Emotional eating is a common yet deeply misunderstood behavior. For many, it’s not simply about a lack of self-control or indulgence but a way of coping with deeper, often unacknowledged emotional wounds. Trauma has a profound impact on our brain, body, and behaviors, reshaping how we manage stress and self-soothe. Over time, food can become a reliable—albeit temporary—escape from emotional pain.
In this article, we’ll explore the intricate relationship between trauma and emotional eating. We’ll also dive into strategies that go beyond surface-level fixes, helping you address the root causes of this behavior and offering a path toward healing and emotional freedom.
Understanding Emotional Eating
Emotional eating is the act of consuming food to suppress or soothe negative emotions, such as stress, sadness, anger, or boredom. Unlike eating to satisfy physical hunger, emotional eating is often driven by cravings for highly palatable foods, such as sweets, salty snacks, or fast food. These foods stimulate the brain’s reward system, releasing dopamine and offering temporary relief from emotional discomfort.
For individuals with a history of trauma, emotional eating often feels like a survival mechanism. The brain and body, conditioned by past experiences of stress or pain, seek comfort wherever it can be found. Food, being easily accessible and socially acceptable, becomes a way to self-medicate. Over time, this creates a cycle where food is not only a source of nourishment but also a way to manage emotions, avoid discomfort, or fill a perceived void.
The Link Between Trauma and Emotional Eating
1. Trauma’s Impact on the Brain
Trauma fundamentally changes the way the brain processes emotions and stress. The repeated activation of the body’s fight-or-flight response during traumatic experiences reshapes key areas of the brain:
Amygdala: Trauma causes the amygdala—the brain’s fear center—to become hyperactive. This heightened sensitivity to stress increases emotional reactivity and makes individuals more likely to seek immediate comfort through food.
Hippocampus: Trauma disrupts the hippocampus, which is responsible for processing memories and distinguishing between past and present. This can cause individuals to feel as though they’re reliving traumatic experiences, triggering emotional eating as a coping mechanism.
Prefrontal Cortex: Trauma diminishes activity in the prefrontal cortex, which governs rational decision-making and impulse control. This makes it harder to resist cravings or make thoughtful choices around food.
Additionally, trauma elevates cortisol levels, the body’s primary stress hormone. Chronic stress caused by unresolved trauma creates persistent cravings for energy-dense foods, particularly those high in sugar and fat. These foods temporarily lower cortisol but contribute to the cycle of emotional eating.
2. The Emotional-Physical Connection
Trauma doesn’t just affect the mind; it profoundly impacts the body. Many individuals with unresolved trauma experience chronic physical symptoms, including digestive issues, fatigue, or a heightened stress response. These physical effects often interfere with hunger and satiety cues, creating confusion between physical and emotional hunger.
For example, trauma can disrupt the balance of hunger-regulating hormones like ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, may be overproduced during periods of chronic stress, leading to increased hunger and cravings. Meanwhile, leptin, which signals fullness, may not function properly, leaving individuals feeling unsatisfied even after eating.
3. Attachment and Emotional Eating
Early life experiences play a significant role in shaping our relationship with food. If caregivers were emotionally unavailable or inconsistent, food may have served as a substitute for the safety and connection that were missing. This is particularly true for individuals with insecure attachment styles, who may turn to food as a way to self-soothe or regulate emotions when interpersonal relationships feel unreliable or unsafe.
Breaking Free from the Cycle
Healing from emotional eating requires addressing both the underlying trauma and the habits that have developed around food. This process is not about willpower; it’s about creating a supportive environment for your mind and body to heal.
1. Develop Mindful Awareness
The first step to breaking the cycle of emotional eating is to develop greater awareness of your triggers and patterns. Mindfulness practices can help you slow down and recognize the emotions driving your cravings.
