268. Face-Down In Crazy Bread: What’s Actually Happening In Your Nervous System
268. Face-Down In Crazy Bread: What’s Actually Happening In Your Nervous System
The Nervous System Cycle Behind Binge Eating in High-Performing Women
You can destroy a to-do list in record time.
You can finish the difficult workout, meet the deadline, manage the crisis, lead the project, and accomplish things that require far more effort than resisting the impulse to buy snacks.
Then the end of the day arrives.
Suddenly, you’re eating in front of a television show you don’t even like while scrolling through your phone and wondering where all your discipline went.
This experience can feel especially confusing when you’re a Type A, hard-charging, high-capacity woman.
You know you aren’t lazy.
You know you can do difficult things.
So why can binge or emotional eating make you feel strangely powerless?
One possible answer lies beneath the level of willpower.
Binge eating may be connected to the way your nervous system moves between activation, overwhelm, and collapse.
Understanding that cycle can help you stop treating the behaviour like a moral failure and begin responding to the root pattern with greater precision and compassion.
Three Nervous-System States
Polyvagal theory describes different autonomic states associated with safety, mobilization, and shutdown.
I’ve translated these ideas into more symbolic language:
Ocean Brain
Fire Brain
Rock Brain
These names are not clinical diagnoses. They are practical metaphors that can help you recognize what is happening inside your body before an unwanted eating pattern takes over.
Ocean Brain: Safety, Presence, and Connection
Ocean Brain is associated with the ventral vagal or socially connected state.
This is the calm oasis.
You feel present, grounded, peaceful, and capable of slowing down. Your system is not urgently searching for danger, escape, or relief.
In Ocean Brain, your relationship with food may feel clearer.
You may find it easier to:
Recognize genuine hunger
Distinguish hunger from another unmet need
Eat without urgency
Notice satisfaction
Stop when you have had enough
Experience less food obsession
Remain present during and after a meal
Ocean Brain can also support higher-quality work.
Because you are less rushed and braced, you may make fewer mistakes and access greater creative depth.
But Ocean Brain is not the only valuable state.
You are not meant to remain soft, slow, and serene every second of the day.
You also need fire.
Fire Brain: Mobilization and Action
Fire Brain is associated with sympathetic activation, often described as fight or flight.
Your heart rate rises. Your body mobilizes. Your attention narrows toward a challenge or goal.
This state is frequently treated as though it is automatically unhealthy.
It isn’t.
For a naturally driven woman, healthy Fire Brain can be one of her greatest resources.
The important distinction is between Exalted Fire Brain and Detrimental Fire Brain.
Exalted Fire Brain
Exalted Fire Brain is warrior mode.
It feels like:
Focus
Determination
Motivation
Power
Aliveness
Healthy intensity
“I’ve got this” energy
This is useful during a workout, creative sprint, difficult conversation, demanding project, or focused period of deep work.
You are activated, but presence is still possible.
Ocean Brain presence may feel soft and expansive. Exalted Fire Brain presence is more directional. You are locked onto something that matters.
Food may temporarily move into the background while you finish a meaningful task. You may delay lunch for ten minutes because you are almost finished writing a chapter, not because you are trying to suppress or punish your hunger.
Exalted Fire Brain is generally:
Chosen intentionally
Aimed at a specific purpose
Focused
Time-bound
You are using the fire rather than being consumed by it.
The problem begins when you remain there for too long.
Detrimental Fire Brain
Detrimental Fire Brain develops when healthy activation escalates into pressure, urgency, and overload.
You begin to tighten, brace, rush, and overthink.
It can feel as though there is never enough time and you must keep pushing, even though your focus and effectiveness are already deteriorating.
This state may result from:
Overworking
Over-exercising
Restricting food
White-knuckling cravings
Ignoring fatigue
Resisting legitimate desires for rest
Placing yourself under constant pressure
Moving from one challenge directly into another
The body’s early requests for support are treated as obstacles to overcome.
Eventually, the system cannot maintain that level of activation.
That is when Fire Brain may collapse into Rock Brain.
Rock Brain: Collapse, Disconnection, and the Binge Trance
Rock Brain is my name for a shutdown or freeze-like state, sometimes associated with dorsal vagal activation.
I used to assume I rarely experienced this state because I pictured freeze as being physically unable to move.
But shutdown does not always look like lying motionless beneath a pile of blankets.
For some women, binge eating can function like part of a collapse or disconnection response.
You may still physically move food toward your mouth, but the experience feels automatic, numb, or strangely frozen.
You are no longer making one conscious decision after another.
You are in a trance.
