Have you ever wondered why you seem to have an unshakeable obsession with food and struggle with binge or emotional eating, while others don’t? Why you’re friends or family members can casually say no to dessert or stop eating when they’re full? Asking yourself what makes you different? You’ve tried diets, exercised willpower, and maybe even seen psychologists or other specialists, but you just can’t shake it.
This blog explores the surprising link between childhood experiences and binge eating. You’ll learn how early life events, even minor ones, shape your nervous system and influence your adult relationship with food – providing you with an explanation as to what makes you so ‘different’!
By the end, you’ll gain a new perspective on your eating habits and discover some practical steps towards lasting change.
The Hidden Impact of Childhood Experiences
Now I talk of ‘childhood experiences’ but in truth, this is simply a different way of saying ‘childhood trauma’. Before we dive deeper, I first need to explain that what our society believes to be trauma, and what trauma really is, are very different things. I want to clarify this to prevent you from dismissing the idea of childhood trauma, as I’ve realised it affects a large number of people struggling with disordered eating.
When we think of trauma, we often picture major, life-altering events like a severe injury or car accident, being assaulted or abused, experiencing combat or war. But the truth is, our nervous systems can be profoundly impacted by a wide range of experiences, many of which society doesn’t typically recognise as “traumatic.”
Defining childhood experiences aka childhood trauma
Trauma extends beyond severe, life-threatening events. It occurs when you experience a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness in the face of an event or situation, and you are overwhelmed in that moment. The situation is simply too much for your body and mind to cope with.
Now it’s not the event itself that determines whether something is traumatic, but how your body and mind process that experience.
Consider a 7-year-old child losing their father. If the child is surrounded by a loving family who acknowledge their grief and allow the child to express their emotions freely – providing support where needed – the child can process the loss and is able to move on from it. However, if the child is told to “be strong” and not to cry or if the child’s remaining caregivers are too overwhelmed to provide emotional support, the child might feel alone and unable to process their emotions because they simply don’t know how. They suppress their feelings, and this unprocessed emotional pain becomes stored in their body as an electrical charge (this is what happens when we say someone has trauma stored in their body). Later in life, reminders of their father can trigger intense emotional responses, as if they’re reliving the original loss over and over again. These aren’t simply memories, it’s the actual emotional response that is resurfacing and will keep resurfacing until the trauma is fully processed and the electrical charge is released from the body.
This explains how childhood trauma can affect someone’s emotional development well into adulthood, until we have taken the time to fully process the event.
The example illustrates Gabor Mate’s quote: “Trauma isn’t just about what happens to us, it’s what happens inside us as a result of what happens to us.” It also highlights how it plays a role that we have adequate support in processing difficult experiences. That when our feelings aren’t validated and we don’t receive the support we need, even seemingly minor experiences can have a lasting impact on our nervous system and emotional well-being – especially in children who have a limited capacity to process emotions due to lack of knowledge and inexperience.
Specific examples:
Common experiences that can affect us as children, often referred to as “small ‘t’ traumas,” can include:
- Bullying or public humiliation (this can be at school or at home by siblings)
- Witnessing domestic violence (this can be physical or emotional abuse)
- Loss of a parent or parental divorce
- Growing up with an emotionally unsupportive or unavailable parent
- Living with a parent with addiction or mental health issues
- Physical or emotional neglect or support when facing difficult situations
- Frequent moving or changes in childhood
- Feeling misunderstood or invalidated
- Excessive parental pressure
It’s estimated that about 70% of the population has experienced some form of small ‘t’ trauma. If you’re struggling with binge eating, there’s a good chance that some of these experiences resonate with you.
Do bear in mind that this is not an exhaustive list and other experiences, not listed here, can also qualify.
How Childhood Experiences Shape Our Nervous System
To understand how these experiences affect us in our adult life, let’s consider an example:
Imagine a child who was frequently bullied at school. During those moments of bullying, their body goes into a state of “hyper arousal” – heart racing, muscles tensing, feeling anxious and powerless. Afterwards, if this child is taught that showing emotions is a sign of weakness, they might put on a brave face and push down their feelings. They pretend like nothing happened.
Without the opportunity to process these emotions, the body stores the unprocessed trauma.
Fast forward to adulthood. This person, now working in an office, encounters a situation where a colleague makes a joke at their expense. Even though the situation seems harmless, their nervous system recognises similar patterns to their childhood bullying experiences. This triggers the stored trauma, causing their body to react as if they’re back in that schoolyard – heart racing, muscles tensing, feeling anxious.
