How Somatic Therapy Helps Heal Body Image Struggles and Disordered Eating
Chloë Bean, LMFT is a licensed somatic trauma therapist based in Los Angeles, specializing in anxiety, burnout, trauma, and nervous system healing for high-achieving women. Her work integrates somatic therapy, EMDR, and IFS to support lasting regulation, resilience, and relational healing.
Somatic Therapy for Body Image and Disordered Eating | Trauma-Informed Therapy Los Angeles
Body image struggles and disordered eating are often less about food or control and more about how safe the nervous system feels inside the body.
If you find yourself constantly thinking about your body, obsessing over food, or caught in a loop of restriction, bingeing, and guilt—you’re not broken.
These patterns aren’t really about food or willpower. They’re about the level of safety in the body.
As a Somatic Trauma Therapist in Los Angeles, I often meet high-achieving women who feel disconnected from their bodies despite years of therapy, journaling, or reading every self-help book out there. They understand the “why” intellectually, yet still feel stuck in self-criticism and control.
Somatic therapy offers a different path—one that works through the body, not around it.
What’s Beneath Disordered Eating
Disordered eating often serves as a way to manage what once felt unmanageable. It might look like emotional eating, rigid food rules, or over-exercise—but underneath, there’s usually:
Chronic anxiety or panic
Perfectionism and people-pleasing
Childhood trauma, neglect, or enmeshment
Toxic or narcissistic relationships
A desperate need for control when everything feels uncertain
You may have learned to disconnect from your body to survive. To numb. To belong. To be “good.”
And yet, your body never stopped keeping score.
Body Image and Trauma: Fight, Flight, Freeze
When you’ve lived through trauma—especially relational or developmental—your nervous system adapts to protect you. Those survival responses can later appear as:
Fight: harsh inner critic attacking your body first
Flight: constant movement, dieting, or “fixing”
Freeze: numbness, fog, or shame that keeps you stuck
Your relationship with your body didn’t start with food—it started with early messages from family, culture, or society: you’re too much, not enough, only lovable when you perform.
Healing has to go deeper than mindset; it has to involve your body.
How Somatic Therapy Restores the Mind-Body Connection
Somatic therapy invites you to notice—not analyze—how your body carries its story.
It helps you reconnect with the sensations underneath the thoughts, where fear, shame, and self-protection live.
A trauma-informed somatic approach may weave together:
Somatic Experiencing® — to release stored fight-or-flight energy
Internal Family Systems (IFS) — to meet protective parts like the perfectionist or inner critic with compassion
EMDR — to reprocess memories that shaped how you see your body
The goal isn’t to “fix” your body image overnight; it’s to rebuild trust with your nervous system so your body can finally exhale.
(For background on how trauma lives in the body, see The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.)
Simple Somatic Practices for Reconnection
Healing body shame begins with small, compassionate moments. In therapy, we might explore:
Tracking Sensation – noticing subtle shifts like warmth, breath, or tension without judgment.
Resourcing – identifying sounds, images, or movements that bring a sense of safety.
Parts Work (IFS) – letting the part that hates your body and the part that longs for peace both have a voice.
Movement & Stillness – grounding, breath, or gentle motion to reconnect curiosity and care.
From Shame → Safety → Self-Compassion
Most clients think they have a “body image problem,” but it’s really a safety problem.
Somatic therapy helps shift the story from “There’s something wrong with me” to “I was doing my best to stay safe.”
When that shift happens—slowly, at the pace your body allows—your body becomes a place you can finally live in, not just manage.
You don’t need to love your body to start healing.
You only need a safe space to listen to it.
You deserve to feel at home in your body again.
And you do not have to force that feeling or earn it.
If you have been stuck in cycles of food worry, body judgment, or perfectionism, there is nothing wrong with you. These patterns often develop as ways the body learned to stay safe, especially in environments where control or vigilance felt necessary.
Somatic therapy offers a slower, more compassionate path forward by helping your nervous system feel safe enough to soften, listen, and reconnect. I offer trauma-informed, somatic therapy for body image struggles and disordered eating in West Los Angeles and online throughout California.
If it feels supportive, you are welcome to reach out and see if working together feels like a good next step.
FAQ: Somatic Therapy and Body Image Healing
How is somatic therapy different from traditional talk therapy?
Traditional talk therapy focuses on understanding thoughts, beliefs, and patterns. Somatic therapy works with the nervous system and the body, helping you experience safety, grounding, and regulation in real time. When the body feels safer, insight can land more deeply and change becomes more sustainable, especially for body image struggles rooted in stress or trauma.
Do I have to talk about my trauma in detail for somatic therapy to work?
No. Somatic therapy does not require retelling traumatic memories or going into detail before you feel ready. Sessions move at your body’s pace and focus on present-moment sensations, emotions, and nervous system responses. Healing can happen through gentle awareness and regulation without re-living past experiences.
Can somatic therapy help if I’ve already done years of therapy?
Yes. Many people who have done years of talk therapy find somatic work helpful when they feel “stuck in their head.” By working with body sensations and nervous system patterns, somatic therapy can support deeper integration and shifts that cognitive insight alone may not create.
Is somatic therapy appropriate for disordered eating and body image struggles?
Somatic therapy can be supportive for people navigating disordered eating patterns and body image distress, especially when these patterns are connected to stress, trauma, or nervous system dysregulation. While it is not a replacement for specialized eating disorder treatment when needed, somatic therapy can help address the underlying sense of unsafety, control, or disconnection that often fuels these behaviors.
How does somatic therapy help improve body image?
Somatic therapy helps rebuild a sense of safety and trust in the body. As the nervous system becomes more regulated, many people experience less body monitoring, reduced shame, and a softer relationship with food and self-image. Rather than forcing body positivity, the work supports neutrality, compassion, and reconnection over time.