How to Stop Stress Eating: A Trauma-Informed Guide to Self-Compassion
What Is Stress Eating and Why Does It Happen?
Look at any rom-com movie from the late 90’s or early 2000’s and you’ll most likely find the trope of a woman, just being broken up with, busting out a huge gallon of ice cream, sobbing into the tub. “Eating your feelings” is something that has been normalized and demonized for a long time. It is seen as something “weak and shameful” that should be hidden. If gone unchallenged for long enough, it can turn into binge eating behaviors.
Understanding the Difference Between Stress Eating and Binge Eating
Before we get started with this blog, I want to differentiate stress eating from binge eating. It’s like the rectangle/square relationship. While a square is a rectangle, a rectangle can never be a square. While binge eating can involve stress eating, stress eating isn’t necessarily bingeing.
Stress eating is a response to stress that develops over time as a trauma coping strategy. Often subconscious, reaching for a snack becomes a way of self-regulating that is quick and easy. Just as we celebrate culturally with food, we also mourn and comfort. It is only natural that this would be a way we self-soothe.
I want to define bingeing in the context of how we would use it clinically to diagnose an eating disorder.
What is binge eating? Binge eating is classified by:
Eating a large amount in a discrete period of time, larger than most people would eat under the same circumstances
A sense of lack of control over the eating behavior
Eating quickly
Feeling uncomfortably full
Eating large amounts when not feeling physically hungry
Eating alone due to feeling embarrassed of the quantity
Feeling depressed, disgusted with oneself, or guilty after overeating
The most important part of starting to look at your own eating behaviors is viewing it through a lens of self-compassion and not shame. We want to start gathering information about patterns like we would gather data – objectively, without moral judgement.
Common Patterns of Stress Eating Behavior
I don’t like to differentiate much between stress eating and emotional eating. Coloquially we use them interchangeably and often the motivation is the same.
Here are are some common patterns of people who stress eat and have an unhealthy relationship with food:
Almost unconsciously reaching for snacks
Finding themselves thinking about food during more stressful parts of their day, even if they aren’t physically hungry
Feeling confused about why they are eating
Reaching for highly palatable foods often
Finding it hard to calm themselves down without the use of food
Zoning out while eating
The specific reasons why a person might stress eat vary from person to person. Oftentimes, it is caused by dealing with an uncomfortable or unwelcome emotion that the person would rather repress. Loneliness, sadness, depression, overwhelm, trauma, and anxiety are common causes of stress eating. Know that if you are utilizing food to calm yourself, you are not alone.
Why Eating Feels Comforting in Times of Stress
The Role of the Vagus Nerve and Early Conditioning
When we are babies, we are given the breast or the bottle when we cry. We know that the vagus nerve is in charge of many bodily functions, including the sucking reflex. Early on, we begin to associate getting fed with getting our needs met both physically and emotionally.
Grounding and Sensory Regulation Through Food
The process of eating is inherently grounding. It is a sensory experience. From the way the food looks, tastes, feels, and smells – all of it can be extremely regulating. Eating can aid in the dissociative process as well. Mealtimes can signal that we are “off the clock,” that we are able to stop working for a moment and get some much needed rest. At times, our mindful, present brain can go offline while we eat, which can create a sense of being overfull.
Self-compassion note: Stress eating is normal. We don’t have to pathologize it. We just don’t want it to be our only coping mechanism in the tool belt.
Why Diet Culture Fails to Address Stress Eating
A lot of my clients who are trying to stop stress eating have first tried dieting. There is this idea that if they are really “strict” with themselves and give themselves a bunch of food rules, they will be able to “lock in” and stop eating when they don’t want to. This will only be effective for short periods of time until it crashes and burns. Ultimately, we want to ditch the diet and tap into Intuitive Eating.
How Intuitive Eating Supports Food Freedom
Dieting is a “top-down” process. It is using the intellect to tell the body what to do and how to eat. It is based on (at times) arbitrary rules that might not be good for us, but rather are aimed at losing weight. Dieting often ignores the body’s signals in favor of a calorie deficit.
When certain foods are off limits, this makes them more attractive than they would otherwise be. This is where Intuitive Eating can be so helpful; it helps people ditch the diet to achieve full food freedom and quit morally qualifying certain types of foods.
When we are chronically underfed or restricted in certain ways, we want to overeat. There is a biological mechanism that takes over to help keep us alive that says “eat!” This can create the binge (or overeating) cycle after a period of restriction. That’s why it is better to ditch the diet altogether.
Trauma Therapy Approaches to Stress Eating
Fortunately, there are a lot of ways we can work with stress eating behaviors, particularly to heal from trauma, therapeutically. Whether it is through direct eating frameworks like Intuitive Eating, trauma therapy modalities like EMDR or Somatic Experiencing, or traditional talk therapy (like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), there are so many effective things to try in order to feel more at peace around food.
