Kimberly Osborn, PhD

About Dr. Kimberly Osborn

I am a Licensed Psychologist specializing in evidence-based treatment for eating disorders, OCD, and anxiety across the lifespan. I believe the people I work with deserve two things at once: treatment that the research actually supports, and a therapeutic space warm enough that the hard work of recovery feels possible. I try never to make anyone choose between the two.

Many of the people I meet have spent years believing their eating disorder, their OCD, or their anxiety is simply who they are. My job is to help them discover that it is not. No one is handed a script here. We figure out together what recovery actually looks like for you, and then we use the treatments with the strongest evidence to get there, from Family-Based Treatment (FBT) and Enhanced Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT-E) to exposure-based therapies and trauma-focused care when PTSD is part of the picture, all matched to your diagnosis and your life.

I was fortunate enough to receive training in the treatment of eating disorders through some of the field’s most respected programs. I completed my predoctoral internship at Duke University Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, carrying a caseload at the Duke Center for Eating Disorders, with rotations in the Outpatient CBT Clinic, the Duke Consultation & Brief Psychotherapy Clinic, and the Duke Family Studies Program & Clinic, and providing consultation at Duke University Hospital. Before that, I trained on the adolescent inpatient unit of the Laureate Eating Disorders Program. I first joined the Eating and Anxiety Treatment (EAT) Lab at the University of Louisville in 2021, running the lab as its lead manager through my doctoral years, and returned after internship as a postdoctoral fellow under Dr. Cheri Levinson, one of the country’s leading eating disorder researchers. The lab’s work on the overlap between eating disorders, anxiety, and trauma is exactly the territory I care most about.

My doctoral work in Oklahoma State University’s Body Image and Disordered Eating (BIDE) Lab examined how comparison and competitiveness feed eating disorder symptoms, including my dissertation study of nearly 800 adults. My published work spans atypical anorexia, the presentations that too often get overlooked because a patient "doesn’t look sick," along with transdiagnostic assessment, the relationship between traumatic stress and eating disorders, and the experiences of foster youth. My current research examines how the body’s stress system connects anorexia, post-traumatic stress, and suicide risk, where getting treatment right matters most.

I came to psychology through social work, and it still shapes how I practice: I see the person and their circumstances, not just their symptoms. I work with children, adolescents, adults, and parents, and whoever is in front of me, my aim is the same: a clear formulation, a treatment with evidence behind it, and a pace that respects how hard this actually is.