This is often accompanied by:
Television
Doomscrolling
Watching videos
Mental fog
Feeling unable to stop
A desire to disappear
Emotional numbness
Dissociation or disconnection
The system is saying, “I can’t.”
Instead of shutting down through complete immobility, it shuts down through food, screens, and escape.
This does not mean every binge is caused by nervous-system shutdown. Binge eating is complex and can have multiple psychological, physiological, social, and environmental contributors.
But for many high-performing women, this lens can explain an important part of the pattern.
Why One Binge Can Lead to Another
Many women can go several weeks or months without binge eating.
Then one binge happens, followed by another and another.
Why does the cycle suddenly feel so difficult to escape?
During the binge-free period, you may have been naturally moving between Ocean Brain and Exalted Fire Brain.
You worked hard, focused, rested, connected, and returned to a calmer state before your internal fire became overwhelming.
Then something changed.
You stayed in Fire Brain too long.
Exalted Fire became detrimental. Detrimental Fire led to collapse. Collapse became Rock Brain, and food provided disconnection or relief.
Afterward, your high-performing parts immediately tried to fix the problem.
You tightened your rules.
You promised to become more disciplined.
You searched for a new strategy.
You tracked more carefully, restricted more aggressively, or created a punishing plan to compensate for what happened.
That activation helped pull you out of Rock Brain, but it did not return you to Ocean Brain.
It launched you straight back into Fire Brain.
Because the new Fire Brain was powered by shame, urgency, and self-punishment, it quickly became detrimental.
Then you collapsed again.
The cycle becomes:
Rock Brain → Fire Brain → Overheated Fire Brain → Rock Brain
The problem is not that you lack the activation needed to escape collapse.
High-performing women are usually excellent at generating activation.
The problem is that you use so much fire to escape Rock Brain that you fly straight past Ocean Brain and begin overheating again.
Why Traditional Diets Can Make the Cycle Worse
Rigid diets, wellness challenges, and structured protocols can intensify this pattern.
Imagine you are completing a 30-day challenge.
You miss a workout or eat something outside the plan while in Rock Brain.
The program tells you that you have fallen behind.
Your high-performing parts respond by doubling down.
You may:
Add an extra workout
Restrict the following day
Tighten your food rules
Track everything more obsessively
Use negative self-talk as motivation
Try to catch up
Demand immediate perfection
This creates more Fire Brain activation.
It may temporarily make you feel powerful and back in control, but the increased pressure can eventually send you into another collapse.
The plan treats the binge as evidence that you need stronger discipline.
Your body may be communicating that you need a safer and more compassionate route back to connection.
Binge Eating Is Not a Character Defect
This nervous-system framework changed how I understood my own experience.
For years, I treated binge and emotional eating as evidence that I needed to become more disciplined, more controlled, or better at personal growth.
But shame did not resolve the pattern.
It often added more pressure, which created more Fire Brain, which increased the likelihood of another collapse.
Viewing the pattern through a physiological and nervous-system lens reduced shame.
It also helped me stop attacking the symptom and begin supporting the conditions underneath it.
You are not broken.
You are not weak.
And struggling with binge eating does not erase the evidence that you are capable, driven, and powerful.
You may simply need to learn how to work with your nervous system instead of repeatedly trying to overpower it.
Three Practices for Interrupting the Fire–Rock Cycle
1. Track Your Current State
Begin asking yourself throughout the day:
Am I in Ocean Brain, Fire Brain, or Rock Brain?
You do not need to conduct an elaborate analysis.
Simply notice.
Perhaps you are in Exalted Fire Brain during a contained 50-minute creative block. You feel focused, energized, and present.
Perhaps the block has stretched into three hours. Your jaw is tight, your thoughts are racing, and you feel frantic every time something interrupts you.
That may be Detrimental Fire Brain.
Perhaps you feel foggy, disconnected, and glued to food and screens.
That may be Rock Brain.
Naming the state gives you an opportunity to respond before the cycle gains more momentum.
2. Schedule Ocean Brain Returns
Ocean Brain returns should not be treated as optional rewards you receive after finishing every productive task.
Build them into your day like important appointments.
An Ocean Brain return might include:
Five minutes of slower breathing
A short walk outside
A brief yoga or stretching practice
Time in nature
A two-minute puppy cuddle
Sitting quietly with tea
Listening to calming music
Connecting with someone you trust
Pausing between deep-work blocks
These practices do not need to be long.
They need to help you return to softness, safety, connection, and gentle presence.
For a high-performing woman, these pauses may not initially feel natural.
That is precisely why they must become intentional.
3. Move Through Fire and Descend Into Ocean
When you are already in Rock Brain, you may need a small amount of activation before a calming practice feels accessible.