The following are trauma therapy approaches to help you stop stress eating:
Intuitive Eating Therapy to Heal the Stress Eating Cycle
While many people try to control stress eating through willpower or dieting, Intuitive Eating therapy offers a compassionate and sustainable alternative. Instead of focusing on rules or restrictions, Intuitive Eating encourages you to reconnect with your body’s natural cues like hunger, fullness, and satisfaction, and to honor those cues without judgment.
In trauma therapy, Intuitive Eating work helps you explore your relationship with food through a trauma-informed lens. For many, stress eating develops as a coping mechanism in response to unmet emotional needs or a dysregulated nervous system. A trauma therapist trained in Intuitive Eating can help you identify emotional triggers, challenge internalized beliefs from diet culture, and build new skills for emotional regulation that don’t involve food.
This approach is particularly powerful because it integrates both emotional healing and practical tools. You'll learn how to recognize true physical hunger versus emotional hunger, how to give yourself unconditional permission to eat without shame, and how to respond to your needs with kindness, not punishment. Over time, this reduces the urgency and guilt around food and allows for a more peaceful, empowered eating experience.
Learn More About Intuitive Eating >
EMDR and Uncovering Root Causes
Oftentimes, stress eating is a response to coping with trauma. Therefore, it can be helpful to utilize trauma interventions like EMDR to identify how exactly the past trauma is impacting the person today, and how some negative core beliefs are contributing to the stress that causes the stress eating response, ultimately helping you heal from trauma and stop stress eating.
Somatic Experiencing and Nervous System Regulation
Somatic Experiencing will also help to target the trauma origins of the stress eating while also helping the person to identify how to track sensation in order to promote nervous system regulation. It can help the person to understand what underlies the desire to stress eat. Is there physiological or emotional tension? Is there an unmet need? Is there an emotion that feels scary to be with? Somatic therapy can help to build capacity to tolerate the difficulty, which allows the person to be able to have some choice in how they cope.
Learn More About Somatic Experiencing >
Cognitive Behavorial Therapy (CBT) for Behavior Change and Emotional Awareness
Talk therapy (like CBT) helps people identify patterns, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that all contribute to their stress eating. It focuses on coping skills and problem solving, helping the person to be able to change their behavior and identify their feelings instead of repressing them.
Learn More About Talk Therapy >
Tools to Break the Stress Eating Cycle
Here are some tools you can use to begin breaking the stress eating cycle.
Identify your triggers for stress eating
Try to take a pause before eating – how are you feeling emotionally and physically?
Understand the times of day that are hardest for you and have a coping skill ready to go
Build up your toolbox – what else regulates you?
Talk to yourself kindly; beating yourself up mentally will not end stress eating
Take breaks during the day. Don’t let stress keep building up and building up.
Take everything in as data. Had a “bad” day of eating yesterday? Ask questions about it, don’t make judgements
When to Seek Help for Stress Eating
If you are finding coping with stress eating to be too much to do on your own, you are not alone. Reach out to a therapist who is versed in Intuitive Eating, eating disorders, or helping people cope with their stress and trauma. Healing is possible!
Start Your Healing Journey Now
Frequently Asked Questions About Stress Eating and How Intuitive Eating Can Help
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Stress eating is using food to cope with emotions like anxiety or overwhelm, often without physical hunger. Binge eating involves eating large amounts in a short time with a loss of control and distress.
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You may be using food as a way to manage emotions like anxiety, loneliness, or overwhelm. This is often a subconscious trauma response, and therapy can help you uncover the root causes and develop healthier coping tools.
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Trauma-informed therapy helps you explore why you turn to food under stress. Modalities like Intuitive Eating, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can reduce emotional triggers and build new regulation strategies to replace stress eating.
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While stress eating alone isn’t necessarily an eating disorder, it can signal deeper emotional struggles or trauma. If eating patterns cause distress or impact your well-being, therapy can help assess and support your healing.
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Diets often ignore emotional and trauma-based roots of stress eating. They rely on willpower and restriction, which can increase cravings and shame. A trauma-informed, intuitive approach addresses the root cause instead of the symptoms.
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Start by identifying your triggers, pausing before eating, and asking what you truly need. Build coping tools like grounding techniques or journaling, and talk to yourself with compassion rather than criticism. Intuitive Eating can also help you stop stress eating.
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Intuitive Eating helps you tune into hunger, fullness, and emotional needs without shame. It replaces food rules with self-compassion and offers tools to respond to stress without turning to food.
Stevie Olson-Spiegel is a Licensed Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner located in Kansas City. She uses Somatic Experiencing as her main body-based trauma healing modality, as well as EMDR. As an Intuitive Eating Counselor, she uses these principles to help her clients challenge their relationship with their cultural misconceptions about their body and food.
