Episode 37

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Published on:

17th Nov 2025

Why You Eat the Way You Do with Jessica Setnick (Part 1)

Dietitian and eating-psychology educator Jessica Setnick joins Sacha to unravel the unconscious stories shaping our eating, coping, and self-soothing behaviors — stories rooted in childhood, emotion, and survival.

Jessica introduces the idea of the “inner eater” — the younger self who learned how to navigate fear, comfort, chaos, and connection through food. Together, she and Sacha explore how emotional environments, family dynamics, and attachment wounds silently influence adult behaviors we often shame ourselves for.

If you’ve ever wondered “Why do I do this?” — this episode starts answering that question with compassion rather than judgment.

🧭 In This Episode

  • How early emotional wiring shapes adult coping patterns
  • Why food becomes a mood-altering chemical
  • The link between attachment wounds and eating behavior
  • How families pass down beliefs without realizing it
  • The influence-map exercise and what it reveals

🪞 Key Takeaways

  • Eating behaviors are often trauma responses, not choices.
  • Shame and fear get tied to food through lived experience.
  • The nervous system — not willpower — drives many eating patterns.
  • Coping strategies develop to keep us safe.
  • Curiosity dismantles shame faster than discipline ever could.

⚠️ Content Note

Themes include childhood emotional patterns, trauma responses, unconscious conditioning, food-related coping, shame, fear, and attachment wounds. Trauma-informed discussion handled gently. No diet talk.

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Keywords

inner eater, emotional coping, trauma and food, attachment wounds, childhood conditioning, survival responses, shame patterns, high-functioning behaviors, emotional eating, nervous system

🎧 In Part 2, Jessica breaks down the “rules” we absorbed growing up — the policing of food, the body comments, the shame triggers, and the emotional landmines that still shape our patterns today. She also explains how trauma (even totally unrelated to food) becomes woven into eating behavior and why breaking these patterns requires compassion, not control.

👉 Make sure you’re subscribed to The High-Functioning Disaster so you don’t miss this next chapter.

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About the Podcast

The High-Functioning Disaster
High-functioning on the outside. Hot mess on the inside.
You’ve got the color-coded calendar, the competent job persona, the “I’m fine!” mask down to an art—and a mental load heavy enough to throw out your back. Meanwhile, life? That's a hot mess express—total chaos with zero chill and a full tank of emotional baggage. And what makes it even worse? Nearly no one’s talking about it.

Welcome to The High-Functioning Disaster, a podcast for people who are doing their best to hold it together while navigating burnout, grief, trauma, anxiety, caretaking duties, family drama, body image issues, and a to-do list that never quits.

Host Sacha Holder isn’t the disaster (neither are you!)—life is. And this show is about making space for that truth and giving ourselves permission to say it out loud. Every week, Sacha explores what it means to be deeply human in a world that keeps demanding more. Sometimes she’s flying solo, sometimes she brings along guests and friends—but the vibe is always real, raw, unfiltered, and grounded in radical self-acceptance and permission to be human.

We talk boundaries. Body image. Mental health. Emotional labor. The moments where everything feels like too much—and the ones where we catch our breath and keep going.

This isn’t a self-help podcast. It’s a self-permission podcast.
Permission to be exhausted.
To not have it together.
To be honest about what’s hard—without needing to package it as a “lesson.”

Because you don’t need fixing.
You need space to fall apart—and still be seen.
Because some of us are just trying to make it through the day.
And here? That’s more than enough.
New episodes every Monday. Come as you are. Seriously.
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About your host

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Sacha Holder

Sacha Holder is a project manager, podcast host, and bariatric patient who’s not here to pretend it’s all perfect. With over a decade of professional experience and a whole lot of lived experience, she creates podcasts that tell the truth about what it means to live, heal, and grow — through chaos, and curveballs, while keeping it together (mostly).

She’s the voice behind Life in the Bari Lane, a bite-sized bariatric podcast for real people navigating post-op life, and The High-Functioning Disaster, a show about showing up even when everything feels like too much. Through humor, honesty, and zero judgment, Sacha builds community through conversation — because no one should have to figure it out alone.