It’s Not About Food: What Happened To You? The Truth About Disordered Eating

Disordered eating can look like a food issue on the outside, but we’ve learned it’s often a safety issue on the inside. When your nervous system lives in fight or flight, food can become the only language your body has left to ask for control, numbness, or relief. So we get honest about the parts people don’t post: trauma, grief, anger, guilt, and especially shame.

We walk through how trauma changes the brain’s relationship with safety and why shame keeps survival patterns stuck in place. I share research connections between trauma histories, PTSD symptoms, and eating disorder treatment, then break down how restricting, binging, and purging can function as coping strategies rather than character flaws. The goal isn’t to excuse the behavior or make it “pretty.” The goal is to make it make sense, so you can stop asking “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking “What happened to my nervous system?”

From there, we talk practical healing: nervous system regulation as the foundation of eating disorder recovery, the difference between rest and digest and fight or flight, and why neuroplasticity means your brain can learn safety again. We also touch trauma-informed care tools like somatic therapy, EMDR, and trauma-focused CBT, plus the role of safe relationships and, for our faith community, bringing compassion to the foot of the cross instead of carrying condemnation alone.

If this connects to your story, subscribe so you don’t miss the upcoming nervous system regulation conversations, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review to help others find it. What’s one small step that helps your body feel safe today?

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Transcript

isordered Eating Is A Safety Signal

SPEAKER_01 0:01

We are gonna be honest in today's episode. We are talking about disordered eating, trauma, and shame. Let's be honest. Disordered eating is never about food. Disordered eating is what your body has to do to survive when things don't feel safe to you, when your nervous system did not learn how to come down from being dysregulated. Some of that by trauma, some of that by normal life. When control, restriction, binging, whatever it looks like happens for you, it becomes the only language that your body has left, your body crying out for help, crying out for safety. So if you are listening to this podcast today and you have disordered eating and you feel like you're failing at recovery, you're not. Your body is supremely doing what it was created to do, and that is adapt to its environment, and it will do that well. Unfortunately, though, that adaptation has a cost. That mode of survival has a cost. Because, guys, you can't heal in a body that still feels like it's at war, that still feels like it's at threat, that still feels like it's dealing with guilt and shame and all of its friends. That is why on this podcast today, we are going to start here. We are going to start with talking about the nervous system, not as some popular buzzword, but as the real non negotiable, non-negotiable foundation for disordered eating. Here is the thing. If your body doesn't feel safe, if you're operating from trauma, you're operating from shame, you're operating from guilt, you're operating from stress, your body doesn't feel safe, nothing else will matter no matter what you try to do to move towards having a healthy relationship with food, nothing else will

