Losing your Hunger and Appetite After Experiencing Trauma
I spilled soup on my laptop this past week. It all happened so fast and I was yelling out loud, "no no no!" as I ran into the kitchen to wipe off as much soup as I could.
This has happened to me once before. In my freshman year of college, I spilled an entire glass of water into my laptop. I made a rule after that no liquids by the computer and I have stuck to that rule for two decades. That is until this past week.
I knew I needed to immediately turn the computer off and wait 48 hours before turning it back on. I had soup all over me. It was all over the floor and yet I was frozen not knowing what to do.
It felt like I had left my body. I was just going through the motions of knowing I probably needed to clean up all the soup. Thank goodness for my husband who came in as an amazing coregulator talking me through what we could do to make sure I could work the next few days without my own computer.
Additionally, I had lost my entire dinner. I knew before I started eating I was definitely hungry and excited to eat the soup I had made. Afterward, my appetite entirely disappeared. I had no hunger cues, no desire to eat, and could barely think about food. Yet, I knew my body still needed food. So, I made something new to eat.
I woke up the next morning still feeling the dysregulation in my body. My face felt flushed, my heartbeat felt a little quicker, and I could feel the exhaustion in my body. Rest supported me in having a fresh perspective on what I needed to do to move the fight or flight response through me. I still barely had an appetite and made breakfast anyway.
Later that day, I chatted with a therapist friend about why this felt like such a big deal in my body. It's just a computer. I had mostly everything backed up. What was I so scared of?
After some reflection, I realized that computers were the thing that was there for me in navigating my parent's divorce and all that surrounded that at 13 years old. AOL had just come out and I could get lost in the world of the internet and not feel the immense pain I was experiencing. Computers, in my body, had been connected to a sense of safety. In that moment when I feared my computer dying, it didn't have to do with my computer, it felt like I might die as well.
As the day progressed and my body moved out of a dysregulated state, my hunger cues normalized and I could start to hear my body asking for what it needed again.
I share this vulnerable story as an example of how our bodily reactions don't have to make logical sense. You react based on your perception of what is occurring and your perceptions are cultivated based on your past experiences.
Trauma can lead to changes in the body's stress response and affect various systems that regulate appetite. As I experienced, my hunger and appetite completely disappeared as my body went into a freeze state. I like to normalize that for those who struggle with feeding themselves and feel hungry, this is your body doing what it is meant to do when it feels that incredibly threatened. Think of it like an animal playing dead. Why would you need to be hungry when you're fighting to stay alive?
Now, my body moved out of this response fairly quickly, and for others, you may have been in this response for years or decades. You may feel confused as to why you never feel hungry and feel as though you need to force yourself to eat. This is information from your body that it's living in a trauma response where it still feels like it needs to protect itself.
Here are some ways trauma can be linked to loss of appetite:
Trauma triggers the body's stress response, which involves the release of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones can impact appetite regulation by altering the function of brain areas responsible for hunger and satiation. Stress hormones can suppress appetite and therefore disrupt the normal patterns of eating.
Trauma can often leave you in a hyperaroused state. This sense of constant threat, danger, and unease can make eating feel like a secondary concern. The increased anxiety you may also experience can affect your digestion where you have stomach aches and pains further reducing appetite.
If you've experienced trauma in the past that occurred while you were eating, your body can create an aversion to those foods and that environment. For example, if a lot of fighting happened at the dinner table when you were a kid, it may feel overwhelming and triggering to eat at a table as an adult. And, if you were consuming particular foods at that meal, those foods get paired with danger inside your body where you may feel an aversion to eating or to eating specific foods. You may get curious about the foods you avoid or feel an aversion to and explore what memories you may have around eating those foods and what was happening at that time of your life.
Trauma is closely linked to the development of depression. Depression can show up in many different ways in the body, including changes in appetite. You might experience a decrease in appetite as a result of the emotional numbness, low energy, and lack of interest in activities that are common with depression.
Trauma can also lead to sleep disturbances such as nightmares, insomnia, and night sweats. Disrupted sleep can affect the body's regulation of hunger hormones like ghrelin and leptin, leading to changes in appetite.
A trauma response held in the body can trigger digestive issues such as nausea, stomachaches, bloating, and pain. These gut discomforts can make eating less appealing and result in appetite loss as you may fear what you have to experience or feel if you eat.
Living in a hypervigilant state where you're constantly on alert for potential threats naturally shifts your focus away from eating and food as that would distract you from looking out for yourself. Your hunger disappears so that your body can do its job of keeping you alive.
Last, a traumatic event can also take away your sense of control. To regain the feeling of control, you may have found yourself controlling your eating where you were restricting food intake or certain foods or food groups or avoiding eating altogether.
Noticing that you lack hunger or a robust appetite is information from your body. It needs your help moving in and out of regulation and dysregulation with more ease. Right now, your body may feel stuck and needs a lot of extra support.
Here are some ways you can explore supporting your body in feeling safe so that your appetite and hunger cues can increase:
1. I have said this before and I will say it again, you're not meant to heal alone. Your body needs other nervous systems that can support it in regulating. This can be from another person, friend, therapist, counselor, coach, or animal.
2. You may not feel hunger, and your body needs food anyway. If you're someone who skips meals or eats inconsistently, it is a lot harder to do this trauma healing work when your blood sugar feels unstable. Put yourself on a consistent eating routine that can stabilize you and anchor you into the present.
3. I knew where the state of my body was at because I've taken a lot of time to get to know my nervous system responses and how they feel in my body. Having an awareness of what your reactions and symptoms are trying to tell you about the state of your body can be incredibly supportive so you can understand what's happening and be able to take action that brings you closer into relationship with your body to support it. This is something I teach everyone I work with and is a part of most of my programs.
If you want to learn more about tracking your nervous system:
I'm offering 30% off my newest offering the Somatic Eating® Intensive as a Labor Day Sale. You will receive a 2.5 hour experiential class to enhance your awareness of what your food coping mechanisms are trying to protect you from, begin to understand what nervous system state you're in, and learn new regulating resources.
You also receive a week of Voxer support where you will be able to send me 1-2 messages a day and receive a message back from me for individualized support. You can sign up HERE and use the coupon code SOMATICEATINGI30 at check out. This discount will end at midnight on Tuesday September 5th.
For those who were interested, my computer is fine and I didn't lose anything. Yay!
Please be gentle and compassionate with yourself when healing your trauma based food behaviors. It's not your fault nor have you been doing anything wrong because you're struggling with feeling hungry. The safer your body feels, the easier it will be to hear your hunger cues and feel an increase in your appetite.