Featured In: Bold Journey - Meet Lily Thrope
Lily was featured on Bold Journey:
“Lily , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
Confidence and self-esteem may seem to have come easily to me. I’ve often been told that I seem confident, that I march to the beat of my own drum and don’t worry much about what others think. Maybe that’s partially true. I do have a strong sense of self and that can shine through in moments. But, of course, like everyone else, I have an internal dialogue that can be self-critical.
Comparison is a primary culprit in undermining my confidence, especially when I compare myself to others in business or life who seem to have it “figured out” or who appear to be “ahead.” There is always someone who seems to be doing more with less effort. I can recognize that comparison is the thief of joy and creativity, but that doesn’t make us immune to our current social climate. We live in a culture that constantly invites us to measure ourselves against curated highlight reels.
Confidence and self-esteem really began to build for me during recovery from an eating disorder. Recovery required me to radically shift my relationship with myself and called into question limiting beliefs rooted in perfectionism, body image distress, and disordered eating patterns. The work of recovery, especially through an anti-diet and weight-inclusive lens, encourages you to develop self-trust. It asks you to tune into your own needs, hunger, fullness, emotions, and boundaries rather than outsourcing your worth to external validation.
Practicing intuitive eating and body attunement helped me prioritize my internal voice. Intuitive eating is a non-diet, self-care framework that promotes a healthy, guilt-free relationship with food by listening to internal body cues rather than external rules. The framework of intuitive eating helped strengthen my perspective and replaced old critical narratives rooted in past trauma and diet culture, and helped them evolve into more gentle and kind narratives.
So what does confidence really feel like to me? Accepting myself means staying present as I change, fail, or succeed. Confidence isn’t about perfection or constant self-love. It’s about recognizing missteps without shame, shifting from blame to accountability, and choosing kindness toward my whole, evolving self.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a licensed clinical therapist and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. I run a boutique group private practice in NYC specializing in eating disorders, disordered eating, and body image healing. What makes us unique is our deep commitment to an anti-diet, weight-inclusive approach to mental health and recovery. We believe health is nuanced and personal, not something defined by wellness trends, rapid weight loss, or external appearance.
Thrope Therapy is, in many ways, a representation of what I needed most as a young adult navigating my own eating disorder recovery. I needed a therapist who truly understood the complexity of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder (BED), and subclinical disordered eating. Someone who understood the medical, psychological, and cultural layers, including the impact of diet culture and fatphobia, but who could also be real with me. Authenticity in the therapeutic relationship matters deeply to me.
About a year ago, we launched something I’m incredibly proud of: Recovery Supper Club. This is a monthly community dinner in NYC for individuals in eating disorder recovery who are seeking connection in an anti-diet, recovery-affirming space. I view it as a critical piece of the continuum-of-care puzzle, existing outside the typical provider/client dynamic. So many people step down from higher levels of treatment into outpatient therapy and immediately re-enter a diet-saturated world. That transition can be incredibly destabilizing and is often a vulnerable period for relapse.
Recovery Supper Club creates something different. It’s a space where participants can show up exactly as they are with no body talk, no diet talk, and no performative wellness. Just a connection. Community is a powerful protective factor in eating disorder recovery, and we intentionally center relationships that extend beyond food and weight.
We often hear from clients how difficult it is to sit down at a meal post-treatment and hear the same toxic diet culture conversations that contributed to their eating disorder in the first place. In our space, we protect against that. We honor connection that isn’t body-focused. We prioritize depth, laughter, creativity, and joy.
We consistently host 8–10 participants monthly and love cultivating this cozy, meaningful community. I co-host alongside Chelsea Levy, a wonderful registered dietitian in NYC, and our collaboration reflects the multidisciplinary care that is so essential in eating disorder treatment.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I founded Thrope Therapy LCSW PLLC in 2021 and have been a therapist for nine years. Looking back, the three qualities that have been most impactful in my journey are curiosity, patience, and trust.
Curiosity has been foundational, both clinically and as a business owner. In eating disorder work, curiosity allows us to move away from shame and toward understanding. In business, it has helped me learn about systems, relationships, marketing, and leadership. A genuine desire to understand how things work, and how people work, has shaped the strongest professional relationships in my life.
Patience has been equally essential. Everything meaningful takes time. This is especially true in eating disorder recovery and trauma-informed therapy. When therapeutic work is rushed, it feels surface-level. Real healing, rebuilding trust with food, repairing body image, and dismantling disordered eating patterns requires time, safety, and consistency. I’ve learned patience largely from my clients. Progress is rarely linear, and honoring that truth has shaped how I run my practice.
Trust may be the most constant thread. Founding your own company requires trusting your instincts and your clinical judgment. Building trust with clients, referral networks, dietitians, physicians, and psychiatrists is critical in the therapy field, especially with eating disorder treatment, and that starts with trusting yourself. Relationships are everything in this work.
Finally, as I just indicated, community and networking have also been vital. Thrope Therapy has grown through authentic, collaborative relationships. Multidisciplinary collaboration is key especially in eating disorder care. Being able to refer to trusted colleagues and to have that trust reciprocated strengthens outcomes for clients and sustains ethical, compassionate care.
Tell us what your ideal client would be like?
At Thrope Therapy, our ideal client is someone who feels exhausted by the constant noise of diet culture and is longing for a different way to relate to food, their body, and themselves.
They may be high-achieving and self-aware yet quietly struggling with anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder (BED), ARFID, chronic dieting, or body image distress. They may experience anxiety, perfectionism, or people-pleasing tendencies that intersect with their relationship to food. Often, they’re tired of white-knuckling recovery alone and ready for support that feels compassionate rather than corrective.
Our ideal client is ready to be gently challenged. Ready to question long-held beliefs about weight, worth, and control. Ready to build self-trust through intuitive eating, body neutrality, and weight-inclusive care.
They’re looking for a space that is anti-diet, LGBTQIA+ affirming, trauma-informed, and deeply relational, where healing isn’t about shrinking themselves but about expanding their capacity for nourishment, autonomy, and self-acceptance.”