Try something that brings movement back into the body:
Take a short walk
Shake your hands and limbs
Practise gentle tapping
Stand up and change rooms
Stretch
Put on one song and move
This activation is not the final destination.
It is the bridge out of collapse.
Once you have regained some movement, choose a practice that helps you descend from Fire Brain into Ocean Brain.
That might mean yoga, nature, physical affection, breathing, rest, or quiet connection.
The crucial piece is compassion.
Do not turn nervous-system regulation into another performance standard.
The goal is not:
“I have to regulate myself so I stop doing this stupid thing.”
The goal is:
“I want to feel connected to myself again.”
You are not returning to Ocean Brain so you can become more controlled, productive, or perfect.
You are returning because peace, presence, and food freedom become more available there.
Your Embodied Activation
For the next several days, pause three times daily and identify your state:
Ocean, Fire, or Rock?
Notice what tends to move you from Exalted Fire into Detrimental Fire.
Then choose one Ocean Brain return you can schedule before your system reaches collapse.
Finally, create a simple Rock Brain plan:
Use gentle movement to interrupt the trance.
Let that movement bring you into manageable activation.
Choose a compassionate practice that helps you descend into Ocean Brain.
You do not need to fight yourself harder.
You need a safer path home.
Discover Your Root Cause
Food Freedom Fantasy explores this framework more deeply, along with a five-element approach to building consistency without abandoning your creativity, intensity, or emotional depth.
To receive launch updates, visit:
embodiedwritingwarrior.com/gift
You’ll receive the free Know Your Hungers assessment kit, which explores five potential root causes behind binge eating and burnout in high-performing creative women, plus a customized audio care package based on your results.
You’re not broken.
You’re just misdiagnosed.
Links Mentioned
Transcript
Hello, and welcome back to the show. My desire for this episode is that after listening, you will never see binge and emotional eating the same way ever again. You will no longer see them as evident of powerlessness or moral failure, especially if you're a Type A, hard-charging, high-performing woman.
Here's what's probably true. You're high-functioning and high-capacity
You can absolutely destroy a to-do list in record time. You're not short on drive, work ethic, or ability. And maybe you still find yourself eating all the things after conquering the day. And you think to yourself, "Okay, but I just did so many things that were way harder than resisting the impulse to go buy snacks.
Why am I still face down in crazy bread in front of some garbage TV show that isn't even good, while also scrolling stupid reels on my phone at the end of the night?" This episode is going to address one big root cause of binge and emotional eating
We are gonna break down the deeper nervous system mechanism happening below the surface. Yes, I know, I know, the nervous system. Everyone is talking about it. It has become a bit of a buzzword, but sometimes things become buzzwords because they're important. But this is not going to be a general regulate your nervous system episode.
We are getting specific on what this looks like in high-performing women, because it looks different than what you might normally think of when you imagine dysregulation. We're also talking about how all this directly impacts cravings and compulsions to binge eat. You're gonna understand why you can go weeks or even months without a single binge, but then one binge seems to lead to another, and then another, creating a cycle that feels difficult to break free from before you understand what's happening.
You'll learn why traditional approaches to wellness, things like challenges, plans, protocols, diets, make this nervous system mechanism worse instead of better. You're gonna walk away understanding that this is a physiological pattern that is normal for anyone with a human body and nervous system. You'll leave knowing you are not broken or weak.
You're also going to get three practices for working with this root cause. One's created specifically for the powerhouse woman who sometimes has a little bit too much drive for her own good I dive into the ideas I'm sharing today even more deeply inside my upcoming book, Food Freedom Fantasy. If you wanna be the first to know when it drops, head to embodiedwritingwarrior.com/gift.
You'll get my free assessment kit that diagnoses the top five root causes of binge eating and burnout in high-performing creative women, and you'll be added to my Fire Starter Diaries newsletter. That's where I'll be dropping the updates first. All right, let's dive into this root cause. First, I always wanna give credit where it's due.
I did not invent these ideas around the nervous system. These ideas first came from Stephen Porges, who created polyvagal theory. Then I went on to study these concepts in my inner coach certifications with my mentor, Patrick Dominguez. But it was actually in a more recent program where I finally understood how this translated directly into binge and emotional eating for high-performing women.
Polyvagal theory was also discussed inside a program with Jenna Gordon that is called Quantum Evolution Academy. I will include links to all three of these teachers in the episode description. So I wasn't hearing this information for the first time when I was inside Quantum Evolution Academy, but I heard it in this way that clarified the patterns I've seen in both myself and in the high-performing clients I've worked with.
