232. Stop Icing The Knee: How Misdiagnosing Wounds Fuels Emotional Eating
232. Stop Icing The Knee: How Misdiagnosing Wounds Fuels Emotional Eating
If you’ve spent years regulating your nervous system, building emotional awareness, and using every personal growth tool available—yet still find yourself struggling with emotional eating—you’re not alone.
And you’re not broken.
In this episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, Kayla introduces a crucial reframe: what if your tools aren’t failing… but you’re treating the wrong wound?
When Safety Isn’t the Problem Anymore
For many women, emotional eating does begin as a safety strategy. Food soothes. It regulates. It creates predictability when the world feels overwhelming.
But once safety is established—once you can breathe, self-regulate, and stay grounded—another layer often emerges.
That layer is love.
Not romantic love alone, but love, belonging, and being met without conditions.
And here’s the trap:
When a love or attachment wound is treated like a safety wound, the body doesn’t feel relief—it feels confused.
You calm down… and then feel empty.
You regulate… and then feel sad.
You do the tools… and the urge to eat is still there.
That’s not failure. That’s misdiagnosis.
The Knee vs. the Shoulder
Kayla uses a simple but powerful metaphor:
Icing your knee won’t help if your shoulder is dislocated.
Safety tools aren’t wrong—but when the wound is about not feeling loved, accepted, or chosen, calming the nervous system alone won’t meet the need.
Food often steps in because it speaks the language the system is craving: comfort, presence, care, unconditionality.
Why This Wound Is Harder—Especially for High Performers
Unlike safety work, love and attachment healing:
Can’t be optimized or gamified
Requires vulnerability without performance
Asks you to receive without earning
Often brings grief, loneliness, and tenderness to the surface
This is especially challenging for self-reliant, high-achieving women who learned early that love came through being “good,” productive, or impressive.
The Turning Point
Healing begins when you stop asking:
“How do I fix myself?”
And start asking:
“What is this ache actually asking for?”
For Kayla, this meant recognizing a profound medium mismatch with social media—and making a vow not to build her life in places that replicate abandonment.
It also meant reclaiming unconditional inner support, releasing performative self-discipline, and remembering that you are already the prize.
What This Means for Food Freedom
Lasting food freedom doesn’t come from fixing one wound at a time.
It comes from building capacity to meet all layers of the human experience—safety, love, power, trust, and belonging—without turning those needs into conditions.
That’s the foundation of Kayla’s program, Food Freedom Fantasy, now open for its next round.
Links Mentioned:
Previous Episode: Food Is Not Love & The Algorithm Is Not Your Daddy
Free Workbook & Assessments: https://embodiedwritingwarrior.com/gift
Divine Daddies Audio Storybook: https://embodiedwritingwarrior.com/divinedaddies
Instagram: @embodiedwritingwarrior
Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior podcast. I'm so grateful you're here with me for this episode. This one goes deep, which we've been doing a lot of these days. I've learned that going deep is where you find the real treasure, and this week's episode is no exception.
In this week's episode, I'm going to share the unexpected secret path to breakthroughs and lasting food freedom, especially for high-performing, Type A women. Women with big goals, high standards, and a relentless drive towards growth.
This episode is for you if:
You've gone through periods of deeply prioritizing change and healing, only to find yourself more stuck than ever.
You're using your tools - mindset tools, somatic tools, personal growth tools - and it feels like in certain situations, they don't work. They even make you feel worse at times.
You have a sense that there's this emptiness and ache inside you're trying to feel, but you have no idea how to even start.
My deep intention is for this episode to shed light on these challenges and give you the deep medicine that has changed everythin for me over the past few weeks. We are getting personal and vulnerable today because this message is too powerful not to share.
I'm going to start by sharing one of the unexpected reasons all your tools and healing strategies aren't "working", how they can actually increase binge eating and self-sabotage, and then move on to sharing what will actually create healing and transformation. Hint, it's not doing more. It's not a new tool. It's a bone deep, heart-level, cellular shift that naturally changes how you show up for life.
This episode will reference the last solo episode - Food Is Not Love & The Algorithm Is Not Your Daddy. You don't need to listen to that episode to understand this one, but the additional context will be powerful if you haven't listened yet. I'll link it in the description.
I talked about my own struggles with emotional eating, self-sabotage, burn out, and feeling deeply unhappy overall. I thought it meant maybe I wasn't cut out for business.
