was more sweetness in her life, not from food, but from connection, fulfillment, purpose, and love.

Sometimes the insight is even more relational and rooted in early experience. One man recognized that the way he dismissed his own feelings was something he had learned from a caregiver long ago, and that this pattern was quietly driving him straight to food. These are the kinds of connections that begin to emerge when we slow things down and listen differently.

The process is about making these hidden links visible, because once you can see what is really going on, you can begin responding to yourself in a new way. You will not be judged, put on a diet, or met with silence you are expected to fill. Instead, you will be met with compassion and curiosity.

Together, we work to uncover what has been keeping you stuck so you can stop using food to cope and start living with more freedom, clarity, and ease in your own life.

Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.'s experience working with the Jewish community

I was raised in the Reform Jewish community, and my grandmother, one of the few in her family to escape Russia and survive the Holocaust, played a central role in instilling a strong sense of cultural and religious identity. From her, I inherited a deep awareness of history, resilience, and the importance of connection to something larger than oneself. The principle of *tikkun olam* resonates with me in a very real way, not just conceptually, but as a guiding value in how I understand healing.

I believe that when we heal ourselves, there is a ripple effect that extends outward. When we begin to change how we relate to ourselves and to others, we create more internal and relational harmony, which naturally supports greater health and wellbeing in the people around us. This is how I see the work I do: as healing the world, one person at a time, through individual transformation that extends far beyond the therapy room.

I work with clients all over the world through my coaching programs, and at least 60 percent of the women and men in my practice are Jewish. I have had the privilege of working with Orthodox women, Israeli Jews, as well as those from Humanistic, Conservative, and Reform backgrounds. Across these differences, there is often an unspoken, felt sense of understanding that can emerge when working with other Jews, a shared language of experience that is hard to fully articulate but deeply meaningful when it is there.

Nina Savelle-Rocklin, Psy.D.'s Book Recommendation Zone

• The Binge Cure: 7 Steps to Outsmart Emotional Eating
  You're not addicted to food. You don't lack willpower. You just haven't addressed what's really driving your eating... until now. The Binge Cure reveals a breakthrough psychoanalytic approach that goes beyond meal plans and restriction to uncover the root causes of binge and emotional eating. Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin draws on years of successful clinical practice to help you identify your emotional triggers, escape the diet-binge cycle for good, and find real comfort strategies that don't involve food, complete with step-by-step exercises and real stories of transformation. "Dr. Savelle-Rocklin enables readers to understand, and master, the real causes of their compulsive eating." — Lance Dodes, MD, Harvard Medical School (retired) Stop fighting food. Start understanding what's really eating at you, and finally build a life where food no longer controls you.
• Beyond Binge Eating: 100 Powerful Reflections to Transform Your Relationship with Food
  In From Binge to Balance, psychoanalyst and emotional eating expert Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin offers 100 powerful reflections to help you heal your relationship with food from the inside out. This isn't another diet or plan. It's a compassionate, insight-driven guide that helps you understand why you turn to food and gives you the tools to respond to yourself in new, supportive ways. Each reflection pairs a meaningful insight with a journaling prompt designed to connect the dots between your emotions, experiences, and eating habits. Organized into seven transformative steps, from letting go of diet thinking to creating a life that feels fulfilling and free, the book provides a structured, practical path to lasting change. You'll learn how to break the cycle of bingeing and guilt, identify emotional triggers and unmet needs, soothe yourself without turning to food, replace self-criticism with self-compassion, and feel more at home in your body. If you're exhausted from obsessing about food or discouraged by another failed plan, this book offers something different: a way to move from insight to action and build a life where food no longer holds power over you.
• Food for Thought: Perspectives on Eating Disorder
  Food for Thought offers fresh psychoanalytic insights into treating clients with eating disorders. In lively and jargon-free language, Nina Savelle-Rocklin breaks down the psychoanalytic approach to eating disorders, proviiding practitioners and general readers alike a deeper understanding of the theory and effective treatment of eating disorders to achieve lasting change and true healing.

Approaches

• Health at Every Size
• Inner child work
• Internal Family Systems (IFS)
• Psychoanalytic Therapy
• Psychodynamic Therapy

Concerns

• Anxiety
• Body image
• Eating disorders & disordered eating
• Obesity
• Weight Management

24 years in practice

Licenses

• Marriage & Family Therapist by California 2006. License number LMFT43526

Degrees

• Doctorate, Psychology by California 2012

Certificates

• Psychoanalyst by American Psychoanalytic Association 2012

Trainings

• Certified Life Coach 2019

Affiliations

• American Psychoanalytic Association
• California Association of Marriage & Family Therapists

Average costs per session

$250 - $750

Payment Methods

• Free consultation
• Cash
• Credit Card
• Venmo
• PayPal