Nervous System Dysregulation & Disordered Eating Explained

If you’ve ever thought:

“Why can’t I just eat like a normal person?”
“Why do I keep doing this even when I want to stop?”
“I know what I’m supposed to do, so why can’t I do it?”

I think it’s really important for you to know that:
You are not out of control.
And it’s not your fault.

I know it probably feels that way right now, and I’m definitely not here to gaslight you. But hopefully I can help you make sense of things in a way that gives you some hope.

Perhaps you can relate to this.

You may have tried traditional talking therapy, food tracking apps, or rigid routines that looked like the answer—but still left you stuck in the same frustrating cycle of disordered eating behaviours.

What no one told you is that your nervous system plays a central role in how you eat, how you feel in your body, and how safe (or unsafe) nourishment feels.

This isn’t just about food behaviours. It’s about your survival mechanisms.

It’s about your body doing exactly what it’s wired to do when it feels overwhelmed, under threat, or disconnected. It will seek safety.

Even if that moment of safety feels short-lived.

I’m going to break it all down for you.

In this post, I’ll walk you through how nervous system dysregulation can show up in disordered eating behaviours, help you make sense of these responses, and how regulation—not more control—is often the missing piece in healing your relationship with food.

What is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)?

Your autonomic nervous system is like your body’s behind-the-scenes helper. It works all the time—without conscious thought—to keep you safe and alive. It controls things like your heartbeat, breathing, digestion, and how your body reacts to danger or calm.

When something feels scary or overwhelming, your nervous system might say, “Let’s run!” or “Let’s freeze!” or even “Let’s shut down for a while.”

You don’t choose those responses—they just happen automatically, like a reflex.

The autonomic nervous system consists of three branches:

Sympathetic Nervous System – This is your mobilising energy. It kicks in when your body senses danger and gets you ready to fight or run away. You might feel anxious, agitated, or like you need to do something quickly.
Dorsal Vagal (Parasympathetic) – This is your shut-down system. When things feel too overwhelming and escaping doesn’t feel possible, your body might freeze or collapse. You may feel numb, disconnected, or like you’ve checked out.
Ventral Vagal (Parasympathetic) – This is your safe and connected state. It supports rest, digestion, play, curiosity, and relationships. When you’re here, your body feels grounded and your mind feels more open.

Together, these branches shape how your body responds to the world.

But these responses are not random—they’re shaped by your past experiences, learned patterns, and the ways your body has tried to keep you safe over time.

What Is Nervous System Dysregulation?

To be in a dysregulated state means you're feeling anything but grounded and connected. Your nervous system is stuck in survival mode—either on high alert, completely shut down, or swinging between the two. In this state, you might feel chaotic, anxious, numb, disconnected from yourself and the world around you, or overwhelmed by emotions and sensations that feel too big to hold.

Disordered eating behaviours often show up as ways to manage that internal chaos—not because you're out of control or doing something wrong, but because your body is trying to seek something to settle and soothe itself.

For example:

When you're feeling emotionally numb or shut down (a collapsed state), you might binge to feel something—anything.
When you're overwhelmed by stress, anxiety, or intense emotions (a fight/flight state), bingeing might help you disconnect—to shift your focus away from what feels unsafe or unbearable in the moment.

But it’s not just bingeing.

Restrictive behaviours—like skipping meals, delaying eating, or undernourishing yourself—can also be signs of nervous system dysregulation:

In a shutdown state, you might not feel hungry at all, or eating might feel like too much. It’s not that you don’t need food—it’s that you’ve become disconnected from your needs.
In a hyper-alert state, eating might feel unsafe, overwhelming, or overstimulating—so you avoid it to feel more in control.

These behaviours might look like the “problem”, but they’re actually a sign that your nervous struggling to regulate itself in a way that stops the cycle.

They work in the short term—but in the long run, they keep you stuck in the very cycle of dysregulation you're trying to escape.

That’s why nervous system awareness and regulation are such important parts of recovery—not to replace food work, but to support it.

Because when your body is no longer in survival mode, you’re able to make decisions that are supportive to your physical and mental wellbeing.

How Dysregulation Shows Up in Eating Behaviours

When we talk about nervous system states, we’re really talking about how your body responds to perceived safety or threat. These states shape everything—from your emotions, bodily sensations and thoughts to how you experience hunger, fullness, and the act of eating itself.

