Why Do I Binge Eat?
TL;DR
If you find yourself binging and overeating despite your greatest efforts to quit, it’s not because you lack willpower—it’s because your nervous system learned to survive in ways that once made sense. Nervous system dysregulation isn’t about having emotions or stress responses; it’s about getting stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown, or going into those states when the present moment doesn’t actually call for them. Food, like many other managing behaviors, can temporarily take the edge off activation but doesn’t create true settling or safety.
True regulation feels different: more presence, calm, and choice—without compulsion or shame. Somatic therapy helps your nervous system learn how to deactivate and settle in real time, which naturally reduces the need to use food as a coping tool.
I’m Martha Carter, a licensed somatic therapist in Boulder, Fort Collins, and Denver who helps people with disordered eating and trauma work with their nervous systems so they can feel safer in their bodies and no longer have to rely on food to get through overwhelming moments.
If you’ve ever found yourself turning to food when you’re overwhelmed, anxious, lonely, numb, or keyed up, you’re not alone—and you’re not broken. Most people who use food to cope aren’t lacking willpower or discipline. They’re responding to a nervous system that learned, often very early, that it wasn’t safe to fully settle.
For many people, food became a reliable way to take the edge off intense internal states when nothing else felt available. Not because it was the best option—but because it worked well enough in moments where true safety, support, or regulation wasn’t possible.
In this article, we’ll explore why food becomes a coping tool, how this relates to nervous system dysregulation, the difference between managing behaviors and true regulation, and how somatic therapy can help reduce the need to rely on food to get through the day.
Nervous System Dysregulation: It’s Not About Having Stress Responses
A common misconception is that nervous system dysregulation means you ever experience fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown. In reality, those states are not the problem—they’re built-in survival responses designed to help us adapt. Our nervous system is actually meant to go into those states countless times a day to keep use safe, and then settle back down once safety is realized or returned.
The issue is:
Getting stuck in those states, or
Entering them when they don’t match the present moment
Dysregulation happens when your nervous system has learned to stay on high alert—or to shut down—long after the threat has passed, or in situations that aren’t actually dangerous.
What Dysregulation Can Look Like in Everyday Life
These reactions often feel confusing or disproportionate after they happen, even though they make sense through a nervous system lens:
Feeling sudden anger or defensiveness when someone sets a reasonable boundary
Freezing or becoming anxious at the idea of saying no to your mom
Automatically people-pleasing with friends even when you’re exhausted or resentful
Shutting down or going numb during mild conflict
Feeling panicky when someone is disappointed in you
Reaching for food late at night when nothing “bad” actually happened
In these moments, your nervous system isn’t responding to the current situation—it’s responding to old patterns of threat.
What Is Not Nervous System Dysregulation
It’s just as important to name what dysregulation isn’t.
These responses are appropriate and healthy reactions to real life stressors:
Feeling angry when something unjust happens in the world
Grieving deeply after losing someone you love
Feeling anxious about finances after losing a job
Feeling fear in a genuinely unsafe situation
Feeling sad or tender after a meaningful relationship ends
Having emotions—even big ones—does not mean your nervous system is broken. Dysregulation is about mismatch, not emotional intensity.
How We Learn to Manage Dysregulation
If you grew up in an environment where safety was inconsistent, conditional, or absent, your nervous system had to get creative.
When true settling wasn’t possible, you learned managing behaviors—ways to control, contain, or mute activation just enough to survive.
These behaviors often developed in response to real danger:
Emotional unpredictability
Chronic criticism or rejection
Having to stay agreeable or quiet to stay connected
Being responsible for others’ emotions
At the time, these strategies made sense. They helped your system endure situations that were genuinely unsafe.
The problem isn’t that you learned them.
The problem is that they’re still running, even when the danger is no longer present.
Managing Behaviors: Helpful Then, Costly Now
Managing behaviors are attempts to regulate without actually settling the nervous system.
They don’t create safety—they create temporary relief.
Common examples include:
Using food to soothe, distract, or numb
Controlling food intake to feel a sense of order or relief
Excessive exercise to discharge internal tension
Compulsive sexual behaviors
Substance use
Overworking or staying constantly busy
Doom-scrolling or dissociating through screens
It’s important to say this clearly:
These behaviors are not always managing behaviors.