Pause Before Eating: When you feel the urge to eat, take a moment to ask yourself, “Am I physically hungry, or am I eating to suppress an emotion?” This will take practice, as it might be hard to stop to ask yourself this when your mind might be implusively racing looking for something to fulfil a need. Physical hunger builds gradually, comes with physical cues (like a growling stomach or low energy), and is satisfied by a variety of foods. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, tends to come on suddenly, craves specific comfort foods, and often persists even after eating. It might also be helpful to pause and rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “not hungry at all” and 10 being “starving.” If your hunger is below a 6, explore whether it’s emotional. Be patient with yourself, know that this is something to settle and feel into, it might not come automatically, but with time you will be better able to realize why you might be eating.
Cooking with less flavouring: Often your body gets overwhelmed by the many flavours a meal has, leading to over eating due to your body focusing on the experience in your mouth rather than the feeling of fullness in your stomach. Cooking with less flavouring allows the signal from your stomach to be more prevalent so that you will recognize when you’re full rather than to keep eating because you want to keep experiencing the beautiful flavours of your meal. Often when you do this, once you feel content the food will actually start to taste a lot less enjoyable after your body is satisfied with the amount of nourishment it has received. An easy activity to test this out if you struggle with hunger cues and want a more noticeable awareness of what this feels like, is to try mono eating. Mono eating, or "mono-mealing," involves consuming only one type of food per meal, often in its whole, unprocessed form. This approach can range from eating only bananas for breakfast to having a bowl of plain rice or a single vegetable for a meal. When it comes to emotional eating, mono eating can serve as a tool to disrupt unhealthy patterns and bring greater mindfulness to eating habits. Emotional eating often involves overeating highly palatable, calorie-dense foods in an attempt to soothe emotions. Mono eating, by contrast, reduces the sensory and emotional stimulation associated with food, helping to break the cycle of using food as a coping mechanism. By eating just one food at a time, you can more easily discern whether you are eating out of physical hunger or emotional need. This practice encourages mindfulness and helps you become more attuned to your body’s natural cues. *Important note: I do not suggest incorporating mono eating as a regular practice in your life. Long-term reliance on mono meals may lead to nutrient deficiencies or an overly restrictive mindset, which could be counterproductive to healing. I only suggest it as an exercise to better understand hunger, satisfaction and fullness, so that you can become better aware of this subtle feeling when you practice cooking with less flavouring.
Track Your Triggers: Recognizing what sets off emotional eating is the first step toward change. Triggers can be external, like a stressful workday or a conflict with a loved one, or internal, such as feelings of loneliness, boredom, or inadequacy. I find that at the beginning of recognizing triggers, it is best to keep a journal to track patterns in your emotional and eating behaviors as sometimes these triggers might go unseen and once you start to look over your journal, you might catch a pattern that you hadn’t noticed before.. Write down when you feel the urge to eat, what you’re feeling, and any events or thoughts that preceded the craving. Over time, you’ll be better apt to identify recurring triggers. Here are some questions to help get you started on your journaling journey:
Questions to identify daily emotional eating triggers
What happened today that felt particularly stressful, frustrating or upsetting?
Did I experience any significant mood shifts today? And what triggered those changes?
How did I feel right before I started eating? Was I truly hungry, or was I seeking comfort?
Did I eat in response to a specific event, interaction, or thought I had today? Was there any particular focus my mind had? What brought me to this thought/focus?
Did I feel I was present when eating today or was my day more parallel to unconsciously eating? If so, what emotions were present during my day?
Were there moments today when I felt overwhelmed, anxious, or sad? How did I go about coping with these feelings?
Did I feel any sense of boredom or struggled with unstructured time? What was my response to this?
Did any smells, sights, or conversations seem to trigger my food cravings?
Were there any particular foods that I craved today? If so, what would I associate with those foods emotionally? Are there any particular memories that are associated with these foods?
How did I feel after eating? Was there a sense of satisfaction, guilt or relief?
Questions for reviewing journal entries to identify patterns over time
Are there any recurring days or times that I have noticed in the entries where I tend to eat more emotionally?
Do specific environments, such as work, home, or social settings, seem to trigger emotional eating?
Are there repeated mentions of particular people, conversations or events that correlate with emotional eating episodes?
What emotions (such as sadness, anxiety, boredom, loneliness) appear most frequently in my journal before I eat emotionally?
