Healing Trauma Through Food: Exploring the Emotional and Traumatic Connections to Nourishment EP: 130

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Depression, anxiety, and autoimmune symptoms after birth is not how it’s supposed to be. There is a much better way, and I’m here to show you how to do just that. Hey, my friend, I’m Maranda Bower, a mother to four kids and a biology student turned scientist obsessed with changing the world through postpartum care. Join us as we talk to mothers and the providers who serve them and getting evidence-based information that actually supports the mind, body, and soul in the years after birth.
Hello, my friends, welcome to the Postpartum University Podcast, Maranda Bower here and I want to have a conversation around healing trauma through food. We are really embarking on a very personal and transformative exploration of how our emotions and traumas deeply influence the way we nourish our bodies. This isn’t just about food. It’s about the profound connection between our inner emotional landscape and what’s on our plates. It’s about the stories and experiences that shape our relationship with food, with nutrition, with nourishment. You know from listening to this podcast that I like to have the conversation that not a lot of people are talking about, and this is one of them. I was having a conversation sometime recently about how we all have some form of disordered eating. It was actually with a nutritionist who was on a private show that I was doing for my membership group, we were talking about this. Why do we all have some form of disordered eating, which is really just a way of saying that we all have a certain relationship to food. It gets us through hard times, it comforts us and also sometimes contributes to an abusive relationship. Although it sometimes feels like it’s something that’s not in our control, it really is. But why is this? Why do we have these relationships with food? And many of these relationships appear to be abusive or not the healthiest, of course. As a society, we’re usually given some pretty poor food options and we are certainly not told the truth about the quality of food or how food works in our bodies. For example, we still use calories as a measurement of health. We are still telling women that it’s completely okay to consume 500 calories in postpartum without telling them any additional information. We just focus on caloric intake as if it were a measurement of health, and we’ve been doing that for 40 years. Nothing has changed and we’re still using RDAs, which is a recommended daily allowance, as a measurement to determine if we’re getting enough nutrients. Even though those numbers are made up for women, they are literally based off studies done on men and reduced to fit a smaller human, i.e. a female. And then there is the joke that is the standard USDA food plate, which was upgraded from the pyramid created by corporations and money that run the entire food industry. Anyway, all of this to say that, although this is the reality that we live in and there is certainly a lot of unlearning that we have to do when we start looking at what is healthy for our body I actually think this isn’t really part of this conversation. Outside of the addictions with food like coffee and sugar, of course and we’ll talk about that we often turn to food for comfort, especially in times of stress or sadness. It’s a way to soothe our souls, a refuge in the midst of life storms, right, but it is also in these moments that we might find ourselves in an unhealthy dance. It’s essential to recognize that this isn’t a conversation about blame or judgment Hands down not in the least bit. I’m going to share some personal experiences of my own with you as well. Instead, it’s just really an invitation to understand, healing. It’s about acknowledging our emotions and our traumas, and that’s part of what makes us human and that plays a significant role in how we nourish ourselves. So I can tell you so many stories about how I love comfort food, especially unhealthy food that is specific to my comfort, and one of my downfalls is potato chips. I love potato chips so much and I tend to go to them in times of stress. Chocolate is another one, and I recognize this pattern. When I was actually well before I was doing this work, I was a childcare provider. I worked in a preschool and being a preschool teacher is the hardest work outside of being a mother. It is just profoundly important work and just absolutely incredible how I felt as a human being on a daily basis. But it was also exhausting. It was also stressful, especially because I worked in a place that was not always giving the most support. I didn’t have a lot of support staff by my side. We had classrooms up to 20 students and that’s a lot, and it was really difficult and I would carry these little chocolate pieces with me just like little chocolate candies Think of what you would hand out on Halloween and I would have like a giant thing of this in my cubby and I would find myself going towards them all the time. Every single time I was hit with a stressful situation, I would literally walk over to my cubby and shove chocolate in my mouth and feel that moment of serotonin rush to the brain, and then I would be fine for the next couple of hours, or whatever the case may be, until my body started relying on it. And so every couple of hours turned into like every hour, and then every 30 minutes, and then I was having belly aches and it was a disaster and I was like what is going on? This is my early 20s. And then I finally put the connection together. Oh, my goodness, I am stress eating chocolate, and so that has shifted and I healed that in that moment, or at least I thought I did. And then I had kids of my own