Bulimia Isn’t About Food: It’s the Body Trying to Find Safety
Bulimia recovery begins when we stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking, “What happened to me?”
In this post:
Understanding Bulimia Nervosa
If you live with bulimia nervosa, you may know the rhythm too well - the tightening control, the breaking point, the rush of relief that collapses into shame. It can feel like you’re at war with your own body.
But what if the causes of bulimia aren’t about willpower or weakness?
What if your body has been doing its best to keep you safe in a world that never taught you how?
Bulimia recovery isn’t simply about changing behaviour - it’s about understanding the body’s survival patterns. The binge-purge cycle can be the body’s way of discharging unbearable energy, emotions, or memories that feel too much to hold. For some, purging looks like vomiting; for others, it may show up through laxatives, diuretics, or compulsive exercise - each an attempt to release what feels too much to hold.
When seen through the lens of somatic nutrition therapy, the story begins to change: the body that purges is not broken. It is simply trying to release what it cannot contain.
The Nervous System’s Role in Bulimia
If you find yourself wondering: What causes bulimia? Why can’t I just stop?
The answers lie not in character, but in the nervous system.
When the body senses threat - whether emotional, relational, or physical - it activates the sympathetic nervous system, our fight-or-flight state. In this heightened energy, the body seeks movement and release. For some, purging provides that sense of relief: a physical act that mirrors the nervous system’s inner urgency.
After the surge comes the crash. The body shifts into dorsal vagal shutdown - the state of numbness, shame, or collapse.
This back-and-forth swing between activation and depletion is not a failure; it’s physiology. Over time, it becomes a loop - a way the nervous system attempts to self-regulate when safety and co-regulation have been missing.
In somatic therapy for bulimia, we don’t try to suppress this pattern with force. We slow it. We learn to recognise the early signs of activation - the racing heart, the tightening in the jaw, the inner urgency - and meet them with gentle grounding before the wave takes over.
The Parts Within Us That Try to Cope
Bulimia can feel like a conflict between different parts of the self.
There may be a part that clings to control, believing perfection is the only way to stay safe. Another part that breaks through in urgency, desperate to let go. And perhaps a quieter part that hides in shame afterward, fearing judgment and rejection.
These are not “bad” parts - they are protectors. Each learned to keep you alive in the only way it knew how.
The controlling part learned safety through order.
The releasing part learned survival through discharge.
The ashamed part learned invisibility as protection.
When these parts fight for dominance, the body becomes the battleground. But when we meet them through somatic awareness, we can begin to listen rather than suppress.
Notice where each part lives: the tension in the jaw, the ache in the chest, the fluttering in the stomach. Can you offer a hand to those sensations and whisper, “I see you. You’ve been trying to help me.”?
Healing begins when these inner parts no longer have to fight alone.
How Trauma and Shame Sustain the Cycle
Every symptom has a story. Beneath the behaviours of bulimia often lie experiences of trauma - moments when the body felt unsafe, unseen, or unworthy.
Trauma says, “I wasn’t safe.”
Shame adds, “And it was my fault.”
Together, they create the fertile ground in which bulimia grows.
Many souls with bulimia have lived through emotional neglect, perfectionistic environments, or cultural messages that equate thinness with worth. In these systems, control becomes a currency for belonging.
The symptoms of bulimia nervosa - obsession, secrecy, exhaustion - often arise from this deeper hunger: the need to be accepted, soothed, and safe.
Modern diet culture reinforces the cycle. “Clean eating,” body surveillance, and weight stigma keep the nervous system on alert, convincing the body it must earn the right to exist. Even recovery spaces can echo these messages, turning healing into another form of performance.
In somatic nutrition therapy, we dismantle these patterns by weaving compassion, calm, clarity, connection into the pattern, rather than control.
We don’t ask, “Why can’t you stop?”
We ask, “What is this behaviour protecting you from feeling?”
When shame is met with empathy, the nervous system begins to loosen its grip.
Somatic Pathways to Healing
So, how can you recover from bulimia?
By returning to the body - not as a battlefield, but as a home.
Somatic healing invites you to build new experiences of safety, one small moment at a time, for example:
Grounding after eating.
Feeling your feet on the floor, the support of the chair, the rhythm of your breath.
Letting your body register: “I have eaten, and I am safe.”Orienting to the present.
Looking around the room. Noticing colours, light, texture.
Letting your body realise it is here - not back in the memory of chaos.Breathing with what’s true.
When the urge arises, breathing with it, not against it.
Whispering inwardly, “Something in me feels unsafe right now, and I’m listening.”Offering gentle touch.
Placing a hand where you feel tension.
Letting warmth become the language your nervous system understands.
These practices may seem small, but they are profound. Each one teaches the body that it can feel and survive - that emotions can move through without needing to be expelled.
Reframing Recovery: From Control to Connection
Recovery from bulimia is not a checklist to complete.
It is a relationship - one that deepens every time you meet your body with curiosity instead of control.
Control is what the nervous system reaches for when safety feels absent. Connection is what grows when safety returns.
As you practice noticing without judgment, the urge to purge begins to lose its urgency. The nervous system learns that you can feel discomfort without being consumed by it. You start to find new ways to self-regulate - through grounding, nourishment, movement, connection, and rest.
Bulimia recovery is not the absence of urges; it is the presence of compassion.
It’s finding enough calm to pause before reacting, enough trust to eat when hungry, and enough tenderness to forgive yourself when old patterns resurface.
When the body is met with love, it no longer needs to scream to be heard.
What remains is a quiet, steady connection - with your body, with food, and with life.
A final word:
Healing is not a straight line. It’s a spiral - returning again and again to the body, each time with a little more gentleness.
Reflection Prompts
When I feel the urge to binge or purge, what is my body truly asking for?
Where do I feel activation or collapse when I think of letting go of control?
What sensations tell me that safety might already be here, even in small ways?
How does my body show me that it wants to heal?
Take your time. There is no perfect pace.
🌿 If this resonated…
At Alitus, I offer a trauma-informed space for bulimia recovery - a place where your story and your body can finally exhale.
Through Somatic Nutrition Therapy, we blend science and soul: the nervous system, the physiology of eating, and the sacred art of listening to the body’s wisdom.
If you are ready to begin, you are welcome here.
Not to be fixed, but to be met - fully, gently, and in your own time.
“Your body is not your enemy. It is the home that has been waiting for you to return.”
📬Or subscribe to my Substack, Notes from the Hearth, where I share creative essays and quiet reckonings — reflections on body and food, grief and healing, feminine wisdom and somatic truth. It’s a space of depth and softness. One where we don’t rush the process.
You are already on your way home.
And your body… has never left your side.