Exploring the Link Between Trauma and Eating Disorders
The relationship between past trauma and eating disorders is complex and deeply personal. For many individuals struggling with disordered eating, the roots of their relationship with food can be traced back to traumatic experiences that may have occurred years or even decades ago. These painful events from our past don't just fade away with time; they can leave lasting imprints on our psyche, influencing how we cope with stress, emotions, and even our basic relationship with food and our bodies. Understanding the connection between trauma and eating disorders isn't just about recognizing a cause-and-effect relationship – it's about acknowledging how our minds and bodies adapt to survive, and how these adaptations, though once protective, may now manifest as challenging patterns around food and eating.
Trauma’s Impact On Food And Body Image
Not all but many people who suffer from eating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder, have experienced trauma. The disordered behaviors around food and body image often act as coping mechanisms to avoid processing painful emotions tied to the trauma.
For folks with eating disorders, trauma can fundamentally alter their view of themselves and their bodies. For instance, survivors of trauma, especially physical or sexual abuse, may dissociate from their bodies as a way to avoid emotional pain, which can lead to a disconnection from hunger or fullness cues.
This disassociation makes it difficult to maintain a balanced relationship with food, and many may experience body shame, feeling their physical selves are flawed or to blame for the trauma. Food often becomes a coping mechanism—some people may turn to comfort eating as a way to numb difficult emotions, leading to overeating or binge-eating behaviors, while others may restrict their food intake in an attempt to control their bodies and lives. This control may develop into eating disorders like anorexia or orthorexia.
Additional impacts of trauma on eating disorders include hypervigilance about food choices, body weight, or calorie intake as a means of control.
This heightened focus on body image can fuel perfectionism and obsessive thoughts about maintaining a certain appearance. For many, trauma also leads to body dysmorphia, where individuals have a distorted view of their bodies, perceiving themselves as overweight or unattractive regardless of reality. Many survivors struggle with low self-esteem, believing they are undeserving of love or care, which can manifest as neglect toward their own health and body. Feelings of chaos or being out of control are also common, and attempts to regulate food intake or body size may serve as a way to cope with these internal struggles.
Another aspect of trauma’s impact on eating disorders is how it changes one’s identity. Trauma can fragment and distort our sense of identity, making us feel disconnected from our true selves, distrustful of our instincts, and overwhelmed by negative self-perceptions. When trauma occurs, especially during formative years, it can significantly impact our sense of self and personal identity. For many, an eating disorder becomes intertwined with their identity, serving as a coping mechanism or a way to establish a sense of self in the aftermath of trauma. Healing from trauma often involves reclaiming and reconstructing one’s identity, learning to let go of the eating disorder, and integrating the traumatic experience without letting it define the entire self.
Survival Mode: How Trauma Reactions Can Develop Into Eating Disorders
In the immediate aftermath of trauma, our bodies and minds develop survival mechanisms to protect us from further harm. These reactions are adaptive in the moment—they help us survive. However, when carried forward into a post-trauma life, these same survival mechanisms can evolve into disordered eating patterns.
For instance, someone who experienced food insecurity might develop binge eating behaviors as a survival response. Someone who endured physical abuse might develop restrictive eating patterns as a way to feel in control of their body. These trauma reactions serve important protective functions initially:
Creating a sense of control in an unpredictable world
Numbing overwhelming emotions through food behaviors
Developing a hyper-focus on food or body size as a distraction from traumatic memories
Over time, these survival mechanisms can become maladaptive, transforming into full-fledged eating disorders. The very behaviors that once helped us cope can become sources of additional pain and struggle.
Understanding the relationship between trauma and eating disorders is crucial for both healing and treatment. Recovery often involves not just addressing the disordered eating behaviors, but also processing and integrating the underlying trauma.
This might include:
1. Working with trauma-informed therapists who understand eating disorders
2. Developing new, healthier coping mechanisms
3. Gradually separating one's identity from the eating disorder
4. Learning to feel safe in one's body again
It's important to remember that healing is possible. While the journey may be challenging, understanding the connections between past trauma and current struggles with food and body image is often the first step toward recovery.
How Trauma Can Influence Current Eating Disorders
Understanding how trauma influences eating disorders can help folks learn to cope when things get hard in recovery. Often, eating disorders develop after traumatic events to deal with unresolved pain or regain a sense of control. Folks may notice an uptick in eating disorder symptoms when they experience trauma symptoms or a new life stressor that takes them beyond their current capacity to cope. I like to think of these symptoms as a barometer that lets us know something is awry and needs to be addressed with a new coping strategy and not an eating disorder.