Polyvagal theory has a tendency to get a little science-coded sometimes, so I have translated some of these terms and ideas in ways that feel more mythical and story-based. I'm gonna include the original terms for you as well in case you want the science First, every human being has three different nervous system settings.
The first one has a few names, parasympathetic nervous system, ventral vagal, green brain, or in Kayla terms, ocean brain. This is the state of resting, digestion, mindfulness, feeling safe, present, and grounded. Ocean brain, to me, is this calm oasis where you're surrendered, you're peaceful and content. You naturally feel calm and grateful.
In this state, your relationship to food most likely includes clear hunger cues. You can more easily distinguish between a true hunger and a desire to use food as a substitute for another need. You'll have less obsession, less urgency. You'll find it easier to stop when genuinely satisfied from a meal, and from this place, your relationship to life often looks less rushed.
You'll be able to slow down more easily, be present, and all of that often means better quality work, less mistakes, and more creative depth in whatever it is you're doing. We love ocean brain, and you can see why this matters for food freedom The second setting is your sympathetic nervous system, also known as fight or flight, orange brain, or in Kayla terms, fire brain.
This is the mobilization energy. Your heart rate is up. Your system is primed for action. It's what lights up when your system interprets something as a danger or a challenge. Now, before we move on to our final state, you might think, "Okay, so ocean brain good, fire brain bad." This is a wild oversimplification.
Neither state is bad. You're meant to dip in and out of both states throughout the day, and I personally think fire brain is the most misunderstood part of the nervous system. I also think there's a huge distinction between what I call exalted fire brain and detrimental fire brain. Exalted fire brain is warrior mode.
It helps you push forward and do the hard thing. This is gonna feel like focus, determination, power, motivation, aliveness. There's going to be a healthy amount of intensity and this I've got this energy. Presence is still possible in exalted fire brain, but it's gonna be aimed presence. Ocean brain presence is often gonna feel softer and more diffused.
Neither type of presence is better or worse. They're just useful in different situations. For example, if you're doing a tough workout, you want your heart rate up. You want to be mobilized for action. You also want this type of energy for creative work and for big projects Anyone who tells you to stay regulated and in ocean brain all the time does not understand the power of exalted fire brain, and they're asking naturally driven women to drown their healthy fire when what they would actually benefit from most is aiming it.
In exalted fire brain, you might get consumed in what you're doing for a while so that food might temporarily take a back seat. So you might delay a meal for a short time because you're genuinely in flow, and you're just 10 little minutes away from wrapping up the chapter you're writing or the piece of the project you're working on.
This isn't about ignoring hunger from a place of restriction. It's the temporary prioritization of finishing a task that matters to you. So your relationship to life here, you're gonna have this high energy that feels good. You're probably giving yourself some kind of a self-imposed temporary challenge that feels good, so something like a workout, a deep work session, or a creative sprint You can also have high quality output in this state as well because you're locked in and focused.
In exalted fire, you're using the fire rather than getting burned alive by it. The key with exalted fire is that it's chosen with intention, it's focused, and it's time-bound. Fire brain itself is not the enemy. The enemy is staying in it so long that it becomes detrimental fire brain. This is the part I generally see people talk about when it comes to the nervous system.
This detrimental fire brain piece, which is often the result of being in fire brain for too long without the necessary ocean brain returns. From here, this intensity climbs to the point where you're feeling pressure and urgency. You probably start to overthink, and tighten, and brace, and rush. It can start to feel like you're running out of time.
It's harder to focus because your brain is beginning to overheat. Detrimental fire brain is often the result of overworking, but it also comes from over-exercising, over-restricting, trying to white-knuckle through too many cravings or desires to rest. And honestly, many of those desires might be legitimate signals from the body that it needs support, not force If you spend enough time in fire brain, it will escalate until you find yourself in the third nervous system state.
This one is also parasympathetic, but it is the freeze state. It's also known as dorsal vagal or red brain, or in Kayla terms, rock brain. But here's what I realized the last time I revisited this nervous system theory. I used to think, "Oh, I don't really go into a freeze state," because I was picturing myself lying like a brick under a pile of blankets, physically unable to move.
But I think in many women who struggle with binge and emotional eating, binge eating is the freeze state. Yes, they might be technically be moving by bringing food to their mouth, but it's done in this automatic, frozen way. It's disassociation, especially because it's very often accompanied with television of some kind, doom scrolling, or in many cases, both.
It's the system saying, "I can't," but instead of shutting down by becoming catatonic, it shuts down with food When I realized this, so much of my struggles finally made sense. It wasn't this moral failing or character defect, it was physiology. And if so much of this is about physiology, then all the years of trying to get better and improve my level of discipline were not helping.