Let’s walk through the main nervous system states and how they might show up in your relationship with food.

Fight or Flight: The Urge to Take Action

Driven by the sympathetic nervous system, this is your body’s mobilisation mode. Adrenaline and cortisol are released, preparing you to confront a threat or run from it.

You might feel:

Restless or agitated
Anxious or panicked
Buzzy or tight
Like you have to do something—anything

In this state, you might:

Binge to try and quieten the chaos
Purge or overexercise to regain a sense of calm
Feel the urge to “fix” or “undo” whatever you just ate

You may not even realise you’re in survival mode—it can feel like autopilot.

Freeze: Trapped with Nowhere to Go

As Polyvagal expert and clinician Deb Dana, LCSW, describes, freeze is a blended state—there’s energy in the system, but you feel immobilised.

Like a deer in headlights.

You might experience:

Mental fog or paralysis
Feeling stuck or unsure what to eat
Overwhelm at the idea of preparing food or making a decision

Collapse: When Everything Shuts Down

This is part of the dorsal vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system—your body powers down to conserve energy and cope.

You may feel:

Numb, sluggish, or disconnected
Emotionally flat or deeply exhausted
Like food just isn’t on your radar

You might:

Skip meals without noticing
Delay eating because even making a decision feels like too much
Feel completely disconnected from hunger or fullness cues

Fawn: Prioritising Others Over Yourself

Also linked to the dorsal system, this survival state focuses on people-pleasing and avoiding conflict.

You might:

Eat in a performative way
Say yes to food when you want to say no (or vice versa)
Lose track of your needs in social settings

This can look like eating past fullness to avoid awkwardness, or not eating so others won’t comment.

Fawning can also look like choosing meals that will appease others rather than what you want—like picking something you feel uneasy about on the menu, or not eating at all because no one else in your group is eating.

It can be really hard to access your own needs when you’re in this state.

Eating as Regulation

Sometimes you might crave crunchy or bland foods to soothe sensory overload. Other times, you may feel paralysed by choice and default to familiar or emotionally comforting foods.

Across all states, bingeing can be a way to feel something when you’re numb, or to disconnect or sedate when you’re feeling too much.

These Are Adaptations, Not Failures

Instead of seeing bingeing, restricting, or emotional eating as failures, you can begin to view them as adaptations—it’s what feels most familiar to you and your nervous system to feel safe.

They’re signals from your body saying: “I’m not okay right now—and I’m doing my best to cope with the tools I’m most familiar with.”

Once you start recognising your patterns, you can begin to meet yourself with curiosity instead of shame—and that shift can change everything.

Why Eating Feels So Hard When You’re Dysregulated

When your nervous system is dysregulated, your connection to your body’s cues and needs becomes disrupted and willpower alone cannot change that.

1. You Can’t Feel What You Need

Dysregulation interrupts interoceptive awareness—the sense that helps you feel hunger, fullness, and satisfaction.

Without this, eating becomes confusing.

2. Food Decisions Become Overwhelming

When you're in survival mode, your executive functioning (planning, organising, emotional regulation) becomes impaired. Even small tasks—like picking what to eat or how to prepare it—can feel impossible.

3. Your Digestive System is impacted

Stress impacts digestion. You might feel bloated, tight, nauseous, or like there’s no room for food—even before eating.

4. Food Feels Like Too Much Input

When you're already overwhelmed, food becomes another layer of sensory and emotional intensity.

In these moments, avoiding food can feel safer than processing what it brings up.

5. You Might Fear Losing Control

If you fear that once you start eating, you won’t be able to stop. This fear can lead to more restriction—fuelling the cycle.

The Role of Self-Soothing and Regulation in Recovery

If you’ve ever tried to logic your way out of a binge urge or force yourself to stop restricting, you’re not alone.

Using logic and willpower alone often keeps the cycle going.

Trying to “fix” the behaviour without tending to what’s underneath is like placing a plaster on a deeper wound—it holds, but only for a while.

What actually supports healing is shifting from fixing to soothing.

Why logic doesn’t work when you’re dysregulated

As I mentioned earlier, in survival mode your executive functioning goes offline. That includes planning, emotional regulation, decision-making, and self-reflection.

So even simple thoughts like “What do I need?” or “What should I eat?” feel out of reach.

Because you're deep in survival mode.