and I transitioned away from working in the childcare fields and I started working directly with moms and being a doula and now being a nutrition specialist in postpartum and doing the work that I’m doing now, and in that I noticed that I go to potato chips because it feels so good in my body for a moment. We’re going to talk about this very much, but I will tell you this story gets even deeper. I’m going to tell you a really personal story and I want to share this with you because it is so profoundly related to food and nourishment. And very recently I got super sick this was last week and my stomach was awful and I haven’t felt that way and probably a good solid 10 years Now. You need to know that about 10 years ago more than 10 years ago I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. It was after the birth of my second and it was awful. If anybody has ever had to do with that, I would literally set up my children’s play space in the bathrooms and I would sit on the toilet for hours. I would have all of my water, I would have all of the kids snacks and their water and all their needs and all their toys laid out. I would have blankets in case they needed a rest and I would literally be on the toilet going through sheer agony and pain and breastfeeding in those moments and trying to navigate life with two kids and then at times passing out on the floor next to them. This is actually why I would set up their play space and close the door so I can keep an eye on them and know that for the most part they’re safe. We literally had I would move everything underneath the cabinets to the tops so they couldn’t reach it. I had designed my life around being a mother with ulcerative colitis, which meant living in the bathroom and passing out on the floor. It was absolutely awful Fast forward after spending many years healing, which I shared that journey with you, and that’s what the Mama Thrive method is all about. That’s why we have postpartum university. I felt that pain again and I didn’t understand why. I was like, wow, I haven’t felt this in forever and my gut is just killing me. That night I had a dream that came to me and it was like one of those dreams where you wake up multiple times because it’s a bad dream and you’re trying to get rid of it, but the moment you go back to sleep, you dream of it again and it was super vivid and I just couldn’t get it off of my mind. It was taking me back to that time when I was in my early 20s and I was in a really difficult situation. I had just left a marriage. I married really young. It was an absolute disaster. It was cheating and drugs and I was trying to leave this relationship and I ended up moving into my parents’ home and I felt like a failure. What am I doing here? I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t escape. I was working in childcare at the time and we all know that childcare providers are not paid anything. I couldn’t move out on my own because I couldn’t afford my own space. Here I am in a home that I was physically safe in, emotionally safe my parents’ home but I felt so, so trapped. I remember specifically this feeling of not being able to breathe, this feeling of what am I doing here? Feeling trapped, feeling like I can’t go anywhere, feeling as if I could die in this moment and it would be so awful, just feeling that entrapment. Now here, I am feeling that again and I’m having these dreams of those moments and I’m waking up almost in a panic, telling myself that I’m safe, focusing on deep breaths and what I realized when I woke up in the morning. Why did I go back to that space, which was really a very traumatic space for me, and recognizing that I was feeling those entrapped feelings all over again in my own life. My had family coming in from out of town. We had sporting events. It was like back to back to back things. I am going back to school. I’m in a really intense course right now that is very demanding on coursework. I’m running behind, I’m trying to put my family first, I’m in the middle of a big business launch and what I really wanna do is just escape and go read, and I can’t Because I have these mom responsibilities, I have these business responsibilities, I have school responsibilities and family and all these responsibilities and I was brought back to that feeling and it was so interesting how that really shaped my body and really actually shapes my relationship with food. I had to rebuild my relationship with food over a long period of time because I didn’t believe that food was good for me. I felt for a long time, especially after being diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, that it was excruciatingly painful to have food in my body and to be nourished, meant to be in pain and so going back to those, and so it was very easy for me to put these pieces together and to connect them, because I’ve experienced this before and because I’ve had the privilege of working in this industry for so long and seeing it, and I was able to heal very quickly. It’s been about two to three days focusing on nourishing my body and resting and I’m back to how things have always been in the last decade and acting like nothing has ever happened. But here’s the thing I see this in clients all the time. I can tell you so many stories of mamas who have similar experiences with their foods, for example, recognizing that the reason why they can’t get well is because they actually don’t want to, because not getting well or being well would mean that they no longer get the attention that they so desperately need from their husband, that he would go back to ignoring her, or that following a plan or any sort of nutritional guidelines would be very much like listening to an abusive ex-husband. It feels like a really terrible relationship.

