Episode 1 : Uncovering the Roots of Binge Eating: A Personal Journey

In the first episode of Beneath the Binge, somatic practitioner Alex Bottomley introduces a body and nervous-system based approach to understanding and recovering from binge eating, aiming to replace shame with compassion and build internal safety so food is no longer the main comfort.She shares her decade-long, largely hidden struggle marked by all-or-nothing thinking, cycles of control and collapse, and extensive searching for fixes through diets, therapies, and medical visits, including chronic pain that helped lead her toward embodiment work. Alex connects her binge eating to grief and overwhelm after her father’s death at age 15 and to early body-image pressures and dieting from ages 11–12.She explains restriction and bingeing as two protective survival responses and outlines healing as developing capacity to feel emotions and sensations with supportive resources rather than rules.For more information, visit www.thefoodfreedomtherapist.com or @thefoodfreedomtherapist