In fact, they were making everything worse in a similar way that traditional wellness plans often aggravate these nervous system patterns as well. But first, in case the most important part of this episode didn't land yet, if you are a high-performing woman who has struggled with binge and emotional eating, it is not a character defect.
It's not some flaw you need to fix with another personal growth hack. Instead, it's a physiological mechanism you can start cooperating with. This has radically decreased my binge eating and my cravings in general, and the reason for that is twofold. First, it eliminated a lot of shame about my chronic struggles in this area.
And two, it actually helped me work with the root cause instead of beating myself up and trying to change a symptom. Now, here's where we get into the specific nervous system pattern that I often see happen in high-performing women, and also what can happen as a result of being on a rigid, structured diet or protocol When you're moving out of rock brain, you don't just magically go back to ocean brain again.
You first need some activation to get out of the freeze state to get you back into fire brain first. Then, in an ideal world, you'd deescalate out of fire brain until you're back in ocean brain. But from what I've seen, this is not generally what happens for high-performing women. They're probably very good at mustering up that activation to get out of the rock brain collapse, but then they pile on too much fire.
After a binge, they go into fix-it mode. They search for the next personal growth strategy, and they apply it with ferocity. There's more tightening, more control, more tracking. There's often also a level of self-punishment and negative self-talk after a binge. None of this is gonna help you get back into ocean brain.
Then diet plans and structured challenges aggravate this even more. Say someone is in the middle of a 30-day challenge, and they miss a workout, and they didn't follow their plan for a day because they ended up in rock brain. Now, they're gonna use a ton of fire brain to catch up and double down and work even harder.
Nine times out of ten, all this does is re-escalate a person right back into rock brain This is why you can go weeks or months on end without a single binge, but then you find yourself struggling to escape the binge eating pattern after just one off night. Those weeks and months without the binge probably had you naturally oscillating between ocean brain and exalted fire brain.
This is the ideal place you wanna be in for food freedom that lasts. But then detrimental fire brain happens and leads to rock brain. Then, without understanding how this works at the nervous system level, you can find yourself fighting too hard to get out of rock brain, overheating your system in fire brain, ending up back in rock brain, and the cycle can keep repeating for a very long time.
My hope is that armed with this understanding of what's going on, you'll be able to end the weeks-long cycles of chaotic eating. You'll catch this pattern faster, and you'll know how to move out of it. This brings us to your three embodied activations. First, start to track your nervous system patterns.
Take some time to ask yourself through the day, "Am I in ocean brain, fire brain, or rock brain?" For example, as I create this, I'm in exalted fire brain. I just took a short ocean brain return to step outside, get some fresh air. Now I'm back in a contained fifty-minute block of creative work If you catch yourself in detrimental fire brain too much, too long, too hot, give yourself a chance to get back into ocean brain as soon as you're able.
Two, this brings us to ocean brain returns. You want these to be built into your day just like any valuable appointment. Not afterthoughts, not that thing you get to if you finish the other fire brain things on your list. No, these need to go on your to-do list. This can be five minutes of deep breathing, a short walk outside, a two-minute puppy cuddle.
The goal is to do something that brings you back to softness, back to gentle presence, back into safety and connection. And as a high-performing woman, this might not feel easy and natural to do. It hasn't always been an easy habit for me to build. That's why I created two archetypes, a fire daddy and an ocean daddy.
Without Haven the ocean daddy, I'd have little desire to do these ocean brain returns. But he's cute enough that he makes me want to do them. Finally, our third activation. The next time you find yourself in rock brain collapse, make it your mission to descend all the way into ocean brain instead of getting stuck in the fire-rock-fire cycle.
This looks like a little activation to get yourself out of the binge trance, so a short walk, some shaking or tapping, something that brings movement back to the body. From there, you wanna choose some practice that moves you back to ocean brain. Maybe it's yoga, some time in nature, or cuddling with a loved one.
It's also very important for this ocean brain return to come from a place of compassion and tenderness versus force and pressure. If you just listen to this episode, and you're like, "Okay, so I have to regulate myself back into ocean brain, so I stop this stupid binge eating habit," my friend, no, that is not the point.
The point is dropping the judgment. It's giving yourself permission to be human, it's deeply knowing that you'll feel better once you're back in ocean brain, and you want to feel better again. That's what this entire Ocean Brain return is about, not regulation for the sake of control and being better or perfect, but returning so you can actually create the food, freedom, and peace that's waiting for you I am wishing you a beautiful next ocean brain return and we'll chat again very soon
