A Somatic Approach to Eating Disorder Recovery: Rewiring the Nervous System

Oct 24

Eating disorder recovery is a self-exploratory learning process whereby we come to understand what the signs of stress are in our own bodies, how our bodies communicate what it takes to survive and thrive, and what happens when we miss these cues.

In this post, I want to share what a somatic approach to eating disorder recovery actually looks like—why recovery is nervous system work as much as it is food work, what "rewiring" really means, and what I've learned from my own recovery about pausing, listening, and coming back to the body. If you're in recovery, supporting someone who is, or sensing that your relationship with food is asking for a deeper kind of attention, this is for you.

Recovery Is More Than Intuitive Eating

Eating disorder recovery is not just about eating more intuitively. It's a process of understanding our own physiological responses to safety and stress—what makes us tick, in the right and not-so-right ways.

This requires learning about our own autonomic nervous system: how it's wired, why it's wired the way it is, and how it is currently working for us right now in all its brilliant and resilient ways.

It requires becoming more self-aware and embodied—having a more accurate gauge of our internal responses to life, rather than how we may look on the outside in comparison to others, or how we may think we should be.

For many people with eating disorders, disordered eating, or simply living in diet culture, we have become used to pushing through stress, pushing down feelings, and saying, "Everything is fine."

When "Superhuman" Is a Survival Strategy

I remember in the depths of my early eating disorder days, I strongly identified with being superhuman. I believed that by eating small amounts, exercising a lot, pushing through, and not feeling any sort of big emotion, I was some kind of superhuman. However, my physiology was struggling, my nervous system was stuck in a deep freeze, and I had no idea because this go-go-go had become my norm.

This norm had resulted from a history of:

Learning early on to hold back my tears because of fear of being judged as too sensitive.
Observing that it wasn't nice to get angry, so I developed grudges and feelings of resentment instead.
Remembering the golden rule "Don't make a mountain out of a molehill," so I doubted my reactions and feelings.
I feared speaking up or expressing myself because it was better to please others than to cause a scene or conflict.

Blocking my truth and my biological impulses, as well as pent-up survival energy and stress chemistry in my system, resulted in the development of an eating disorder. (A small note: There are, of course, many more layers to the development of my eating disorder, and the complexity of it all just cannot be captured in one blog post).

I want to be clear about how I hold this now: my eating disorder wasn't a flaw or a failure. It was my nervous system's most resourceful attempt to keep me safe with the tools it had. Recovery didn't ask me to wage war on that part of myself—it asked me to understand it, and to slowly rewire my system so that other ways of being safe became possible.

What "Rewiring" Actually Means

When I talk about rewiring the nervous system, I'm using a metaphor for something researchers call neuroplasticity—the nervous system's capacity to form new patterns through repeated experience. It doesn't happen through willpower or insight alone, and it doesn't happen overnight. It happens gradually, through consistent experiences of safety, attunement, and care that give the body evidence it can respond differently.

The way we are wired—which, in the case of disordered eating, has often organized itself around survival—can be stretched, disentangled, and rewired toward patterns that support our wellbeing, with nervous system education and support.

The Power of Pausing

A large part of my own recovery has been about pausing and checking in with my body—asking questions about what it may need, where there may be held tension, and how I can attend to myself moment to moment.

This process of acknowledging and pausing at intervals throughout the day gives the habitual go-go-go energy a chance to reset, metabolize, and "come down," so it isn't on high all the time.

We may realize how starved our bodies are for self-care and nourishment—on different levels, not just food. When we pause, this creates more space and flow in the system. We may start to realize that we can hear our hunger or fullness cues more easily, or that we can identify what foods we genuinely want to eat, or that we have more capacity to socialize and engage in joyful activities, because the system is no longer in a state of go-go-go or shutdown.

When the System Shuts Down

When we've been pushing for long enough, something in us eventually stops being able to push. I think of this as the body's shutdown — not a clinical term, but a lived one. It can feel like flatness where feelings used to be, exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch, a dimming of appetite for food and for life. And when the body isn't receiving enough fuel, it wisely conserves what little energy it has — which is why nourishment itself is one of the most direct forms of nervous system repair.

Why Change Can Feel Threatening

The eating disorder recovery process will ask us to change, heal, grow, unlearn, and relearn.

This is a somatic-based approach to eating disorder recovery, and it can sometimes feel painful and threatening—to the psyche, and to the physiology it has organized.

When something has been done the same way for so long, and change is imminent, we may feel resistant, suspicious, or doubtful. We may even want to hold on tighter to the eating disorder strategies because we know, deep down, they are slipping from our grip.

This is when we need to remember why we are on this path and call in all the positive resources—because it is possible to rewire the nervous system's habitual patterns.

And this is also where I want to say something important: somatic work is a companion to eating disorder recovery, not a replacement for professional treatment. Eating disorders carry real medical and psychological risks, and working with a treatment team—a doctor, therapist, or dietitian who understands eating disorders—creates the foundation of safety that makes this deeper body-based work possible. If you're in active struggle, please let that be your first step. This work will be here for you.

It takes patience, perseverance, courage, and commitment to face the undoing and shifting of old stress survival patterns into new patterns that support our multidimensional somatic wellbeing.

Coming Home to Yourself

We all have the healing capacity to do this work. It requires a knowing that the body can heal, that you deserve the healing, and a willingness to embrace the process, however bumpy it may get.

Over time, areas of the body that were stressed by the eating disorder—the digestive system, the immune system, the tissues—heal and recover.

Old programming and conditioning rests and rewires.

Intuition and self-trust emerge as we return to our natural capacity to heal.

As we learn the language of our biology, embody it, and become more attuned and self-aware to our internal and external environments in the present moment, the recovery process leads us to the medicine we have been looking for: ourselves

You don't have to do this alone.

Earth: A Place to Land — is my free monthly online eating disorder recovery drop-in circle, a soft place to be witnessed and supported wherever you are in your journey. No preparation needed. Just come as you are.

Join us at EARTH