Eating, movement, sex, and rest are all normal human experiences. They become managing behaviors when they’re used compulsively to escape internal states rather than respond to actual needs.
Why Food Is Such a Common Coping Tool
Food works quickly on the nervous system.
It provides:
Sensory grounding
Predictable comfort
Dopamine and soothing chemicals
A socially acceptable way to self-soothe
For a nervous system that never learned how to settle through connection, food can feel like the safest option available.
The issue isn’t the food.
It’s that food becomes responsible for regulating something it was never meant to handle alone.
How Food Soothes Old Wounds
For many people, food doesn’t just soothe the present moment—it soothes the past.
Eating can offer a sense of agency that may have been missing earlier in life. You get to choose what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat. For someone who grew up feeling powerless, controlled, or unseen, that choice can feel deeply regulating.
Comforting or excessive foods can also create a sense of peace, fullness, or safety that didn’t exist elsewhere. Warmth. Predictability. Pleasure without having to ask. In moments when emotional needs weren’t met—or weren’t allowed—food stepped in as something reliable.
Food can also:
Create a brief sense of being cared for when care was inconsistent
Offer grounding when emotions felt overwhelming or dangerous
Provide relief from loneliness, emptiness, or internal chaos
Soften hypervigilance when your body never fully relaxed
None of this means you’re weak or undisciplined.
It means your nervous system found something that worked.
The goal isn’t to shame or remove food’s comforting qualities. The goal is to help your system learn that safety, agency, and peace can exist beyond eating, so food no longer has to carry the weight of old wounds.
Managing Behaviors vs. True Regulation
Understanding the difference between these two experiences is key.
Managing Behaviors Often Feel Like:
Numbing or zoning out
Temporary relief followed by shame or frustration
A compulsive, driven quality
A sense of being out of control
Relief that fades quickly
Needing more to get the same effect
True Regulation and Deactivation Feel Like:
A sense of presence and groundedness
Internal quiet rather than distraction
Feeling settled with yourself
Reduced urgency or compulsion
Greater clarity and choice
A felt sense of safety in the body
True regulation doesn’t erase emotion—it allows emotion to move through without overwhelming the system.
Why Willpower Doesn’t Fix This
You cannot think your way into nervous system safety.
Trying to stop using food to cope without addressing the underlying dysregulation often leads to:
White-knuckling
Increased obsession
Swapping one managing behavior for another
Feeling like you’re failing when the urge returns
Your nervous system isn’t asking to be controlled.
It’s asking to be cared for.
How Somatic Therapy Supports True Deactivation
Somatic therapy works with the nervous system instead of trying to override it.
Rather than staying in prolonged activation, sessions intentionally guide the system toward true deactivation—the physiological experience of settling, safety, and presence.
This often includes:
Some discussion and verbal processing to identify patterns
Noticing activation in the body
Supporting completion of stress responses
Allowing the system to settle in real time
Returning to the topic from a regulated state
Repeating this process over and over again
Over time, your nervous system learns:
“I don’t need food to survive this feeling.”
As regulation capacity grows, the urge to use food to cope naturally decreases—not because you forced it to stop, but because it’s no longer needed.
About My Work With Disordered Eating, Eating Disorders, and Trauma in Colorado
I’m Martha Carter, a licensed, a somatic trauma therapist in Denver, Colorado specializing in nervous-system-based healing for people who feel stuck in patterns of over-functioning, people-pleasing, chronic pain, disordered eating/eating disorders, and disconnection from their needs.
My work is grounded in polyvagal theory and neuroscience, and focuses on helping clients move out of chronic fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown—not through coping strategies like binging, but through true nervous system deactivation.
If you’ve been using food to cope, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means your nervous system learned to survive—and now it may be ready to learn how to rest.
Final Thoughts
Using food to cope isn’t a failure of discipline—it’s a nervous system strategy.
And nervous system strategies can change.
When your body learns that safety and settling are possible, the behaviors that once felt necessary begin to loosen on their own.
You don’t need to fight yourself to heal.
You need support that speaks your nervous system’s language.
About the Author: Trauma Therapy in Boulder and Eating Disorder Therapy Denver
Martha Carter is a licensed therapist providing virtual services in Colorado. She is trauma-informed and trained in somatic, neurobiology-based modalities to help people with all types of trauma , eating disorders, and chronic pain heal from the inside out.
(Colorado residents only)
