If you are in eating disorder recovery — or even thinking about recovery — you likely already know how confusing and frustrating it can feel. You might intellectually understand what your body needs, yet feel afraid, disconnected, or overwhelmed when you try to care for it. You may wonder why healing feels so hard, even when you truly want it.

There’s an explanation for this disconnect.

Psychiatrist and trauma researcher Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, spent decades studying how trauma affects the body. His work offers poignant insight into why eating disorders develop and why recovery is not just about willpower or motivation. At its core, his research reminds us of something essential: your body learned these patterns to help you survive.

Trauma and Eating Disorders: How your Body Learns to Protect You

Trauma, especially ongoing or early-life trauma, can change how the nervous system responds to the world. The body may stay on high alert, shut down, or feel unsafe even when nothing is “wrong” in the present moment. In this context, eating disorder behaviors often serve a purpose. They may help you feel in control, numb overwhelming emotions, manage anxiety, or create a sense of safety when other options feel unavailable.

Rather than asking, “Why can’t I stop?” it can be more helpful to ask: “What was my body trying to protect me from?”

This shift does not excuse harmful behaviors, but it does help to move from shame to understanding. In eating disorder recovery, it’s hard to make meaningful step forwards when you’re caught in a loop of self-criticism and isolation. When we can understand that our body isn’t working against us, it’s easier to treat it with care and compassion.

Healing Is More Than Changing Behaviors

Many people in recovery know what they “should” do. In therapy, we may be reminded that we deserve nourishment, rest, and care. Yet the body may react with fear, tension, or shutdown when those needs are met.

This happens in part because trauma is not only stored as thoughts and memories. It is stored all over our body and mind in sensations, breath, muscle tension, and emotional reflexes. Healing, therefore, must work with the body – not as something to fix, but as the very ground of our experience. To heal from trauma, we need practices that work directly with breath, movement, posture, and attention, and that help us notice and gradually change how their bodies respond to stress.

In practical terms, this often means starting very small. For some people, it looks like learning to notice their feet on the floor when anxiety rises, or paying attention to the rhythm of the breath for a few seconds at a time. Over time, practices like these can help interrupt the automatic patterns that trauma leaves in the body. They create space between sensation and response, which is where we can access true choice.

If you are interested in learning practices like these, and in exploring how yoga can support eating disorder recovery, the Eat Breathe Thrive Foundation offers embodied, skills-based courses for people in recovery. With support from donors, some courses are available at low or no cost for those who need them.

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