When Food Feels Unsafe: IFS Therapy for Eating Disorders, ARFID and Childhood Trauma
Not all eating disorders are about control or appearance. Some are about protection and survival. Some are about what the body remembers when it was left alone with hunger and no one came.
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) is often misunderstood as a childhood phase or simple pickiness. But for many clients, especially those with histories of trauma, deprivation, or disrupted attachment, ARFID is not about food at all. It is about safety. It is about the internal system’s relationship to nourishment, care, and vulnerability.
From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective, ARFID is not seen as a singular pathology but as a constellation of parts. Each part holds a different belief, burden, or fear around eating. These parts aren’t irrational; they are adaptive.
From a trauma-informed perspective, adaptation is survival. Parts develop strategies not because they are flawed or defiant, but because the system learnt that certain experiences, like eating, asking for care, or receiving attention, led to danger, neglect, or shame. When early environments are unpredictable or threatening, the brain and body encode these conditions as cues for protection. Over time, these protective responses become embodied patterns.
In IFS, we honour these as protective parts who have taken on burdens they were never meant to carry. Whether it’s a part that refuses food, avoids certain textures, or shuts down hunger entirely, their adaptations make sense in the context of what the system has lived through. As Van der Kolk reminds us, the body remembers what the mind might try to forget. These parts are doing their best to keep the system from re-entering situations that once brought danger, rejection, or overwhelm. They are our internal protectors, constantly scanning for signs of threat and mobilising quickly to prevent the system from re-entering danger. While their strategies may be extreme or isolating, their motivation is protection, not punishment. A loyal attempt to keep the system from ever feeling that kind of pain again. Their goal isn’t sabotage; it’s survival.
Recent research helps us understand the clinical backdrop. Koomar et al. (2022) explored the overlap between ARFID and traumatic experiences, especially among children with sensory sensitivities or medical trauma. These children were not simply "difficult" eaters. Their systems had associated feeding with pain, confusion, or lack of control. Bryant-Waugh (2019) highlighted that ARFID often emerges in environments where food has been paired with distress, when nourishment itself becomes dysregulating.
Clinically, I have often met children in out-of-home care who will only eat takeaway or highly processed food. For some, this is all they had access to in chaotic or neglectful homes. One young girl in child protection services refused to eat anything other than canned spaghetti. In therapy, we learnt that this was the only food she knew she could trust; she had learnt to survive on what didn’t rot. Her nervous system had memorised the message: food is not safe, but this one thing is. Her eating behaviour wasn’t defiance. It was loyalty to a survival strategy.
Shame becomes entrenched in these survival patterns. When a child has been shamed for being hungry, for asking for more, or for refusing to eat what felt unsafe, the internalisation can have lasting impacts. Shame teaches the system that having needs is wrong. That asking is dangerous. That being full is greedy. In homes marked by food scarcity, children may learn to hide their hunger, to hoard in secret, or to apologise for wanting more. And in the presence of such shame, the body learns to associate nourishment not with comfort but with guilt, disgust, or exposure.
From an IFS therapy lens, we may meet:
A Manager part that rigidly controls food intake to avoid the unpredictability of taste, texture, or emotional overwhelm.
A Firefighter part that numbs hunger cues altogether, pushing eating out of awareness to avoid triggering pain.
Exiles that carry memories of being force-fed, punished for leaving food, or ignored when crying for milk or comfort. These can often be preverbal, somatic exiles who learnt early that expressing need was dangerous.
In this way, ARFID is often a trauma response, not a food aversion. Norris et al. (2018) noted that children with food insecurity or neglect histories frequently present with hypervigilance around meals and restrictive preferences. These behaviours reflect internalised survival maps, attempts to avoid the chaos of the past.
Healing begins not with a food chart but with presence. Internal Family Systems therapy invites us to slow down and approach each protective part with compassion. When Self is in the lead, we do not shame the part that refuses food; we ask it what it’s afraid might happen. We do not override the part that only eats toast; we witness it. We begin to gently unblend the shame, validate the fear, and reconnect with the exile who learnt that food and care were never truly safe.
Chatoor (2009) reminds us that early feeding trauma is rarely about nutrition alone. It is about attachment and relational patterns where food was used to soothe, punish, ignore, or control. These early dynamics embed themselves in the nervous system and emerge years later as rigid preferences, fear based avoidance, or complete disinterest in eating.
In the therapy room, even small shifts matter. Offering choice, pacing slowly, and attuning to internal consent allows the system to recalibrate. One teenage client, previously hospitalised for malnutrition, once whispered, "It just feels safer to be empty." With time, we explored which part said that and why. Behind it was an exile who had only been fed during arguments. For her, emptiness meant safety and peace.
Self-led healing invites something radical: to reintroduce nourishment not as a demand but as a possibility. The goal is not to force the body to accept food. It is to help the system trust that nourishment will not hurt this time.
And just as restriction can emerge in response to trauma, so too can binge eating be rooted in early experiences of scarcity. When the body and nervous system have learnt that food may not come again or that fullness must be chased in private before it is taken away. Bingeing can become a firefighter's urgent attempt to soothe and reclaim control. In homes where food was withheld, conditional, or weaponised, binge eating is not about a lack of discipline. It is about a deep, adaptive effort to meet unmet needs. In Internal Family Systems therapy, we may encounter protectors who generate a sense of urgency around eating, compelled by a fear that the opportunity for nourishment could vanish again. Exiles who carry the embodied memory of being ignored in their hunger, left to navigate the emptiness alone. In these systems, fullness can feel like safety. Until it doesn’t. And so the cycle repeats, not out of choice, but out of a desperate internal sequence built around survival.
Internal Family Systems therapy helps us untangle these internal sequences with compassion, allowing each part to be heard, each burden to be witnessed, and each exile to finally receive the care it never got.
Because when food has been paired with pain, eating is no longer a neutral act, it becomes a courageous choice. A quiet rebellion against past deprivation. Each bite is a gesture of hope that this time, nourishment will not hurt.
Disclaimer: This blog is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional help. If you are in crisis, please call Butterfly Foundation 1800 334 673, Lifeline 13 11 14 or 000 in an emergency.
At Let’s Work On That, we offer Internal Family Systems therapy that welcomes your whole system, exactly as it is. You can book a session or learn more about our approach.
References:
Anderson, L. M., & Anderson, S. M. (2023). Internal Family Systems Therapy and Eating Disorders: Treating the Whole System. Routledge.
Bryant-Waugh, R. (2019). ARFID: Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder in children and adolescents. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 32(6), 476–481.
Chatoor, I. (2009). Diagnosing Feeding Disorders: A Developmental-Transactional Framework. Infant Mental Health Journal, 30(3), 209–224.
Koomar, T., Thomas, C., et al. (2022). The role of trauma in avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder: A review. Journal of Eating Disorders, 10(1), 1–13.
Lucene Wisniewski, L., & Kelly, E. (2019). Using the Internal Family Systems Model in the Treatment of Eating Disorders: An Integrative Approach. Eating Disorders Journal, 27(3), 249–265.
Norris, M. L., Spettigue, W., & Katzman, D. K. (2018). Feeding difficulties and ARFID in child welfare settings: A trauma-informed perspective. Eating Disorders, 26(4), 352–365.
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