hy Shame Keeps You Stuck

SPEAKER_01 1:56

stick. And let's talk about shame for a second. I've said so many times on this podcast that shame wants you to believe that you are the mistake, not that you made a mistake. Shame loves dark corners, guys. It will tell you that you're the only one struggling with that whatever it is. It'll tell you that you're too much, it'll tell you that you're not enough, or it'll tell you that you're too far gone. But shame does not survive in spaces like the Wednesdays with Watson Podcasts, because we're gonna shine a light on that dark corner. It doesn't survive. Shame doesn't survive when people start telling the truth out loud, unfiltered, and without apology. So that's what we're gonna be doing on this podcast today. We are not gonna sugarcoat this. We are not packaging healing into something that looks pretty. That's like a two plus two equals four kind of thing. We are not going to put a bow on this. We're talking about the hard things. We'll talk about the patterns that kept you alive, but right now are keeping you stuck because your body doesn't need to be in survival mode anymore. We're gonna talk about the grief and anger, the moments that nobody posts about on social media, right? Here's the thing, guys. For those of us who struggled with disordered eating, every single day we get another shot. We don't get a shot at being perfect, but at choosing something different, choosing to move towards a regulated nervous system, choosing support, choosing help, choosing a version of treatment that actually helps your body feel safe instead of constantly bracing for impact and making you have a poor relationship with food. Because here's the thing disordered eating is not the problem. It is a signal of a body that does not feel safe. It is a signal of a dysregulated nervous system. It is screaming and asking for your attention to work on your nervous system to feel safe, to tell yourself that the war is over, to put guilt and shame in its place. It does not belong stuck in your body. Because when your body feels safe, you don't need those same pain signals that often come with symptoms of disordered eating. And so today, I hope to, as your trauma doc, shed some light on the connection between, especially trauma and disordered eating, and bring hope and help in practical ways that can help you move from a poor relationship with food to one where food sustains you, fuels you, and makes you satisfied. But to do that, we have got to go to the hard places. We have got to talk about the connection between trauma and shame and guilt and other things with disordered eating because you matter and you are worth the fight. This is the Wednesdays with Watson podcast. My name is Dr. Amy Watson, your trauma doc, and let's talk about it right now. So as we start today, I want to start with a quiet truth. Because I know that there are people listening to this right now all over this world and every continent. Maybe you are laying in a dark room with an earbud in, and you are fighting a battle with food that nobody else understands. I had that experience, as many of you know, if you've been following this podcast for any amount of time, is I have had disordered eating, but as I have moved towards nervous system regulation and convincing my body that the war is over, I'm doing better, but I remember that feeling that nobody understood my poor relationship with food. And so I laid in dark rooms hoping for information like I hope to give you today. Because on the outside, it might look to people like you're just trying to eat healthier, or maybe you tell people I just don't feel hungry, or if you uh don't restrict food but you binge food, maybe you just say I just lose control sometimes. But inside, in those dark rooms where nobody else is, maybe in the shower when you put your head on the pillow, it feels like something very different to you. It feels like shame, it feels like fear, it feels like control. It feels like a way to numb the pain, it feels like panic, it feels like guilt. Sometimes it feels like food is the enemy. Sometimes it feels like your body is the enemy, and sometimes it feels like you are the enemy, because we have an enemy, Satan, who wants you to believe that you don't matter and that your fight is not worthy, and that you yourself are your own worst enemy. But today I want to say something very clearly: you are not the enemy. And if trauma, which by definition is an event that took your safety or your choice, is a part of your story, there may be a reason your relationship with food became complicated.

rauma Redefines What Feels Safe

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Today we're talking about something that research is increasingly confirming is that trauma, which is something that took your safety or took your choice, and disordered eating is deeply connected. I don't think that surprises anybody. And if that connection is part of your story, I want you to hear this from the beginning. You are not broken. Your brain did not create disordered eating patterns because you're a weak. Your brain created it because it was trying to survive. Because you see, safety is of utmost importance for your brain. Now, some of you are gonna check out right now and go, well, I haven't had trauma. I I haven't had trauma. I just have I've been safe all of my life. But have you really? Right? Because trauma and unsafety and compromising a safety doesn't have to happen inside the confines of a of an unhealthy home. It can happen anytime you feel like your safety has been compromised. And about six years ago, every person on this planet had their safety compromised. I will be really interested if there are any studies post-COVID on increase in disordered eating because every single person on this planet faced their own mortality. It didn't matter how old you were, and some people were massively affected by the pandemic of 2020. And so I don't want you to press stop on this podcast if you have never experienced what you have come to know as trauma, abuse, neglect, those kinds of things. It could be a car accident, it could have been COVID, it could have been a family member that was sick, it could have been your own sickness. And so don't create some big T trauma that you think that you didn't have because we all have had our safety compromised in some way, and the COVID-19 pandemic is just one way of that. And so we know that there is a connection between when a person has had their safety compromised and it was against their will, and disordered eating. And so your brain creates ways to survive, and for some of us, that is disordered eating. Because you see, trauma teaches the body how to survive. My friend Lauren Starnes, who we're going to be doing lots of work with, I say this all the time. One of my favorite things that she says is when the traumatic event happens, or when your safety felt compromised, or when you are dealing with overwhelming emotions like guilt and shame, it train changes the way your nervous system understands safety. And so you are living the cheetah life, and that's an example that was on one of the very early podcasts about how cheetahs will just run, run, run until they can't anymore, because that's what our nervous system learns to do. It learns to keep us safe. So

