by Benjamin Fry
One of the key legacies of untreated or unfinished trauma is that the body’s nervous system can become highly dysregulated. This makes for a very biologically uncomfortable place for us to live in. Spending time inside a body which is malfunctioning biologically can be unbearable. Therefore in order to be able to manage we need to introduce into our bio-chemical system some kind of chemical influence from the outside.
The digestion is a very powerful biological and chemical system in the body. It has the capacity to have a large influence on the way that our nervous system is functioning. Therefore it can be a very useful tool for people who are trying to change their existing deeply uncomfortable biochemistry. This is one of the explanations for people using food and their digestive system in a way other than what it was designed for. So in effect food becomes a narcotic and the digestive system becomes the method of delivery rather than simply being nourishing fuel for an already well balanced system.
So from a trauma treatment perspective we can understand a food addiction or eating disorder as a fairly logical attempt to rebalance a dysregulated nervous system. Unfortunately like all addictions and all narcotics it creates secondary problems and can exact a terrible price on the lives of the abuser and those who care for them.
Therefore effective recovery from eating disorders can be achieved with accurate and successful trauma reduction treatment which would help to rebalance the nervous system and reduce the need for any external influence to do the same such as food.
Benjamin Fry works across a range of services and media using personal, professional and scientific expertise to help people to a baggage-free life. Â A published author, and a past columnist for The Times and Psychologies magazine, Benjamin is a social activist in mental health. Â He founded Get Stable in 2010 to get effective treatment paid for by the state and his great passion is to bring treatment, which works, to all levels of society and across all severities of conditions.
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