Why Do I Feel Broken Around Food? (You Don’t Need Fixing, You Need Freedom)
By the time someone arrives on my therapy couch looking for support in their relationship with food, there’s often already a quiet belief sitting underneath their pain: something is wrong with me.
It’s often been lingering there in the background for years. I hear it in the way they tell me that they really should have been able to figure this out by now. In the frustration after another night that didn’t go the way they planned. In the feeling that other people seem to manage food just fine, yet they can’t seem to get a grip.
And at some point, the question forms:
why do I feel so broken around food?
When Struggle Starts to Feel Like Personal Failure
Over time, these experiences often organise into stories: that bingeing means they lack self-control, or that an obsession with food is a character flaw. There is a conviction that only structure, rules, and restraint can possibly hold them back from a lifetime of gluttony.
And so, the narrative has shifted from this is hard, to this is happening because of me. And their identity has begun to be tangled up in the story, as the bigger, existential questions circle: can I trust myself? Am I even doing life right? At my core, am I a failure?
A Culture That Teaches You to Fix Yourself
I want to name here the culture that encourages this kind of self-critique. Our culture is very quick to locate problems inside the individual. In fact, it thrives and profits from self-doubt narratives, especially when it comes to food and bodies.
There are endless messages about self-control, discipline, and getting it “right.”
And when something isn’t working, the solution offered is almost always the same:
Try harder.
Be better.
Fix it… Oh, and buy my program/ diet/ self-help book/ treatment.
So, it makes sense that over time, the struggle with food gets interpreted through the lens of evidence that something inside needs correcting, as opposed to something that is shaped by experience, environment, or nervous system patterns.
Very little space is dedicated to asking: What if these patterns are doing something for you?
The Body That Learned to Protect
Because underneath the surface, there is often a different kind of logic at play.
Patterns with food don’t just emerge randomly - they form in response to something. Sometimes it can be something subtle: a comment; a shift; a period of uncertainty. A way the body started to feel unfamiliar or exposed, and there was nowhere or no one to turn to while navigating that.
Sometimes it’s more obvious. Significant stress, or disconnection. Or a lack of felt safety.
And so, in its wisdom, the body adapts. It finds ways to create relief - ways to soothe, manage, and regulate to what feels overwhelming or unclear. For many souls, food becomes part of that - not because of any inherent failure or willpower weakness they possess - but because food was available when other resources were absent.
Food is something that can very effectively bring intensity down. It can create structure where there previously was none and offer moments of settling - even if they don’t last.
On the one hand, such a relationship with food can feel like utter chaos… and yet, beneath it all, when looked at through a compassionate, somatic lens, it has a kind of coherence.
A logic that says: this is helping me get through.
Not Broken - Something Else Entirely
So, the question begins to shift from, what’s wrong with me? to what has this been doing for me?
Because if these patterns formed in response to something - if they helped you navigate, cope, or stay afloat in some way - then they are not evidence of brokenness, but of adaptation. Evidence of a system that found ways to keep going using what was available at the time, which is a very different starting point:
Not something to fix. Just something to begin to see more clearly.
IF YOU WANT TO KEEP EXPLORING...The Body Remembers - on how trauma shapes your relationship with food
Why Your Body Feels Out of Control Around Food - on why eating can feel chaotic or overwhelming
Why You Restrict Food (Even When You Don’t Want To) - on restriction and the deeper pull towards control