ontrol And Numbness As Coping

SPEAKER_01 10:14

when something overwhelming happens to you, and this is especially true in childhood, the brain begins to ask a different set of questions. And it's all deeply related to safety. Instead of am I safe, it asks, How do I stay safe? And sometimes those answers are unexpected. For some people, safety becomes control. And so for me, I am on the restricting side of food for my disordered eating, and that feels safe. It feels in my control. If I am not dependent on food, then that is one less thing I have to worry about. And so in my nervous system that can be dysregulated, I answer that question: how do I stay safe by restricting food, not needing food, not depending on food, so that if I can't buy food, then I still feel safe. That's just an example. Sometimes safety becomes numbness, right? You are seeking just a way to not feel, and food will often do that. Sometimes safety beans isolating, disappearing. Sometimes it shows up in the way we eat or we don't eat. Research consistently finds that traumatic events that are extremely common among people who struggle with disordered eating. Some studies demonstrate that between 18 and 80 percent of individuals receiving eating disorder treatment also report histories of trauma. Unfortunately, trauma symptoms are deeply rooted in activities that create safety. And that prevents effective treatment of disordered eating. And what I mean by that is the symptoms of trauma, so intrusive thoughts, avoidance, hypervigilance, substance abuse to numb, right? These are trauma symptoms. Those trauma symptoms are are they create a barrier to treatment, effective treatment for disordered eating, because your disordered eating is making the trauma symptoms quiet down a little bit. We also know that there was a large analysis of some case studies, and 24% of people with disordered eating also met criteria for PTSD. And I will put these studies in the show notes. And remember that criteria for PTSD is avoidance, intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, flashbacks, those kinds of things. We know too that 23 to 25% of individuals with anorexia or bulimia meet criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. And here's where I will do a little plug. If you want to know whether you meet criteria for PTSD, shoot me a message. You can go right into your app right there and shoot me a text message with your contact information. I can reach out to you because as a doctor of trauma and community care, I can assess you for post-traumatic stress disorder. But we know that 24, one in four people with disordered eating also meet criteria for PTSD. And as I mentioned, unfortunately, the trauma symptoms themselves, the avoidance, the hypervigilance, the intrusive thoughts, the lack of sleep, the anxiety, that gets in the way of treating disordered eating because, and this is an important place for you just to stop and listen to me. People with histories of trauma, or if they experience any time in their life where their lives felt unsafe, eating disorders become symptoms and coping strategies of traumatic events. Disordered eatings are coping strategies to help the body feel safe in times of dregulated nervous system. And we underst when we understand that we something important shifts as we think about disordered eating. We stop asking what's wrong with me or what's wrong with you, and we start asking what happened to you. Because here's the thing, guys, it is highly unlikely that a person has disordered eating without a time in their life where their nervous system felt extremely unsafe and they began to use food, either restricting or eating too much, as a survival strategy.