Are there patterns in the types of foods I crave when eating emotionally? Do certain foods seem to come up during specific triggers?
Have I noticed a connection between certain physical states, like exhaustion or dehydration and emotional eating?
Do hormonal or physical cycles (e.g. PMS, illness) align with emotional eating patterns?
Do certain activities or responsibilities such as deadlines, financial worries, relationship issues, or social obligations, seem to repeatedly appear alongside emotional eating episodes?
Do my emotional eating episodes tend to increase during or after interactions with specific people or situations? This may even be days after interactions as the emotional response may be so intense it seems to linger days after.
Are there habitual behaviors, like scrolling media or watching tv that seem to precede emotional eating?
Have I noticed changes in my emotional eating habits on days when I’ve practiced self-care or felt more rested?
For further assistance, try using mindfulness practices, such as a body scan meditation, to tune into physical sensations and emotions when a craving arises, this can help attune you to your bodily needs. During this meditation, ask yourself, What am I feeling right now? Where do I feel it in my body? This can help you identify emotions without reacting impulsively. A simple body scan practice can be found here: Somatic Exercises for Trauma: Reconnecting Mind and Body for Holistic Healing.
• Practice observing your craving impulses: This technique involves observing your cravings without acting on them. Picture the craving as a wave that rises, peaks, and eventually subsides. What stands out to you about when these cravings arise? Was there a certain trigger? Emotions are often behind the urge to eat, and naming them can reduce their intensity. For instance, when a craving strikes, try saying aloud or writing down the emotion you’re experiencing, such as “My body is feeling anxious” or “Sadness has arose within me.” Naming the emotion creates a sense of distance, allowing you to observe it without judgment and without integrating it as a part of your being. Take it a step further by asking yourself, What is this emotion trying to tell me?Emotions are signals from the body and mind, often pointing to unmet needs, such as the need for rest, connection, or self-care. Practices that can help ease overwhelming emotions can be found here: Somatic Exercises for Trauma: Reconnecting Mind and Body for Holistic Healing.
Practice Non-Judgmental Observation: It’s easy to fall into self-criticism when you notice emotional eating patterns. However, judgment can increase feelings of shame and perpetuate the cycle. Instead, aim to observe your behaviors with curiosity and compassion. When practicing this, replace self-judgment with self-compassion. If you overeat, acknowledge it without criticism. This happens, it’s nothing to be ashamed of or anything to rip yourself down for. You have come so far and have adopted coping mechanisms in order to survive, that takes a tremendous amount of endurance and resilience to push through and now that you have been so patient enduring the trauma, it is now your turn to be patient and kind to oneself. For example moving forwards, you might say, “I used food to cope, and that’s okay. Now I can learn from this experience and show the love I deserve to myself.” To deepen this practice, visualize yourself as a psychologist studying your behavior. Imagine observing your emotions and actions from a neutral, third-party perspective. This detachment can help you understand your habits without attaching guilt or shame, it will also bring a greater understanding and appreciation for one’s self, just as you might show to a friend in need of support.
2. Heal Through the Body
Trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind, so addressing emotional eating requires reconnecting with your physical self. Somatic therapies and body-based practices can help you regulate your nervous system and reduce the intensity of emotional triggers.
• Reconnect with Physical Sensations: Trauma can disrupt your ability to sense and interpret physical cues from the body, such as hunger, fullness, or emotional discomfort. Emotional eating often arises when individuals lose touch with these cues and respond reflexively to stress.
Somatic awareness—being in tune with your body—helps you differentiate between genuine physical hunger and emotional urges. It also allows you to recognize and release stored tension that may contribute to cravings.
Start by practicing a daily body scan meditation, which I have linked above. Lie down or sit comfortably and bring your attention to each part of your body, beginning at your toes and moving upward. Notice sensations like tightness, warmth, or tingling without judgment. This practice helps you become more aware of your body's needs and responses over time.
To further this, during moments of intense craving, pause and ask yourself, What is my body feeling right now?Instead of eating immediately, try stretching, moving, or even placing a hand on your stomach to create a sense of grounding.