To cope with these overwhelming sensations and buried emotions, they might turn to food as a way to self-soothe, temporarily numbing the discomfort of being in this state, and creating a sense of safety. This is how a childhood experience combined with a lack of emotional coping skills & learned emotional suppression, can continue to impact present-day behaviours creating a trigger that leads to binge or emotional eating as a coping mechanism.
Here is a brief summary of what happens when you are triggered:
- A trigger occurs (e.g., stress, criticism, fatigue, loneliness, not feeling good enough)
- Your body reacts to the trigger, based on past experience, changing your nervous system state to “hyper-” or “hypo-arousal”
- You exceed your “window of tolerance” and lose willpower
- You resort to a learned coping mechanism like binge or emotional eating
- Temporarily, you feel soothed and safe
“Hyper-arousal” and “hypo-arousal” are two contrasting states triggered by stored trauma, both rooted in a sense of fear or unsafety. When a person encounters a situation that resembles a past traumatic experience, their body reacts as if they’re reliving that trauma. Hyper-arousal activates the fight-or-flight response, causing increased heart rate, muscle tension, and anxiety. Hypo-arousal, on the other hand, induces a freeze or shut-down response, leading to feelings of numbness or disconnection. Even if the current trigger seems relatively harmless to others with no internal reaction, you will feel the same overwhelming fear and emotions you felt during the original traumatic situation.
The “window of tolerance” is the zone where you’re able to function most effectively. When you’re within this window, you can respond to life’s challenges without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. You’ll have control and can say no to food. Being outside your window of tolerance means you’ve exceeded your capacity to cope, you lose control and resort to coping behaviours.
Beyond Triggers: How Childhood Experiences Shape Lifelong Nervous System Function
These childhood experiences don’t solely create isolated memories that surface when we are triggered. They can also fundamentally alter how our nervous system functions. Repeated exposure to stressful or traumatic experiences in childhood can lead to nervous system dysregulation.
This dysregulation persists into adulthood, throwing off the balance of our nervous system. We find ourselves spending more time in states of hyper-arousal (feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or reactive) or hypo-arousal (feeling shut down, numb, unmotivated or depressed) as opposed to the regulated state where we feel calm, focused, and in control.
In this dysregulated state, our emotional landscape becomes more volatile, and we’re increasingly sensitive to triggers. We exist in a constant state of survival, continuously seeking ways to soothe our emotions. If we lack effective emotional coping skills, our world begins to revolve around our coping behaviours. Food often becomes a constant preoccupation, seen as a reliable means to manage intense emotions. Even minor triggers can lead to binge or emotional eating episodes, as our nervous system chronically seeks regulation.
Binge eating can occur both as a response to specific triggers and as a habitual coping mechanism, regardless of our current state. However, when we’re in a persistently dysregulated state, we may find ourselves turning to this coping behaviour more frequently. The ongoing intense emotions and physical sensations arising from dysregulation can increase the likelihood and frequency of binge eating episodes.
Why This Matters
Understanding the connection between your childhood experiences and your current struggle with food is crucial because:
- It shifts the narrative from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?” This change in perspective can be profoundly healing.
- It explains why willpower alone often isn’t enough to overcome binge eating & why traditional approaches are not always effective.
- It opens the door to more effective, long-lasting solutions that address the root cause.
- It can help improve both your mental and physical health by addressing the underlying dysregulation.
Breaking the Cycle: The path forward
Understanding the link between childhood experiences, nervous system dysregulation and your struggles around food is just the beginning. I hope it helps you realise that overcoming binge or emotional eating is not something you can fix by exercising more willpower, trying a different diet, tablet or potion. But this isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it opens up a path to healing that goes beyond just your relationship with food.
This journey, while challenging, can lead to profound changes in how you understand and relate to yourself. Even if the idea of self-discovery feels daunting right now – and it’s okay if it does – know that each small step forward can bring unexpected moments of relief and even joy.
If you’re asking yourself ‘Where should I begin’? The short answer is: self-compassion.
Embrace Self-Compassion With This Simple Exercise
I’d now like to invite you to try a brief self-compassion practice with me right. Know that you’re in control, and you can stop at any time if it feels too much right now.
If you’re willing, find a comfortable position. Then, gently place your hand over your heart. If you’re comfortable doing so, try to have as little clothing as possible between your hand and your skin, so you can feel the warmth of your palm and fingers on your chest. Take a few deep breaths, feeling the rise and fall of your chest under your hand.
Keeping the hand rested on your chest, silently say to yourself:
“I am only human. I have done the best I can with the knowledge & tools I have been given. I am worthy of love and understanding, and I am in the process of learning how to better cope with challenging situations.”
