Dr Anna Colton is a highly knowledgeable, articulate and charismatic clinical psychologist, with over 20 years of experience in her fields of expertise. She combines her love of all things performance with her passion for understanding how our brains work.
Dr Anna’s first book, How to Talk to Children About Food, was published by Bonnier Books in 2025. This book explores how to create a positive food culture at home, understand the psychological and societal influences that shape eating behaviours, and break the intergenerational cycle of food and body struggles.
Anna works with both adults and young people across a broad range of emotional and behavioural difficulties. Anna specialises in the psychology of food, eating, and emotional wellbeing in children and adolescents. She helps parents navigate the emotional and psychological complexities of feeding and raising children, especially when they are still healing their own relationship with food. At a time when debates around ultra-processed foods, body image, and weight loss medications dominate public discourse, Dr Anna brings a calm, evidence-based voice. Some of the key issues she regularly approaches include eating disorders, self-harm, parenting work, stage fright and performance anxiety.
Anna is passionate about teaching people to cope with distress, overcome anxiety and perform at their very best. She supports high performers - including actors, musicians and barristers - facing performance anxiety and stage fright. She is the only psychologist to have been resident on West End shows and tours, including Billy Elliot, Matilda the Musical, Cameron Makcintosh Ltd, and she consults to theatre companies, and works with the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM).
Dr Anna’s work and her accessible, warm nature have led her to appear regularly as a TV psychologist on our screens. A pleasure to work with, Anna is a frequent guest expert psychologist on ITV’s This Morning as well as radio appearances on LBC and BBC Radio 5Live.
Anna also works behind the TV scenes, advising TV companies working on reality TV projects that involve social experiments and studying human behaviours. Anna has been featured as a body image expert on Sky Living’s DKW (Different Kind of Woman) and BBC1’s daytime series Health: Truth or Scare?
As well as featuring on multiple television programmes, Anna’s work has led her to working with the BBC on the BBC Mind Set’s GCSE campaign – the UK’s first national peer-to-peer coaching network for GCSE and national students. The campaign explored exam stress, targeting secondary school students across the UK and providing support and advice.
Anna also worked with the National Citizen Service’s body image campaign, where she featured as their spokesperson on programmes such as Sky Sunrise and Good Morning Britain.
After attaining a 1st in her undergraduate degree at Bristol University, Anna did her clinical training at University College London. Since then Anna has worked in the NHS and the private sector at The Tavistock Clinic, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Vincent Square Eating Disorders Clinic and the Priory Roehampton. She now works exclusively in private practice. Anna is registered with the HCPC (Health Care Professions Council) and the BPS (British Psychological Society).
Anna is trained in many therapeutic models including CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy), ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) and systemic therapy. She is also a qualified clinical hypnotherapist.
Anna lives in London with her husband, four children and three cats.
Anna's Website