• Incorporate Movement for Emotional Release: Physical activity is not only beneficial for your physical health but also a powerful tool for emotional regulation and trauma release. Trauma often gets “stuck” in the body, and certain forms of movement can help process and release these stored emotions. Regular movement improves your connection to your body, reduces stress, and releases endorphins that combat emotional lows. Specific practices like yoga or dance can also help process unresolved trauma in a safe and controlled manner.
To start this, it is best to incorporate gentle, intentional movements into your daily routine. Yoga, for instance, is particularly effective because it combines mindful breathing with poses that release tension in trauma-sensitive areas like the hips, chest, and shoulders.
If you want to explore a step further, practice expressive movement, such as free-form dancing or shaking exercises, to release pent-up energy. Trauma experts often emphasize shaking as a natural way to discharge tension that mammals use instinctively after stressful events.
• Practice Grounding Techniques: Grounding is the practice of anchoring yourself in the present moment, particularly during times of distress. Emotional eating often occurs when individuals feel overwhelmed and disconnected from their environment. Grounding techniques help you re-establish a sense of safety and control. This is a good practice to incorporate as when you feel grounded, your nervous system shifts from a heightened fight-or-flight response to a more balanced state. This reduces the intensity of emotional cravings and increases your ability to make mindful decisions.
One way of starting this practice is by trying simple grounding techniques like the “5-4-3-2-1” method. Identify five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste. This exercise helps anchor you in the present and distracts from emotional triggers.
To further this practice, use grounding tools, such as weighted blankets, walking barefoot on grass or sand, or holding a textured object such as a smooth stone. These kind of tactile experiences can soothe the nervous system and reduce the impulse to seek comfort through food.
• Explore Breathwork for Nervous System Regulation: Breathwork involves using controlled breathing techniques to calm the nervous system, release stored emotions, and increase self-awareness. Because trauma dysregulates the body’s natural stress response, breathwork can help restore balance and reduce emotional eating behaviors. This deep, intentional breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest and digestion. Activating the parasympathetic nervous system, helps to counter the heightened arousal caused by stress and helps you manage cravings more effectively.
To begin, start with diaphragmatic breathing (belly breathing). Sit or lie down, place a hand on your stomach, and inhale deeply through your nose, allowing your belly to rise. Exhale slowly through your mouth, feeling your belly fall. Practice this for 5–10 minutes daily.
To deepen your practice, experiment with advanced techniques such as box breathing (inhaling for 4 counts, holding for 4, exhaling for 4, and holding again for 4) or alternate nostril breathing to deepen relaxation and increase focus.
3. Rewire Neural Pathways
Emotional eating is often reinforced by deeply ingrained habits and thought patterns in the brain. Rewiring these neural pathways involves creating new, healthier patterns that replace the old, automatic responses to emotional triggers. This process requires consistency, patience, and deliberate effort. Below, we’ll explore each step in-depth to help you transform your relationship with food and emotions:
• Challenge Negative Beliefs About Food and Self: Negative beliefs, such as “I’ll never control my cravings” or “I deserve to eat junk food when I’m stressed,” reinforce emotional eating. These thoughts become self-fulfilling as they drive behaviors that align with the belief. Reframing these beliefs is essential for creating new neural pathways as thoughts influence behaviors, and persistent negative beliefs strengthen neural circuits that perpetuate emotional eating. By identifying and challenging these thoughts, you weaken their hold over your actions.
A great first step to start rewiring your brain to create thought patterns that align with your goal is to start by noticing recurring negative thoughts about food or yourself. Write them down and evaluate their accuracy. For example, replace “I have no willpower” with “I am learning to make healthier choices every day” or “I am becoming more aware of my emotional needs.” Reframing shifts your mindset and promotes self-compassion.
To take this a step further, use cognitive-behavioral techniques such as evidence gathering. For example, if you think, “I always fail at eating healthy,” list times when you made positive choices, highlight and note these moments and congratulate yourself for the positive steps taken rather than focusing on the missteps. This practice will help to rewires your brain so you can focus on your strengths rather than the perceived failures.