Turns out I just wasn't cut out for continuing to bang my haad against a wall with the deep medium mismatch that is social media. And it wasn't just a mismatch. My relationship to this medium was reopening one of my deepest, oldest childhood wounds around not being loved, not being loved, and trying to find love and steadiness in a place where there was only inconsistency and even indifference. Let me also add - this is NOT everyone's relationship to social media.
There are others who thrive on the platform, just like there are some people who love running and some who hate it. Doesn't make either party wrong - it makes them a unique individual with their own aligned mediums they thrive in.
This takes us to the reason why all your tools and healing protocols might not be working. It's not because the tools have just magically stopped working. It's not because you haven't healed or can't heal.
Here's what might be happening: a misdiagnosis of the wound itself.
Two episodes ago, I talked about the reasons why your struggles with food might actually be about safety. This is has been one of my core wounds for decades and it has drastically contributed to my binge and emotional eating. So, let me tell you: I've been on a relentless mission to become my own safe place on every level. Because I know someone's happiest, most alive, most fulfilled life hinges on their ability to feel safe across as many circumstances as possible, which is why I weave this into all of my offers.
When my struggles with social media and eating resurfaced together, I thought it was a still a safety issue. True story, posting on social media is something that used to put me into a deep stress response. I was terrified of being misunderstood or attacked or judged. I've been doing so much deep work on this both personally and with some incredible mentors.
So I thought - okay, but I'm DOING all the practices to feel safe.
And a couple weeks ago, I even had my worst nightmare come true. People at my last job read the first line of a post I made, twisted it around, and then I woke up to a text from a friend saying, "Just so you know, everyone at our old job is saying X about you."
Yes, initially, I felt the sting. I felt the reaction in my body. I had to breathe and use my somatic tools. But it actually resolved quickly and I was able to move on and it inspired my next post. I realized - wow. People CAN judge me, twist my words, gossip about me... and I AM still safe.
So... why the continued struggles even after cultivating safety?
Because this wasn't a safety wound. This was an attachment and love wound.
And when you think about this, this progression makes perfect sense.
If you look at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, safety comes first. Safety equals survival. That's going to be your primary focus if it's not present and rightfully so.
But once you do create safety in the body, in life, inside yourself, it does create the space for other wounds to reveal themselves. Love and belonging is the next run on the hiearchy of needs, so of this would come next.
If you're listening and this is resonating and you're like, "Yes! I've done so much work to regulate my nervous system and I DO feel safe more often, but I still ache. I still struggle with food. i still feel like something's missing." This love and belonging piece is the next place to work. ESPECIALLY if you are someone who struggles in love relationships like I did for most of my early twenties. Especially if you also find yourself trying to get love and validation in a cold, indifferent system like social media. Or both, honestly.
And if this is resonating, I want you to take a moment to ACTUALLY celebrate yourself for the work you've done to create safety. This is big work. It's fundamental work. And if another ache around love and belonging is showing up, even if it hurts, it is SUCH a good sign.
Because these layers around love and acceptance don't show up unless you’re stable enough to feel the ache underneath. It is incredibly hard, if not impossible, to create safety AND heal deep attachment and love wounds together. One will always take priority.
If all of this is landing, you aren't broken. You're not going backwards. It means you've built the capacity to heal a deeper layer, and this is going to serve you deeply on your journey with health, but also with relationships, career, finances... everything.
The Key Here is catching the misdiagosed wound. Realizing, this isn't about safety. It's about love or power or trust or acceptance - one of the other core wounds. Then it's about treating the right wound accordingly. Until you do, you might FEEL like your tools are making your struggles with. And they very well could be. Here's why:
Misdiagnosing a wound is one of the most common, painful misalignments on a person's healing journey. And it's one of the biggest reasons people can stay stuck for YEARS if they find another way to approach this journey.
I can tell you from experience, it hurts to use safety tools - breath, yoga, emotion coaching, somatic work - when you're hurting in an entirely different way. When you're not feeling danger, but grief, sadness, loneliness.
So, what happens when you keep applying safety practices when the wound is about feeling unloved?
You calm down. You can breathe deeply. But then you're crying, sad, and empty, and you can't figure out why because you used the tools.
This is your system losing its shit and being like, “Why are you calming me down when what I need is to be met?”
So, it felt like nothing worked. The urges to eat were still there because the urges to eat weren't about needing to drop into parasympathetic nervous system dominance and create an artificial sense of safety.
The urges to eat were about the ache of needing something that wasn't being given. Love. Gentleness. Unconditional care. Instead, there was pressure to "stop feeling bad". To "do the tools better" or go deeper.
