If you use food to cope, you’re not weak—you’re adaptive.

For many people with trauma histories or disordered eating patterns, food becomes a way to regulate a nervous system that feels stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown. Not because something is wrong with you, but because your body learned early on that it wasn’t safe to relax.

In this blog, I break down the difference between nervous system dysregulation and healthy emotional responses, how managing behaviors like using food can temporarily take the edge off, and how somatic therapy supports true deactivation so food no longer has to carry the weight of old wounds.

Is somatic therapy helpful for complex trauma? This article explores how somatic, trauma-informed therapy supports nervous system regulation, safety, and embodied healing more than talk therapy alone.