1. Increased Emotional Eating
Trauma survivors may use food to cope with difficult emotions, such as sadness, anger, or anxiety. Emotional eating can provide temporary relief or numbness from these overwhelming feelings, but it often leads to cycles of binge eating or compulsive overeating, particularly in those with binge-eating disorder. The comfort food provides can act as a form of self-soothing in response to unresolved trauma.
2. Food Restriction for Control
Survivors of trauma, particularly those with a history of abuse or neglect, may feel an ongoing sense of helplessness or lack of control over their lives. As a result, food restriction or starvation can become a way to reclaim control over their bodies and environments. For individuals with anorexia or orthorexia, rigid control of eating habits and body weight can serve as a coping mechanism for the chaos they feel internally with unresolved or new life stressors.
3. Increased Body Dissatisfaction and Distorted Self-Image
Trauma, especially related to physical or sexual abuse, can lead to deep feelings of shame and a distorted body image. These negative beliefs may influence disordered behaviors like purging, excessive exercise, or dieting to deal with a loss of control, grief, shame, guilt, helplessness, or worthlessness. When folks begin using these behaviors more than usual, it’s a sign that they’re more distressed and need support.
4. Avoidance of Body Cues and Hunger Signals
Hunger and fullness cues get over or under-aroused when folks are stressed. Furthermore, trauma often leads to dissociation, leaving folks feeling disconnected from their bodies as a protective mechanism. The combo of these factors can make it hard to recognize or trust hunger and fullness cues. As a result, folks may develop more irregular eating patterns, where they either ignore hunger cues altogether or find themselves unable to stop eating because they don’t recognize fullness signals.
5. Triggering of Past Trauma by Food or Eating Situations
For some trauma survivors, specific foods, eating situations, or body-related experiences can trigger flashbacks or reminders of their traumatic events. Family gatherings, certain restaurants, smells, etc. can be distressing reminders that bring up distress, prompting a relapse or worsening of an eating disorder.
6. Negative Self-Worth
Trauma can deeply affect how someone views their self-worth, often leading survivors to believe that their value is tied to their appearance, body size, or achievements. This belief can reinforce eating disorder behaviors like extreme dieting, binging, or purging as a way to meet societal or internalized ideals of beauty and perfection. Moreover, negative self-worth can bleed into things like work or school, leading folks to drive themselves to exhaustion to meet impossible self-imposed standards.
7. Reluctance to Heal or Gain Weight Due to Fear
For some folks, the idea of gaining weight or changing their body shape can trigger fear or discomfort because they associate body size with safety or invisibility, reducing the chances of being harmed or unaccepted. This fear of becoming more physically “present” or noticeable can delay or complicate the recovery process.
All of these issues get exacerbated by additional life stressors. It’s important to work with a specialized eating disorder therapist to address the underlying causes of these eating disorder symptoms.
Healing From Trauma For Eating Disorder Recovery
Healing from trauma often involves reclaiming a positive relationship with one’s body, through body-oriented therapies (such as yoga or somatic experiencing), or trauma-informed therapy such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Relearning how to trust the body and its signals can be challenging but is essential for developing a healthier relationship with our bodies and food.
Recovery also involves rebuilding self-esteem and learning to develop healthier coping mechanisms for managing difficult emotions. Practices such as mindfulness and self-compassion can be a great way to become more attuned to the body’s natural signals and develop a healthier relationship with food. Healing from trauma not only addresses the root cause of many eating disorders but also fosters resilience, emotional regulation, and a deeper sense of self-acceptance, all of which are essential for long-term recovery.
If you or someone you love is dealing with recovery from trauma and/or an eating disorder, know that you are not alone. There are many resources available to help you. Look into trauma-informed therapists on the Somatic Experiencing International directory. You can also search for trauma and eating disorder specialists on Psychology Today. Furthermore, check out the National Eating Disorders Association website for resources in your area or to talk to someone.
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I’m dedicated to helping individuals heal and grow through various approaches. Trauma and somatic therapy aren’t the only services I provide. I’m dedicated to helping individuals heal and grow through various approaches including intuitive eating services focused on fostering a healthier, more balanced relationship between food and your body. Learn more about the support eating disorder therapy can offer or visit my blog today for more helpful support!