• Use Visualization to Strengthen Positive Neural Pathways: Visualization is a powerful tool for rewiring the brain. Imagining yourself responding to emotional triggers in healthy ways that activate the same neural circuits as actually performing the behavior, which then helps to reinforce new patterns. This exercise will help to prime your brain for success by mentally rehearsing positive behaviors. This practice increases confidence and reduces the likelihood of reverting to old habits when faced with real-life triggers.
Start by spending a few minutes each day visualizing yourself responding to stress or emotions without turning to food. For example, imagine yourself feeling stressed and choosing to journal or go for a walk instead of eating. Make the imagery vivid, engaging all your senses.
Deepen this practice by combining visualization with affirmations. For instance, as you visualize yourself making healthy choices, repeat affirmations like “I am in control of my emotions and my eating.” This dual approach reinforces both the mental image and the underlying belief.
• Create New Habits to Replace Old Ones: Breaking the cycle of emotional eating requires replacing unhelpful habits with healthier alternatives. Habits are formed through repetition, and creating new, positive behaviors can rewire your brain to respond differently to triggers. Every time you repeat a behavior, you strengthen the neural pathway associated with it. Replacing an unhealthy habit with a healthier one weakens the old pathway and reinforces the new one, making it easier to maintain over time.
Firstly, identify the behavior you want to replace (e.g., eating cookies when stressed) and decide on a healthier alternative (e.g., taking a walk, journaling, or drinking tea). Practice this alternative consistently until it becomes your default response.
After some practice, it would be great to start to incorporating habit stacking to integrate new habits into your routine. For example, pair the desired behavior with an existing habit: you might always open the fridge when you feel the urge to snack. Instead, after opening the fridge, pause and drink a glass of water before deciding if you’re truly hungry. Often, thirst can be mistaken for hunger, and this habit helps you evaluate your need for food while giving you time to reflect on your emotions. This sort of approach will help to leverage existing pathways to build new ones.
• Practice Gratitude to Reframe Emotional Responses: Gratitude shifts your focus from what’s lacking or overwhelming to what is positive and abundant in your life. This practice helps reduce the intensity of emotional triggers and creates new associations between positive emotions and your behaviors. Gratitude rewires the brain to notice and amplify positive experiences, which can reduce reliance on food for emotional comfort. It also strengthens the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for self-control and decision-making.
Keep a daily gratitude journal, to practice this, write down three things you’re grateful for each day, focusing on small, specific details. For example, instead of “I’m grateful for my health,” write “I’m grateful I had the energy to take a walk today.”
Next, incorporate gratitude into moments of emotional eating. If you find yourself reaching for food, pause and list three things you’re grateful for in that moment. This practice interrupts the craving cycle and shifts your mindset toward positivity.
4. Address the Root Causes
Emotional eating is often a symptom of deeper issues, not the root cause itself. To break free from unhealthy patterns, it’s crucial to explore and address the underlying reasons driving the behavior. This process can feel overwhelming, but it is also profoundly liberating. By addressing the root causes of emotional eating is ultimately about reclaiming agency over your body and emotions. This involves unlearning patterns of avoidance or punishment and instead choosing intentional actions rooted in self-love and self-respect.
Trauma and Emotional Suppression: For many, emotional eating begins as a coping mechanism in response to unresolved trauma or suppressed emotions. Childhood experiences, such as neglect, abuse, or inconsistent caregiving, can create patterns where food becomes a source of comfort and safety. Adults who have experienced significant loss, betrayal, or chronic stress may also turn to food as a way to self-soothe.
Working with a trauma-informed therapist or coach can help uncover these deeper wounds. Modalities like somatic experiencing, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), or internal family systems (IFS) therapy can be particularly effective in processing trauma and rebuilding a sense of internal safety.
Unmet Emotional Needs: Emotional eating often fills a void created by unmet needs, such as a lack of connection, validation, or self-worth. Ask yourself:
Are there relationships in your life where you feel unseen or unappreciated?
Are you consistently prioritizing others’ needs over your own?
