The Body Remembers: How Trauma Shapes Eating Patterns

Healing & Reconnection
Written By Emily Hahn

There is a troubling narrative in the wellness-sphere, which suggests eating is just about the food. Even when eating feels confusing, inconsistent, out of control, we are told that if we can just eat the right combination of foods, or get our hands on the right food plan, we will be able to eat perfectly. And yet, in spite of an endless quest to get eating ‘right’,

You find yourself still restricting without fully understanding why.
Or eating past fullness, even when part of you wants to stop.
Or feeling completely disconnected from hunger altogether, with no clue about what your body is asking for, or if you can even trust it.

If any of this feels familiar, I want you to know that it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means your body has learned something important about how to keep you safe.

When eating patterns start to make sense

What we call “disordered eating” is often a pattern that once made sense to a body that didn’t feel entirely safe, seen, or held.

Restricting can create a feeling of control or numbness.
Overeating can soothe, soften, or momentarily settle something overwhelming.
Disconnection can protect you from sensations that once felt too much to hold.

What may feel like random behaviours are in fact nervous system-driven adaptations, shaped by experiences of stress, overwhelm, or trauma - whether obvious and acute, or subtle and long-standing.

Why this isn’t just about willpower

Here’s the rub, though. We live in a culture that reduces eating struggles to willpower, discipline, or mindset. Flick on a podcast, or listen to a social media post, and we’re told to “just listen to your body”, “eat intuitively”, “have more control”.

But this overlooks something fundamental: if your body has learned that it isn’t safe to feel, to need, or to respond, then “just listen to your body” is not that simple. In fact, it can feel downright threatening to a nervous system that has survived by disconnecting from the body.

So instead of seeing eating patterns as something to fix, it can be more helpful to understand them as something that formed in a particular context.

What happens in the body after trauma

What we now understand about trauma, is that it doesn’t just live in memory, but in the body. For example, when the nervous system has been overwhelmed, it can respond by moving between different states:

  • a kind of urgency or activation

  • or a heaviness, shutdown, or disconnection

By physiological design, in these states eating is deprioritised and so it becomes a lot harder to sense hunger, fullness, or satisfaction. Not because these signals have disappeared, but simply because they have been intentionally quietened. This can show up in our relationship with food as:

  • eating quickly, without quite registering it

  • feeling “too much” or “not much at all” in your body

  • swings between control and loss of control around food

In somatic nutrition, we see these behaviours as a symptoms of a body trying to navigate safety, and before anything changes with food, we begin by noticing, when things feel tight, distant, unsettled, constricted, agitated… each piece of information offering insight into the landscape of your wise system.

A different kind of beginning

In my experience, healing a relationship with food is rarely, if ever, about finding the “right” way to eat. Instead, it’s about very slowly and gently rebuilding a trusting relationship with your body, where signals are no longer forced, behaviours don’t have to be perfect, and changes are given permission to arise at the pace of safety.

If your eating feels complicated, I can promise you that there is a reason for it; a reason deserving of understanding and compassion, which begins with realising that your body has been trying to take care of you all along.

IF YOU WANT TO KEEP EXPLORING...
Emily Hahn
Previous

Why Do I Feel the Need to Control Food or My Body?