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I had one client share with me that she put the connection together that if she were to eat healthy, that would mean that she would lose weight, and if she lost weight then she was going to be raped again. And so these connections with food are so deeply profound and so interconnected to why and how we nourish ourselves or not nourish ourselves, and this is especially true in postpartum, because we’re raw, we’re vulnerable. There’s some major brain changes that occur that bring us more closer to our trauma, and these are invitations to heal so that we can release them and that we can grow into the mothers that we want to be. Many traumas can be healed through nourishment, especially as we recognize our worthiness, our sacredness, our deserving of health and wellness and feeling good. Healing involves not only acknowledging the emotional and traumatic roots of our relationship with food, but also reestablishing a connection with our body and often sever this connection as a form of self-preservation. Through mindful eating practices and other practices that I’m going to share with you here Shortly, we can really get back to rekindling this bond and learning to listen to our body’s cues for hunger and fullness and specific nutrition needs and overall needs in general even that are not necessarily connected to food. Who knew that ulcerative colitis or an ex-husband or our relationship with our partner or a previous rape experience were all connected to food? And I can go on and on and on about food in general and the way our bodies really hold on to trauma. There’s a book about trauma called the Body Keeps the Score and oh, how true is that title the body truly does keep score. So let’s talk about why this happens for us. Why do food and emotions go hand in hand? And this is pretty fascinating. But we have a couple of things that we definitely want to talk about. So one is neurobiology. Neurobiology of emotional eating is massive. There’s plenty of research in the field that has shown that emotional eating is associated with a certain release of neurotransmitters, and I mentioned this earlier in my own need for lots of chocolate. It was a dopamine and serotonin rush, which plays a role in mood regulation. So comfort foods often are high in sugar and fat and they can release these neurotransmitters, leading to this temporary feeling of pleasure and relief. And then there’s the gut-brain connection. There’s so much emerging research that has highlighted this gut-brain axis, which is this bi-directional communication between the gut and the brain. So the gut microbiota can influence mood and behavior. Your gut microbiota can influence mood and behavior. This is huge because this plays such an important role in postpartum depression and anxiety. But anyway, to stay on topic here, influencing mood, behavior, stress and emotions as well. And so this connection suggests that our emotional well-being can impact our digestive system and our food choices what we want to consume, what becomes a trigger for us. There are therapeutic approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy CBT, there is dialectal behavioral therapy DPT and they are widely used to address emotional eating and disordered eating behaviors. And there are therapies that are rhoded in scientific principles that have been really effective in helping individuals heal their relationship with food while addressing these underlying traumas. It’s specifically related to trauma and food. This scientific insight really, I feel, oftentimes underscore the intricate web of connections between our emotional well-being, the trauma and the relationship with food. But they do highlight the complexity of this relationship and the profound healing and transformation that we could have. When we focus our attention on nourishment, we’re recognizing one’s worthiness of well-being, self-compassion it’s not only a psychological but also a physiological and neurobiological journey. But that’s enough of that. Let’s talk about what we do about this. Let’s shift our focus to actionable steps that we can take to address our health and and heal our relationship with food, especially in the context of recognizing our worthiness and healing from this trauma. So one is cultivate self-compassion and self-worth. Number one. First and foremost, recognize your worthiness, and that begins with self-compassion. It’s essential to treat yourself with kindness and understanding, especially when it comes to our relationship with food. I constantly beat myself up. I’ll run into the kitchen, I’ll have a bag of chips and I’m like I don’t even know how this bag of chips got here. It’s usually because I was stressed out in grocery store. I stressed out ordering groceries because, gosh, there’s so much going on. And now I have a bag of chips and now I got to eat it and I feel guilty if I don’t, or I’ll just go in there mindlessly and grab a thing of bag of chips and I’m eating it and then halfway through I’m like, oh my gosh, what am I doing Right? And who am I to do this? I work in nutrition. I’m letting everybody down. I’m a horrible person. How can I do this? I will tell you. Those are thoughts that I have had in the past and sometimes I still do, and it’s a work in progress of recognizing my pattern and giving myself some self-compassion. It’s OK, let’s make some adjustments to my life. Let’s change this. I actually just had a conversation with my husband last week because this whole stomach thing happened and I recognized my stress level and I thought I have to do something different. And we did. We figured out a plan together and got his additional support and we’re looking at other things that we could do for family pickups, and all of this when it comes to sports, and just asking for other support systems to be in place so that this stress doesn’t have to be. That’s the beauty of this, but I’m getting ahead of myself, ok. So two is recognizing the patterns. One is self-compassion and self-worth. Two is recognizing patterns. Healing requires awareness, so start by recognizing the patterns in your relationship with food that may be connected to trauma or emotional stress. Keep a journal. Track your eating habits, your emotions and triggers. Identify these patterns. I went to Canva just a couple of weeks ago and made myself a tracking book, because I have. You can find health journals and tracking everywhere and anywhere, and I found a lot of those to be really complicated. I