Are you ignoring your own desire for creativity, joy, or rest?
When emotional needs are not acknowledged and met, food becomes a stand-in, temporarily masking feelings of loneliness, frustration, or inadequacy. Identifying these unmet needs allows you to address them directly through healthy relationships, hobbies, or self-care practices.
Self-Compassion and Inner Criticism: Many people with emotional eating patterns are caught in cycles of guilt and shame. They may eat to numb painful feelings, only to berate themselves afterward, which perpetuates the cycle. Cultivating self-compassion is a vital part of healing.
Instead of focusing on willpower or self-control, shift toward understanding and kindness. Remind yourself that emotional eating is not a moral failing but a survival mechanism your body developed to cope with stress or pain. Practices like compassionate self-talk, journaling, and mindfulness can help reframe your relationship with yourself and food.
Cultural and Societal Pressures: Society often sends mixed messages: encouraging indulgence while simultaneously promoting unrealistic body standards. These pressures can exacerbate emotional eating by triggering feelings of inadequacy or rebellion against restrictive norms. Recognizing how cultural expectations shape your relationship with food can help you take a step back and re-establish control on your terms.
Rejecting diet culture and embracing intuitive eating can be powerful tools in dismantling unhealthy beliefs. Intuitive eating encourages listening to your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, fostering a more balanced and respectful relationship with food.
Physical Triggers and Nutritional Deficiencies: Sometimes, what seems like emotional eating is amplified by physiological factors. Chronic stress, for example, dysregulates cortisol levels, which can increase cravings for high-fat or high-sugar foods. Poor sleep, nutrient deficiencies, or hormonal imbalances may also contribute to heightened emotional reactivity and impulsive eating.
Addressing these triggers requires a holistic approach. Regular movement, balanced meals with protein and fiber, and adequate sleep all play a role in stabilizing your body’s systems, reducing the likelihood of emotional eating episodes. If you’re interested in reading more about cortisol and the impact it has, you can read more about it here: The Impact of Cortisol: Understanding Stress Hormones and How to Lower Them
5. Create New Coping Mechanisms
Breaking free from emotional eating requires replacing it with healthier ways to cope with stress, sadness, or other difficult emotions. These new mechanisms should address both the emotional and physical sensations you’re experiencing, providing relief and comfort without turning to food. Sometimes when we want to snack, what we are looking for is some instant gratification, it might be helpful to consider new coping mechanisms such as:
Journaling to process emotions
Taking a luxurious bubble bath
Go for a swim
Applying a face mask to feel pampered
Putting on something that is pleasing and cozy to physical touch, such as a fluffy bathrobe or something satin
Sip on sparkling water with fresh fruit
Light some candles to create some ambiance to bring calm
Wrap yourself in a heated blanket or heating pad to soothe yourself
Tidy your space and add something special such as flowers to brighten your space and spark joy
Go for a walk or a nice scenic drive
Start a small art project
Write a love letter to yourself
Practice some yoga flow or Hatha (restorative) yoga
Take a barefoot walk in nature to ground yourself
Try using a foam roller or massage ball to reset your body and bring awareness to another area of your body
Put on some white noise to bring sensory relaxation such as light waves, a crackling fireplace or rain
Read a few pages of a book that brings enjoyment or grounds you in another emotion, different from what you’re currently feeling
Sit in the sun for a few minutes for a natural boost
Try a guided visualization
When to Seek Professional Support
If emotional eating feels overwhelming or deeply ingrained, it may be time to seek professional support. Trauma-informed therapists and coaches can help you navigate the complexities of trauma and emotional eating, providing personalized tools and a safe space to heal.
Steps Toward Lasting Healing
Healing emotional eating is not about quick fixes; it’s about creating a sustainable relationship with yourself and your emotions. Each step—whether it’s practicing mindfulness, engaging in therapy, or developing healthier habits—brings you closer to a place of emotional freedom.
Remember, this journey requires patience and self-compassion. There will be setbacks, but every effort you make is a step toward reclaiming your power and building a healthier, more fulfilling life.