Take a moment to let these words sink in. Feel the warmth of your hand on your heart as you offer yourself this compassion.
Remember, you can return to this practice anytime you need a moment of self-kindness. It’s a small but powerful step on your journey towards healing. One that reminds you, that your struggles with food are not a personal failure or flaw, but a normal human response to childhood experiences that shaped your nervous system.
A Personal Journey: From Childhood Trauma to Self-Compassion
I’d like to share a part of my own story that illustrates the profound impact childhood experiences can have on our adult lives.
As a child, I witnessed domestic violence in my home. My father emotionally and physically abused my mother, creating an environment of fear and unpredictability. These experiences, though I was very young, didn’t simply fade away. They lingered as vivid flashbacks well into my adulthood.
I can still recall scenes of my father intentionally tripping my mother, his violent outbursts leaving her bruised and having to make excuses to friends about her bruises, her secret tears she thought went unnoticed, and his seemingly insincere apologies accompanied by flowers the next day.
For years, I secretly believed these experiences had irreparably damaged me. I struggled with depression as a teenager and was later diagnosed with bulimia nervosa, which eventually evolved into binge and emotional eating. I felt broken, with little hope of being able to change.
Whilst I had many experiences in my journey that contributed to my progress in different ways, my own childhood trauma wasn’t even on my radar when I experienced a profound shift. While listening to an interview with an eating disorder specialist, I heard them list various experiences that could contribute to eating disorders. When they mentioned witnessing domestic abuse, I felt an overwhelming surge of emotion. Tears flowed as I finally felt seen and validated. What I had experienced was real, and its impact on my life was recognised.
This moment of validation didn’t magically solve all my problems, but it lifted a tremendous weight from my shoulders. It allowed me to stop punishing myself for my perceived flaws and opened the door to treating myself with more respect and compassion.
My journey underscores the importance of recognising and validating our childhood experiences (without having to go into them in detail). It shows how understanding the roots of our struggles is an important step towards healing. Most importantly, it demonstrates the transformative power of self-compassion in overcoming the lasting effects of childhood trauma.
Remember, your experiences are valid, and your reactions are understandable. You’re not broken; you’re human. And like me, you have the capacity to heal and grow. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Have you ever wondered why you seem to have an unshakeable obsession with food and struggle with binge or emotional eating, while others don’t? Why you’re friends or family members can casually say no to dessert or stop eating when they’re full? Asking yourself what makes you different? You’ve tried diets, exercised willpower, and maybe even seen psychologists or other specialists, but you just can’t shake it.
This blog explores the surprising link between childhood experiences and binge eating. You’ll learn how early life events, even minor ones, shape your nervous system and influence your adult relationship with food – providing you with an explanation as to what makes you so ‘different’!
By the end, you’ll gain a new perspective on your eating habits and discover some practical steps towards lasting change.
The Hidden Impact of Childhood Experiences
Now I talk of ‘childhood experiences’ but in truth, this is simply a different way of saying ‘childhood trauma’. Before we dive deeper, I first need to explain that what our society believes to be trauma, and what trauma really is, are very different things. I want to clarify this to prevent you from dismissing the idea of childhood trauma, as I’ve realised it affects a large number of people struggling with disordered eating.
When we think of trauma, we often picture major, life-altering events like a severe injury or car accident, being assaulted or abused, experiencing combat or war. But the truth is, our nervous systems can be profoundly impacted by a wide range of experiences, many of which society doesn’t typically recognise as “traumatic.”
Defining childhood experiences aka childhood trauma
Trauma extends beyond severe, life-threatening events. It occurs when you experience a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness in the face of an event or situation, and you are overwhelmed in that moment. The situation is simply too much for your body and mind to cope with.
Now it’s not the event itself that determines whether something is traumatic, but how your body and mind process that experience.
Consider a 7-year-old child losing their father. If the child is surrounded by a loving family who acknowledge their grief and allow the child to express their emotions freely – providing support where needed – the child can process the loss and is able to move on from it. However, if the child is told to “be strong” and not to cry or if the child’s remaining caregivers are too overwhelmed to provide emotional support, the child might feel alone and unable to process their emotions because they simply don’t know how. They suppress their feelings, and this unprocessed emotional pain becomes stored in their body as an electrical charge (this is what happens when we say someone has trauma stored in their body). Later in life, reminders of their father can trigger intense emotional responses, as if they’re reliving the original loss over and over again. These aren’t simply memories, it’s the actual emotional response that is resurfacing and will keep resurfacing until the trauma is fully processed and the electrical charge is released from the body.