uriosity That Saves Lives

SPEAKER_01 14:35

So let's talk honestly about that. Disordered eating behaviors don't start out as self-destruction. They usually start as solutions, as I just mentioned, when somebody has a history of a traumatic event, something that took their safety or took their choice, and and sometimes guilt and shame that come with connected events of that, coping, for example, with traumatic events like the COVID-19 pandemic, coping with traumatic events like that sometimes come in these behaviors that include disordered eating. Your body is using the disordered eating as a solution to help it feel safe. Disordered eating doesn't start as healthy solutions, but solutions. For example, when somebody is living in chaos, right? Like the the, and I keep using the COVID-19 pandemic because that is something that we all can relate to. For someone living in chaos, controlling food might feel like the only area of your life that feels predictable. For someone carrying unbearable emotions, food can numb feelings for a little while. For those who have been abused or harmed, overeating can create a sense of safety and even the desire to not be attractive so that safety can be maintained. This is a big one, especially as it pertains to people with disordered eating who struggle on the weight, the heavy weight side. Sometimes those people will overeat to create a sense of safety because they were harmed and/or to make themselves unattractive so people leave them alone. Now I want you to think about somebody in your life like that, somebody that is struggling with weighing too much, and ask yourself what happened to them instead of looking at them like maybe they should just be able to control their eating. For someone who has experienced a violation or shame in their body, actually changing the body can feel like a way to escape it, a way to protect it from more danger. Researchers studying trauma survivors have found that disordered eating behaviors often function, as I just mentioned, as coping mechanisms for overwhelming stress and emotional regulation. So it's that feeling that we all have where everything feels out of control, nothing feels safe, and so we go grab things that make us feel safe, that gives us some semblance of calm. And these are not healthy, but this is why we have disordered eating. Your body is trying to tell you something. As my friend Lauren says, when the traumatic event happened or when the overwhelming event happened, your body said, I will hold on to that for you, but at some point it's going to be my turn. So food can become a way to manage what feels unmanageable. And that's true whether you're restricting food or overeating. If this has been your experience, I want you to hear me with compassion. There is no shame in disordered eating. There's no shame in weighing less than you sh than than is healthy for you. There is no shame in weighing more than is healthy for you. As I mentioned on a very early episode talking about disordered eating of the Wednesdays with Watson podcast, you are not defined by that blinking number on the scale. You're defined by a God who made you in his own image and who wants you to live a life that is abundant and free. If you are struggling, it's because your brain is trying to help you survive something that felt impossible. And maybe this is the time for you to dig deep and ask yourself, what is that? What am I trying to escape? Why am I trying to change my body? Why am I trying to capture control? You might not remember. And this would be a good opportunity to journal and to make sure that you're surrounded by a good support system and that you're ready to kind of visit. Why don't I feel safe? Why is my brain creating these coping mechanisms to help me feel safe? What is going on? Curiosity did not kill the cat, guys. Curiosity saves lives. Be curious about why you may be struggling with disordered eating. When the body is a battlefield, like one of the heartbreaking things that trauma can do is turn your body into a place that does not feel safe to live in. And it's the only body you're ever gonna have. And so some of us try to destroy it because it doesn't feel safe, it feels like it's our enemy, but what if we can stop this disassociating of our body? What if we can help the body begin to feel like home instead of feeling like a separate entity? Oftentimes people with disordered eating will feel separated from their own body. This is uncomfortable, right? The things that make your body and your brain feel unsafe may be something that maybe memories that you wish that weren't there, maybe restricting food or or binging on food makes it all quieter, right? There is a thing for those people with disordered eating that's called food noise in your brain. And it's a hyperfixation on food. Where am I getting it? Am I eating too much? Any version of that spectrum. Binging food can make your mind go blank for a while, right? Benging food is going to do something to your blood sugar that sends you off into orbit for a little while, and maybe that's your way of escaping. Purging can re can release a surge of tension. These are not random patterns, these are deeply tied to how traumatic events affect the nervous system, how having your safety compromised and your choice taken affects the nervous system. A national United States study found that 43.8% of people with eating disorders reported experiencing multiple traumatic events. This is significantly higher than the general population. So eating uh disordered eating is much lower by a significant amount among the general population than those who report having experienced a traumatic event where they felt unsafe and their choice was taken. Because trauma does not just live in the memory, it lives in the body, as my friend Lauren says, and I've already mentioned in this podcast, it said, I will hold this for you, but at some point it's my turn. Trauma gets stuck in the nervous system. And in order to treat disordered eating, though, the nervous system needs regulation. You cannot treat the narrative of your trauma. So often we want to get stuck in what happened and the story, and that is important, but we can't help you process that until your nervous system is regulated. As long as your body still thinks you're unsafe, you are going to struggle with things like disordered eating. And so, our goal here at the Wednesdays with Watson podcast is To provide resources for you, especially as it relates to nervous system regulation, and keep it right here because the next several podcast episodes are going to be with my friend Lauren Starnes, who is a nervous system specialist, and she is going to help us understand the importance of feeling the feelings, sitting in the places, and going there so that for once and for all, your nervous system can feel safe. And finally, it's your body's turn to get the attention from the traumatic narrative.