didn’t want to spend every day an hour a day talking about all the things that I have ingested and tracking my periods and how I felt. I wanted something very simple, that was very for me, and so I created my own and it feels really good and I’m able to track those things. I also keep a journal, and that was one of the big parts of my healing journey. I was working through that trauma that I had experienced in my 20s, those emotions of feeling so trapped, and that was a big part of the release that I’ve gone through. So I’m so grateful that I went through what I did last week, even though it was excruciating. I learned so much about myself and actually I was very excited. I was sharing with my assistant when it was going down, like hey, I need your help, I’m learning, I’m really sick, but I’m learning so much about myself, like I can’t wait to share with you. And she was like are you okay? Yes, I am, I’m going to make it through and I’m going to learn so much about myself and I’m going to heal. And that’s exactly what happened. So here’s number three mindful eating. This is really tricky because mindful eating it’s a powerful practice and it can help us reestablish this really healthy and intuitive connection with food. And it involves paying full attention to the sensory experience of eating the taste, the texture, the smell and that really helps us become more attuned to our body. But I will tell you, in the decade of working with moms, I find that mindful eating can be sometimes really difficult, especially when there is trauma present, because we feel that we can’t trust our bodies. Okay, and I’m speaking from personal experience and years of working in this field. If you don’t feel like you can trust your body, mindful eating goes out the window. It’s very difficult to do that. So this is where number four comes in, which is seeking professional help. Healing from trauma and addressing disordered eating can require some professional support. Sometimes it’s really big, sometimes it’s a huge deal. There are big things that we have to go through in life that are unfair and unjust and require a therapist or a counselor or someone who can specialize in trauma and or eating disorders. They can provide guidance, coping strategies and really a safe place for healing, and if you don’t have that in your life, I highly recommend finding someone to support you in that. Five is nutritional education. Educate yourself about nutrition and the benefits of nourishing your body with wholesome foods. Learn what that means, because I will tell you, our world is not teaching you what that means. I have nutritionists come to me all the time saying I can’t believe I was taught these other things and they are not true, and it’s an ongoing battle. It’s something that I’m working really strongly on in terms of fighting the system, and that is very difficult in and of itself. I constantly feel like I’m in battle, I’m collecting my troops, we’re doing this together because what we’re being fed pun intended, is untrue and it’s not okay. So really learn about what it is that is healthy and what is not, and why our nutritional world is currently shaped the way it is. Why are we being told what’s not true? It’s a fascinating conversation. Building a supportive community can be really helpful as well. Surround yourself with people friends, family, support groups who understand your journey, sharing, experiencing and receiving encouragement. It doesn’t have to be food related. It can just be motherhood related, something that’s really challenging for you in your life, like motherhood or breastfeeding, or getting out and about and discovering yourself again, discovering who you are. Find something that’s going to give you that support system, that outlet for yourself. There’s also some mind body practices, so incorporating yoga or meditation or Tai Chi or routine prayer in your day. That helps reduce stress, it improves emotional regulation and it just enhances your overall wellbeing, which allows for the connection of food to happen more freely. And the other component to this is getting out in the nature. We have study after study after study that show that just 20 minutes out in nature, by the trees, with our feet in the grass or not, is incredibly helpful in regulating our nervous system, which makes connecting with food and healing from traumas that much more easier. So this is a beautiful list and I highly recommend taking some time to write it down. We’ve got self-compassion and self-worth recognizing your patterns, mindful eating, getting help, nutritional education, finding a community, mindful practices and nature. Our journey in this episode has really been about diving deep into this intricate relationship between healing from trauma, recognizing our worthiness and nurturing our bodies through food, and we’ve explored many different avenues. But, importantly, we’ve also discussed actionable steps to foster this healing and cultivate this self-compassion. And I want you to remember your journey toward a healthier relationship with food and self-worth is unique and a transformative one, and it’s also ongoing. It’s also ongoing. I have been doing this for over a decade and I am still learning. I am not any way shape, form or fashion, the master or having mastered it, and I honestly don’t even believe that really exists, because if we’re doing the work, we’re always learning, we’re always growing, and that is the human experience, and we all have to start somewhere. We all have to start somewhere, so choose to start now if you’ve never started before, choose to continue on your journey, even if it’s hard, recognize it’s never linear, there’s ups and there’s downs and there’s everything in between, and with patience and self-love and the support of a caring community, you can really pave the way for a life filled with health and wellness and the feeling of goodness and every sense of the word. I am so grateful you turned into the Postpartum University podcast. We’ve hoped you enjoyed this episode enough to leave us a quick review and, more importantly, I hope more than ever that you take what you’ve learned here, applied it to your own life and consider joining us in the Postpartum University membership. It’s a private space where mothers and providers learn the real truth and the real tools needed to heal in the years to come and the real tools needed to heal in the years Postpartum. You can learn more at wwwpostpartumu. That’s the letter U.com. We’ll see you next week.