This explains how childhood trauma can affect someone’s emotional development well into adulthood, until we have taken the time to fully process the event.
The example illustrates Gabor Mate’s quote: “Trauma isn’t just about what happens to us, it’s what happens inside us as a result of what happens to us.” It also highlights how it plays a role that we have adequate support in processing difficult experiences. That when our feelings aren’t validated and we don’t receive the support we need, even seemingly minor experiences can have a lasting impact on our nervous system and emotional well-being – especially in children who have a limited capacity to process emotions due to lack of knowledge and inexperience.
Specific examples:
Common experiences that can affect us as children, often referred to as “small ‘t’ traumas,” can include:
- Bullying or public humiliation (this can be at school or at home by siblings)
- Witnessing domestic violence (this can be physical or emotional abuse)
- Loss of a parent or parental divorce
- Growing up with an emotionally unsupportive or unavailable parent
- Living with a parent with addiction or mental health issues
- Physical or emotional neglect or support when facing difficult situations
- Frequent moving or changes in childhood
- Feeling misunderstood or invalidated
- Excessive parental pressure
It’s estimated that about 70% of the population has experienced some form of small ‘t’ trauma. If you’re struggling with binge eating, there’s a good chance that some of these experiences resonate with you.
Do bear in mind that this is not an exhaustive list and other experiences, not listed here, can also qualify.
How Childhood Experiences Shape Our Nervous System
To understand how these experiences affect us in our adult life, let’s consider an example:
Imagine a child who was frequently bullied at school. During those moments of bullying, their body goes into a state of “hyper arousal” – heart racing, muscles tensing, feeling anxious and powerless. Afterwards, if this child is taught that showing emotions is a sign of weakness, they might put on a brave face and push down their feelings. They pretend like nothing happened.
Without the opportunity to process these emotions, the body stores the unprocessed trauma.
Fast forward to adulthood. This person, now working in an office, encounters a situation where a colleague makes a joke at their expense. Even though the situation seems harmless, their nervous system recognises similar patterns to their childhood bullying experiences. This triggers the stored trauma, causing their body to react as if they’re back in that schoolyard – heart racing, muscles tensing, feeling anxious.
To cope with these overwhelming sensations and buried emotions, they might turn to food as a way to self-soothe, temporarily numbing the discomfort of being in this state, and creating a sense of safety. This is how a childhood experience combined with a lack of emotional coping skills & learned emotional suppression, can continue to impact present-day behaviours creating a trigger that leads to binge or emotional eating as a coping mechanism.
Here is a brief summary of what happens when you are triggered:
- A trigger occurs (e.g., stress, criticism, fatigue, loneliness, not feeling good enough)
- Your body reacts to the trigger, based on past experience, changing your nervous system state to “hyper-” or “hypo-arousal”
- You exceed your “window of tolerance” and lose willpower
- You resort to a learned coping mechanism like binge or emotional eating
- Temporarily, you feel soothed and safe
“Hyper-arousal” and “hypo-arousal” are two contrasting states triggered by stored trauma, both rooted in a sense of fear or unsafety. When a person encounters a situation that resembles a past traumatic experience, their body reacts as if they’re reliving that trauma. Hyper-arousal activates the fight-or-flight response, causing increased heart rate, muscle tension, and anxiety. Hypo-arousal, on the other hand, induces a freeze or shut-down response, leading to feelings of numbness or disconnection. Even if the current trigger seems relatively harmless to others with no internal reaction, you will feel the same overwhelming fear and emotions you felt during the original traumatic situation.
The “window of tolerance” is the zone where you’re able to function most effectively. When you’re within this window, you can respond to life’s challenges without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. You’ll have control and can say no to food. Being outside your window of tolerance means you’ve exceeded your capacity to cope, you lose control and resort to coping behaviours.
Beyond Triggers: How Childhood Experiences Shape Lifelong Nervous System Function
These childhood experiences don’t solely create isolated memories that surface when we are triggered. They can also fundamentally alter how our nervous system functions. Repeated exposure to stressful or traumatic experiences in childhood can lead to nervous system dysregulation.
This dysregulation persists into adulthood, throwing off the balance of our nervous system. We find ourselves spending more time in states of hyper-arousal (feeling anxious, overwhelmed, or reactive) or hypo-arousal (feeling shut down, numb, unmotivated or depressed) as opposed to the regulated state where we feel calm, focused, and in control.