rauma In The Body And Treatment

SPEAKER_01 22:33

I've mentioned trauma a lot, and trauma is often so related to shame, but shame is one of trauma's loudest lies. If you struggle with food, you might also struggle with shame. It might be shame about struggling with food. It might be shame or something that you feel like is unforgivable that you did. It might be shame that you're not able to interact with your friends because either you're not strong enough or maybe you have too much weight on you to operate a normal life, but you have this shame where you just want to hide in a corner. And shame is not good for your nervous system. Shame is the voice that tells you, why can't you just stop? Other people don't do this. What's wrong with you? These are the voices of shame. These are the voices of shame. But trauma research shows us something powerful. Shame actually maintains these unhealthy survival patterns. Shame, the survival pattern, meaning the disordered eating. Shame will keep you in the behavior that feels safe and um safe and familiar to you. The more shamed someone feels, the harder it becomes to change that behavior because shame pushes people into hiding. And then nobody's watching if you're eating or how much you're eating or if you're purging. Shame dies in safe places. And healing almost always requires this connection and this compassion that you're just a human being, that your behavior is not shameful, that you are not shameful, is that shame wants you to believe that you are the mistake, not that you make a mistake. But we also have to connect compassion with a regulated nervous system. This is one reason why trauma-informed care is so important. Because instead of treating eating disorders or disordered eatings as simple behavior problems, it treats them like the pain signals that they are. And so if you're listening to me and you're struggling with disordered eating, what is your body signaling? Where is the pain? Where is the shame? Where is the trauma? Feel it in your body and move towards a regulated nervous system, which we are definitely going to be helping you with in the next couple episodes of the Wednesdays with Watson podcast. Because if you can find a way to acknowledge the pain and titrate it, right? Like feel a little bit of the pain so it's not overwhelming, but that pain can teach you what your body is trying to tell you. Disordered eating can be treated by acknowledging the source of that pain, your trauma, your shame, your guilt. It is time for you, my friend, to stop living in survival mode. Because the signals from your nervous system that learn strategies under pressure are signals you want to pay attention to, because those strategies under pressure are not effective when you are safe. And we want to teach your nervous system that you are safe. And once we teach your nervous system that you are safe and you have entered into movement, eating, drinking, sleeping, which is one of Lauren Starne's foundational principles to a regulated nervous system, once you are paying attention to those survival strategies that are created under pressure, you can then begin to teach your nervous system that the war is over, that you are safe. And when that happens, your disordered eating patterns can begin to change because they're no longer signals for an unsafe nervous system.

hen Faith Meets Trauma And Food

SPEAKER_01 26:23

Now, this is a Christian podcast. I love Jesus, I am a Christian. Let's talk about when faith meets trauma. For those of us who are people of faith, shame can sometimes be worse than and people those people who do not profess Jesus as our Savior. We as Christians like to live in shame for some reason because it makes us feel some sort of control. But it doesn't mean if you are struggling with disordered eating, don't let your shame make you think that it means that you lack discipline or faith or gratitude. Because when we look at the life of Jesus, he moved towards wounded people, not perfect people. And so going before him, as you pay attention to these pain signals that your body are giving you that are playing themselves out and disordered eating, you can take that to the bottom of the cross. Because remember, Jesus moved towards wounded people, whether he was talking interacting with the woman at the well who society had outcast, or he healed the woman with the bleeding disorder, or the man by the paralytic the paralytic man by the pool of Bethesda, over and over the gospels are filled with Jesus moving towards wounded people. Moving towards you and moving towards me. Not the perfect people, but the wounded people. Jesus moves towards people who needed healing from all the things. He is so close to the brokenhearted, the outcast, the ones carrying shame like the woman at the will. And he never led with condemnation. He led with restoration and ended with something like your faith has made you whole. Because Psalm 34 tells us that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted. He is not distant. He is close. He is close to people who are hurting to you and to me. He's close to those of us who bodies carry wounds and our nervous system is telling a story. Resulting in disordered eating, he is close to us. He is close to people who feel lost inside themselves, who feel like their body belongs to somebody else. He does not wait for perfect healing before offering us compassion. And we can go to him with those things, those events that took our safety or took our choice, or decisions that we made that make us live in shame completely opposite of what the completed work of Jesus on the cross is for. To wipe all of those things away, the sins of others or the sins of ourselves, compassion for yourself is where the healing begins. Because your brain can learn safety again or maybe for the first time. Here's the hope I want to leave you with.