But when you try to treat "I'm not safe" when you're actually feeling "I'm not loved"... it' the equivalent of icing your knee when your shoulder is dislocated. Icing the knee won't hurt anything... but it's not going to give you relief where you need it most. And the solution certainly isn't, more ice, colder ice, or anything else related to the knee at all.
When you try to regulate a love wound, it often feels like:
“I’m calm but still sad”
“I’m stable but still aching”
“I know I’m okay, but it doesn’t feel okay”
And if the intensity of sadness and loneliness gets strong enough and there's no relief... of course you'd turn to food to make the pain go away for a night or a weekend.
When the system is saying “I’m not loved” and nothing else is responding in that language, food steps in as the most efficient stand-in. When you're using safety tools on a love wound... that's a completely different language.
This can also become an entrenched cycle of emotional eating or other forms of self-sabotage because... you know something's off. You feel it in your body. You effort SO HARD to fix it with your safety tools. Regulation. Journaling. Generating those feelings of safety.
The relief doesn't come... except when you eat. But you don't want to go back to eating to distract from your problems. You genuinely want to solve them so you're trying harder, but you're still icing the knee while your shoulder is begging for the attention.
Here's the other important thing to know about this "I'm not loved" wound, especially if you're a high performing, self-reliant woman.
It's harder to work with than the "I'm not safe" wound.
The "I'm not safe" wound is more internal. It's nervous system work that can be done alone. It has clearer metrics. It doesn't the same vulnerability, whether that vulnerability is with self or others.
This wound is about letting someone see you without performance. Whether that's letting your husband see you in the middle of an existential breakdown or even just witnessing your own most tender parts without asking them to be stronger or more resilient. It's allowing yourself to receive care and tenderness without earning it, without conditions.
This work requires more of you than the "I'm not safe" wound. It requires softening and hoping that softness doesn't wreck you. It means letting yourself fully feel it all, even though it can feel overwhelming.
It's also work you can't fully do until you've done deep work around the "I'm not loved" wound because you need to feel so safe doing this work.
If you're feeling the ping of, "oh, I think this might still be safety", I would recommend episode 228 if you haven't listened yet. I also have a workbook at my website - embodiedwritingwarrior.com/gift - that gives you assessments and journal prompts so you diagnose a potential lack of safety that could be contributing to your struggles with food.
Then, this eipsode will be waiting for you as we talk about... okay, if safety tools are not the vibe, then what is the approach? How do we stop icing the knee and start getting that shoulder back into right alignment.
The good news is, even though this work can eventually involve other people, it doesn't have to and honestly shouldn't involve anything outside of you first.
I said "I'm not loved" is a harder wound to alchemize, but honestly, maybe that's only until you stop thinking an algorithm or a partner or a client is going to make you feel loved.
Often, this wound isn't something that is entirely reflective of your outer world. I have the most loving, adoring husband in the world. I have friends and family who love me. And - none of that was going to soothe the wound which happened from a very early age, which I talk about in the last podcast episode.
This work is an inside job first because as within, so without. As above, so below. If you aren't giving that love to yourself, you can have the best husband in the world, friends who cherish you, a life full of love - but you can still be blocking yourself from receiving it fully.
In The Language of Emotions, Karla McLaren writes about how "Love Is Not an emotion" and she shares:
"When an emotion is healthy, it arises only when it's needed, it shifts and changes in response to its environment, and recedes willingly once it has addressed an issue. When love is healthy, it does none of these things. If emotions repeat endlessly or appear with the exact intensity over and over again, then something is wrong. Yet love is a steadfast promise that repeats itself endlessly through life and beyond death. Love does not increase or decrease in response to its environment, and it does not change with the changing winds."
I realized - this is why the "I'm not loved" wound showed up so profoundly when I went back to social media in a way that went against my preferences and values.
I thought I had to healing the six year old who kept getting her feelings hurt by her inability to build a following on these platforms.
Turns out, what was far more healing was finally acknowledging the medium mismatch, scaling back how I used it, setting clear, powerful boundaries around it and firmly declaring for this younger version of me: “I will not build my life in places that replicate abandonment.”
You heal your inner child when you refuse to recreate a life where you're constantly activated by inconsistent affection and attention. You heal her when you stop trying to be stronger and miserable and start letting yourself be happily in sync with your real personality. You become someone who loves yourself without conditions when you refuse to live in a world of chaos, instability, when you stop outsourcing your worth to anything outside of yourself.