Soothing the system, not forcing it

Think of your nervous system like a scared cat in a tree (it was only a matter of time before the cat woman weaved a cat into this blog). Yelling or forcing it won’t work—it clings tighter, it might even climb higher into the tree!

But offer softness, space and safety, and eventually, it climbs down on its own.

Your body works the same way.

You don’t need to push through the urge.
You don’t need to pretend you’re fine.
You need to create a felt sense of safety.

What does self-soothing look like?

Placing a hand on your forehead, chest or belly
Naming five things you can see around you
Humming softly or exhaling with a sigh
Rocking gently or wrapping yourself in a cosy blanket

Each of these small actions stimulates the vagus nerve—a key part of your parasympathetic nervous system (aka rest and digest).

The vagus nerve helps your body shift out of survival mode and into a more regulated state.
It’s connected to your breath, your voice, your heart, and even your digestion.

That’s why humming, gentle touch, or a slow exhale can have such a grounding effect. They’re not just soothing your mind—they’re sending signals of safety to your nervous system.

Healing isn’t a straight line. It’s a relationship.

When we stop trying to control our bodies, healing starts to look…messy. And that’s okay.

That’s why I often hear people say, “When I stopped using my behaviours, everything felt out of control.” Or words to that effect.

And I gently remind them: that chaos you’re feeling? That might actually be the first time you’re not suppressing or shutting down. It can feel very scary to experience.

It’s unfamiliar, yes. But it’s you learning a new way to cope. Making the unfamiliar, familiar. That said, you don’t have to feel everything at once and it’s okay and advisable to make small adjustments over time.

I’ll also add that recovery doesn’t mean being regulated all the time. It doesn’t mean never getting triggered again or always making the “right” choice.

The autonomic nervous system is still gonna be there doing its thing in the background

After all, life will still bring stress, uncertainty, and challenge.

But your response to those things will change.

Regulation is Not about Perfection

What starts to shift is your capacity.

You might still get knocked off balance—but you come back to centre more easily.
You might still have spirals—but they don’t last as long or be so destructive.

You begin to notice:

“I can pause before acting on an urge.”
“I can sit with discomfort and still offer myself care.”
“I can feel safe in my body, even when I don’t feel good about it.”

You learn to work with your body, not against it.

To offer yourself regulation and co-regulation—through relationships, routines, community, and rest.

Healing is care, not control

Recovery asks a lot. But it also gives you something back: Your capacity. Your agency. Your sense of connection.

That means…

Listening instead of silencing
Soothing instead of suppressing
Coming home to yourself—even when it’s uncomfortable

And you are so worthy of that.

There is hope for you

If eating has felt confusing, chaotic, or out of your control…
If you’ve blamed yourself for not being “disciplined enough”…
If you’ve wondered why recovery feels so hard, even when you’re doing all the “right” things—Let this be your reminder:

You’re not doing recovery wrong.
You’re not failing or broken.

You’re navigating survival with a nervous system that’s doing its best to protect you. And it probably has been doing so for a very long time.

And the truth is—your disordered eating behaviours probably have helped you survive.

They’ve offered a sense of control, comfort, or escape in moments when nothing else felt safe.

They’ve been all the tools in your toolbox. Like, you looked in there and that’s it. Same old tools that have been there from…Well, a long time.

And there’s no shame in that.

In fact, shame is often what ignites the binge–restrict cycle in the first place. And the more you try to suppress or push through that shame, the more likely you are to stay stuck in it.

What helps is not more control—but more compassion.

So what we’re doing now isn’t just about throwing your old toolbox away—it’s about slowly building familiarity with new tools. Ones that support your body, your emotions, and body with care.

Tools rooted in compassion, connection, and trust—not punishment or force.

It may feel messy, but it’s part of the process of becoming more resourced.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

I’ve created a gentle, practical resource to help you begin that shift:

The Nervous System Regulation Toolkit

A printable workbook to help you recognise your nervous system state and respond with care—especially in moments of food-related overwhelm. The workbook was created to help you:

The workbook was created to help you:

Understand how different nervous system states impact your eating behaviours
Explore how you personally experience and respond to those states
Choose gentle, trauma-informed regulation tools that actually work for your body
Build a personalised support plan for moments of anxiety, shutdown, or food distress

Feel less alone, less confused, and more connected to your healing

You can purchase the workbook here.

The Connection Between Nervous System Dysregulation and Disordered Eating