europlasticity And Rest And Digest

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Your brain is not fixed. We can get your nervous system regulated. Your nervous system is not stuck forever in survival mode when and if you make decisions to move towards healing and move towards establishing a regulated nervous system. Because you see the brain has something remarkable called neuroplasidy, where all of these things can be healed, where your emotional brain and your left and linear brain are speaking to each other and you're able to operate in truth, not in lies that are so often covered by shame and trauma. Your brain can change, it can relearn, and it can heal. When trauma is processed safely through therapy and supportive relationships, and you enter into things that we're going to teach you in the next couple episodes about nervous system regulation, the nervous system gradually begins to relax. There's two different modes that your nervous system is in. Rest and digest, which is where we want you, so that you can eat properly and your body can benefit from the food that you give it, or fight or flight, where your body can't rest and digest. And so even if you are on the end of the disordered eating spectrum that binges, that eats more than you need, your body can't properly digest it. If you're not in a rest and digest state, if you are living in fight or flight, you're going to struggle with things like disordered eating. And so we want your body to beginly to slowly begin to learn, I am safe now. Because when safety grows, something amazing happens. Those coping strategies that once were indicative of disordered eating slowly lose their grip. And here's where I will side note a personal testimony. As I uh recorded an episode in 2020, um, when I first started the podcast, I talked about my own struggle with disordered eating, my own coping strategies that included capturing control because the world felt uncontrolled out of control after COVID for me, and I couldn't eat. My body was constantly in fight or flight. And when I would go to eat, I just couldn't. It shut down. I lost a ton of weight and really struggled in those early days of the pandemic with disordered eating. When I connected, however, with Lauren Starnes and we did nervous system work, I'm not telling you that I don't struggle with it sometimes now, but I have this cognitive, purposeful thing that I do to choose to try to get my nervous system to feel safe, even if I've got to speak into myself that I am safe, I am loved, and and and all of the things so that I can get my body out of fight or flight into rest and digest. And since then, my it has stopped being such a battle for me because I understand that when that signal comes, that is, I don't want to eat, I have no appetite, I know that I need to go deeper and be curious and ask myself, why don't I feel safe? And I want you to ask yourself that. For those of you who are going, Amy, I have never had a traumatic event. COVID was no big deal for me. Continue to go deeper and ask yourself, do I feel safe? Do I feel like I need to capture control? What am I trying to escape by my disordered eating? Because when you become curious like that, and when you understand the importance of nervous system regulation and keeping your body safe, food stops becoming a battlefield. The body starts to become home again, and for some of you, the body starts to feel home for the first time ever. When you get curious about what's going on in your nervous system and you work to help your understanding your brain and your body know that it is safe, shame dies. Because almost everybody with disordered eating obviously brings shame in because we're all human beings, but you also are shame about your disordered eating. You're shamed about what you see in the mirror. You're shamed about what you see on the scale. When you understand that these behaviors are coping strategies for something else, and you become really curious about what that something else is, shame dies. And I'm gonna talk in a few minutes about a few different treatment options that help, besides a ner a regulated nervous system. I am never going to advocate any treatment until your nervous system is calm and your default is I am safe. Healing does not happen overnight, but it absolutely happens. If this episode feels personal to you, I want to say something to you gently. Your struggle with food does not mean you are broken. It might mean that your nervous system went through something incredibly difficult and it learned ways to survive. But survival patterns do not have to be permanent. With curiosity, with compassion, with trauma-informed care that starts and stops with nervous system regulation, with safe relationships, with faith, your story can move towards healing because you deserve a relationship with food that feels peaceful. You deserve a relationship with your body that feels kind. You deserve a relationship with your nervous system that is safe. And you, my friend, deserve a life that is bigger than survival. We all do. We all survive. We all deserve a life that is more than just surviving. So before we end today, I want to speak directly to the person listening who feels exhausted by this struggle. The person who has promised themselves a thousand times that tomorrow will be different. The person who feels trapped in patterns with food that they don't fully understand. The person who wonders, why can't I just fix this? If that's you, I want you to hear something deeply important. Your nervous system learned these patterns for a reason. When trauma happens, especially repeated trauma, the brain becomes focused on survival. The nervous system shifts into protection mode. It learns ways to regulate overwhelming fear, shame, and pain. And sometimes those strategies or those coping mechanisms or those pain signals involve food. Restricting food can create a sense of control. Binging can temporarily calm a nervous system flooded with stress. And this is dangerous because you think your nervous system is regulated because the food is temporarily calming it down. Purging can release intense physical