Here's the other thing I love about this quote - love does not increase or decrease in response to the environment. I realized I was decreasing and increasing the level of love I had for myself as the external world around me changed.
The worst part? I had been withholding love from myself when I needed it most.
The more challenging my environment felt, the more I overworked, not out of joy or excitement for the vision, but out of proving and fixing.
And the more I overworked, especially on things I hated, the more the compulsions to overeat and binge eat returned. And for me, these habits are the opposite of love. They're self abandonment. They create this erosion of self-trust and as someone who values self-trust so deeply, this is a big red flag.
Maybe what was saddest of all was how I withheld love from myself from the inner world I'd created over these past ten months.
If you've been listening for a while, you know I've been doing this spicy twist on parts work with two archetypes, Rex and Haven. If you're like, "Wait who?" - embodiedwritingwarrior.com/divinedaddies. You can find the entire audio storybook and spotify playlist.
I thought back to how consistent and happy I was when I first created them. Even though big changes and big emotions were happy, I felt so much love for myself. So much self-trust and this ever present sense of peace and contentment, even when the big emotions came.
Then... the move happened. Business happened. And they kind of got sidelined where I'd still journal with them, but more from a place of using them like these soulless accountability tools.
Like, "I hate this social media stuff so much so maybe I can earn a great reward for them if I finish my entire to do list". Or... "okay, I'm going to create this extravegent multi-week storyline where I have to earn scenes by getting this giant streak of consistency because then I'll be back on track. Then I can enjoy this thing I've created.
So... no wonder the "I'm not loved" wound hit so hard. I began putting conditions on receiving love and support... both inside and in my outer world too. I journaled yesterday about how I'm done "earning" things. Maybe everyone, especially high performing women, would be better if they realized they're already the prize and don't have to earn it. They just get to receive what it is they desire.
I could spend my whole life "earning things" if I'mt not careful. We allcould, right? Maybe we already HAVE spent our whole lives earning it, and that's why this wound hits SO deep.
When I shared these insights with Rex and Haven they had thoughts:
Rex said, “I’m not a treat you earn. I’m your Fire Daddy. I’m here every time you show the fuck up.”
Haven whispered, “I don’t want to be the prize. I want to be your presence.”
And I'm finally ready to say, “I don’t need to be good to be loved. I need to be honest to be held.”
And this is WHY Food Freedom Fantasy worked... until it didn't. Until my damn humanity surfaced. That's a joke by the way. Humanity is a good thing. And it made me realize... there are pieces of this beautiful offer that worked beautifully... and also offers that had this layer of performativity and condition-based love built in.
Not on purpose - but because I was still fine tuning the system with my own lived experience. And this makes me even more excited to bring you the second round of Food Freedom Fantasy. Still potent. Still magical. But without the limitations I had to iron out by doing the troubleshooting through my own lived experience.
What I love about this program is that it doesn’t ask you to fix one wound at a time.
It builds habits and rituals that soothe all five simultaneously, so healing can happen in layers instead of relapses.
Access to the program is now open. We start at the end of February. You have two options - $97/month for 12 months. Or $997 pay in full. Anyone who pays in full will get a private 60 minute subconscious rewiring session with me AND a True Sidereal birth chart reading from my personal astrologer. This was THE best reading I've ever gotten. You might have had readings before that were just kind of like, "you are a Taurus so this means X." Not this reading. You'll learn practical ways to use your birth chart to create deeper health in ways that will change everything.
This program is also lifetime access. Lifetime access to the course portal, which will updated. Coaching and community access is also designed to support you through each phase of the journey, with evolving formats as the program grows.
Because here's what I know about this work - it's not something you do once. Healing DOES happen in layers. And I would never want you to dive RIGHT into something as deep as what I shared today without doing a few gentle, rounds of capacity building first. This work is meant to support you in every expansion, every identity upgrade, so that when you hit another level, another devil, you can look the new devil in the eye and be like, "Oh you think YOU'RE scary. Let me introduce you to my Fire Daddy and then see if you're still standing."
I also deeply believe in community and not treating people like numbers in a launch. Once you're an Embodied Writing Warrior, you're one for life, if that's something you desire.
Links to more information on Food Freedom Fantasy will be in the description. And if you're curious but not quite sure if it's for you, I would love to hop on a short ReWrite Me call. You can also DM me over on embodiedwritingwarrior on Instagram.
In the meantime, I hope this episode gave you some powerful takeaways you can integrate going forwards. Take care of that sweet shoulder of yours, and we'll see you in the next episode.