In this dysregulated state, our emotional landscape becomes more volatile, and we’re increasingly sensitive to triggers. We exist in a constant state of survival, continuously seeking ways to soothe our emotions. If we lack effective emotional coping skills, our world begins to revolve around our coping behaviours. Food often becomes a constant preoccupation, seen as a reliable means to manage intense emotions. Even minor triggers can lead to binge or emotional eating episodes, as our nervous system chronically seeks regulation.
Binge eating can occur both as a response to specific triggers and as a habitual coping mechanism, regardless of our current state. However, when we’re in a persistently dysregulated state, we may find ourselves turning to this coping behaviour more frequently. The ongoing intense emotions and physical sensations arising from dysregulation can increase the likelihood and frequency of binge eating episodes.
Why This Matters
Understanding the connection between your childhood experiences and your current struggle with food is crucial because:
- It shifts the narrative from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?” This change in perspective can be profoundly healing.
- It explains why willpower alone often isn’t enough to overcome binge eating & why traditional approaches are not always effective.
- It opens the door to more effective, long-lasting solutions that address the root cause.
- It can help improve both your mental and physical health by addressing the underlying dysregulation.
Breaking the Cycle: The path forward
Understanding the link between childhood experiences, nervous system dysregulation and your struggles around food is just the beginning. I hope it helps you realise that overcoming binge or emotional eating is not something you can fix by exercising more willpower, trying a different diet, tablet or potion. But this isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it opens up a path to healing that goes beyond just your relationship with food.
This journey, while challenging, can lead to profound changes in how you understand and relate to yourself. Even if the idea of self-discovery feels daunting right now – and it’s okay if it does – know that each small step forward can bring unexpected moments of relief and even joy.
If you’re asking yourself ‘Where should I begin’? The short answer is: self-compassion.
Embrace Self-Compassion With This Simple Exercise
I’d now like to invite you to try a brief self-compassion practice with me right. Know that you’re in control, and you can stop at any time if it feels too much right now.
If you’re willing, find a comfortable position. Then, gently place your hand over your heart. If you’re comfortable doing so, try to have as little clothing as possible between your hand and your skin, so you can feel the warmth of your palm and fingers on your chest. Take a few deep breaths, feeling the rise and fall of your chest under your hand.
Keeping the hand rested on your chest, silently say to yourself:
“I am only human. I have done the best I can with the knowledge & tools I have been given. I am worthy of love and understanding, and I am in the process of learning how to better cope with challenging situations.”
Take a moment to let these words sink in. Feel the warmth of your hand on your heart as you offer yourself this compassion.
Remember, you can return to this practice anytime you need a moment of self-kindness. It’s a small but powerful step on your journey towards healing. One that reminds you, that your struggles with food are not a personal failure or flaw, but a normal human response to childhood experiences that shaped your nervous system.
A Personal Journey: From Childhood Trauma to Self-Compassion
I’d like to share a part of my own story that illustrates the profound impact childhood experiences can have on our adult lives.
As a child, I witnessed domestic violence in my home. My father emotionally and physically abused my mother, creating an environment of fear and unpredictability. These experiences, though I was very young, didn’t simply fade away. They lingered as vivid flashbacks well into my adulthood.
I can still recall scenes of my father intentionally tripping my mother, his violent outbursts leaving her bruised and having to make excuses to friends about her bruises, her secret tears she thought went unnoticed, and his seemingly insincere apologies accompanied by flowers the next day.
For years, I secretly believed these experiences had irreparably damaged me. I struggled with depression as a teenager and was later diagnosed with bulimia nervosa, which eventually evolved into binge and emotional eating. I felt broken, with little hope of being able to change.
Whilst I had many experiences in my journey that contributed to my progress in different ways, my own childhood trauma wasn’t even on my radar when I experienced a profound shift. While listening to an interview with an eating disorder specialist, I heard them list various experiences that could contribute to eating disorders. When they mentioned witnessing domestic abuse, I felt an overwhelming surge of emotion. Tears flowed as I finally felt seen and validated. What I had experienced was real, and its impact on my life was recognised.
This moment of validation didn’t magically solve all my problems, but it lifted a tremendous weight from my shoulders. It allowed me to stop punishing myself for my perceived flaws and opened the door to treating myself with more respect and compassion.
My journey underscores the importance of recognising and validating our childhood experiences (without having to go into them in detail). It shows how understanding the roots of our struggles is an important step towards healing. Most importantly, it demonstrates the transformative power of self-compassion in overcoming the lasting effects of childhood trauma.
Remember, your experiences are valid, and your reactions are understandable. You’re not broken; you’re human. And like me, you have the capacity to heal and grow. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