tension. None of these patterns mean that you're weak. But here is the hopeful truth. That same nervous system that learns survival can also learn safety. Healing doesn't happen through shame, doesn't happen through punishment. Healing happens when the nervous system slowly experiences regulation, safety, and compassion. And that's why trauma-informed treatment can be so powerful. After you have learned to regulate your nervous system, and there are all kinds of resources out there, many of them coming on this podcast, and some of them already on this podcast. If you haven't picked up the most important thing in this podcast episode, besides you matter, is that your nervous system needs to feel safe if you want to treat the pain signals of disordered eating. There are therapies like trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy, there's somatic therapies, EMDR, which I've talked about before, that help the brain process the traumatic memories. But again, I say to you, we have to get your nervous system feeling safe before we can treat the trauma narrative. Other approaches focus directly on helping the nervous system regulate, like breath and movement, grounding, reconnecting the body with safety. There is an episode, a few prior back to this one that I'll put in the show notes that is basically some breathing exercises to help you calm your nervous system at any given moment. You just press play. We want the brain to feel safe again. And as safety increases, something remarkable will happen. The urge to control, numb, escape through food will slowly begin to loosen its grips. The body is going to begin to feel like less like a battlefield and more like a place you can live again. And I also believe, and you know this because we've talked about this on the podcast over and over, the three C's healing happens through connection. We talk about community, we talk about counseling, and we talk about church here. And two of those help connection. When you are around safe, compassionate people, professionals and not, and with God, healing can begin to happen. You can begin to understand that you are ultimately safe, that no weapon formed against you will prosper on this earth. And so if the worst possible thing happens on this planet, if you know Jesus as your Savior, you are going to be with Him forever. And so healing happens with connection with safe people, with compassionate professionals, with God, and with the truth of Scripture, because God is not standing far away for you to fix this all by yourself. He is looking for you to say help. He is close to the brokenhearted. He is close, he is right in the middle of the healing process, right in the middle of the struggle, right in the middle of the days that still feel hard. So if you feel stuck today, please hear this. Your story is not finished. Your brain is capable of change. Your nervous system is capable of peace. Your body is capable of healing. And the patterns that once helped you survive do not have to define the rest of your life. There is help. There are treatments that work, there are people that understand trauma. And there is hope for a future where food is not your enemy, your body is not your enemy, and your story is not defined by survival alone. Healing is possible, and you are worth the work that it takes to get there. Sometimes the question isn't what's wrong with me, sometimes the better question is what happened to my nervous system that made this the best way my body knew how to survive. Because when trauma overwhelms us, the brain doesn't choose perfect coping strategies. It chooses survival. Pat yourself on the back if you've got disordered eating because your body has done exactly what it's supposed to, and that is help you survive. Sometimes survival looks like controlling food, sometimes it looks like numbing with food. Sometimes it looks like fighting a body that no longer feels safe to live in where you want to hurt your body because it has betrayed you and your mind. But here's the truth that trauma research and hope both point to. It adapted. But adaptive symptoms can learn again. And with the right help, trauma-informed therapy, nervous system regulation, safe relationships, and compassion instead of shame, the brain can rewire, the body can calm, and the patterns that once felt impossible to change can slowly loosen their grip. Healing is not about forcing yourself to be stronger. Healing is about teaching your body that it is safe now.

reedom Grows When Safety Grows

SPEAKER_01 42:11

And when safety grows, freedom grows too. So if today feels heavy, remember this. You are not failing at recovery because you have disordered eating. You are learning how to come home to your body again. And guys, that is one of the bravest things that a person can do. Please remember that you are seen, that you are known, that you are heard, that you are loved, and that you are valued. And you are more than a number on a scale. We will be back in two weeks with the first of our many episodes with Lauren Starnes. We're gonna continue to talk about nervous system regulation. So please make sure you subscribe to the podcast, particularly if this episode helped you, because we are going to give you resources to help you tell your nervous system. The war is over.

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I just want you to know that I believe in.

losing Song And Encouragement

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If you ever start doubting When it's hard to keep hoping I just want you to know that I believe in I believe in you When you're tired of fighting And you feel like you're broken I just want you to know that I believe in I believe in you Look how far you've come What you've already done I want you to know that I believe in I believe in you Whenever you forget I'll say it all again If you ever start deadin' When it's hard to keep hoping I just want you to know that I believe in I believe in you When you're tired of fighting And you feel like you're broken I just want you to know that I believe in I believe in you I just want you to know I believe in I believe in you