Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms or Numbing

If you've ever reached for food when you weren't hungry, poured a drink to take the edge off, scrolled until midnight to avoid your own thoughts, socialized mindlessly, filling your time with plans that drain you or binge watched Netflix/OTT every day pushed yourself into exhaustion just to feel in control — this episode is not here to judge you. It's here to explain to you.

In Part 3 of this series, Dr. Deepti Sharma turns to one of the most misunderstood chapters of the trauma-health story: what we do to survive the feelings we were never taught to feel. Unhealthy coping mechanisms — emotional eating, substance use, avoidance, overworking, people-pleasing, numbing in all its forms — are rarely about weakness or lack of willpower. They are the nervous system doing exactly what it was wired to do: find relief from a pain it doesn't know how to metabolize any other way.

Dr. Sharma walks through the full landscape. How the brain's reward circuitry gets recruited in the service of survival. Why behaviors that start as relief can quietly become their own source of harm. How coping patterns forged in childhood or during periods of prolonged stress become so deeply grooved they feel like personality — when in fact, they are adaptations. Brilliant, logical, and in need of compassionate revision.

This is the episode where the ACEs framework and the trauma physiology from Parts 1 and 2 stop being abstract — and start showing up in everyday life. In the pantry at 10pm. In the third glass of wine. In the inability to rest even when the body is begging for it.

Whether you're a patient who has quietly wondered why certain patterns feel impossible to break, or a clinician searching for language that meets people without shame — Dr. Sharma builds the bridge between biology and behavior with the clarity, warmth, and rigor that define her practice.

Understanding is not the finish line. But it is where freedom begins.