In the first two weeks after D-Day, I lost eleven pounds.
Not because I was trying to. Because my body had rejected food entirely. The smell of cooking made me nauseous. The act of chewing felt impossible. I would sit at the table with my children and move food around my plate, performing the motions of eating while my throat closed around every bite.
I slept in fragments. Two hours, then awake. Staring at the ceiling with my heart pounding, replaying conversations, running timelines, scanning for clues I’d missed. Then crashing for another hour of the kind of sleep that is closer to unconsciousness than rest.
I went to work. I sat in meetings. I smiled at the right moments. And by 3 PM every day, I hit a wall so severe I couldn’t remember what day it was.
If you are living any version of this right now, this piece is for you. Not therapy. Not long-term healing. Tactical survival for a body in crisis.
Why Your Body Is Doing This
Your autonomic nervous system is locked in a sustained stress response. Cortisol and adrenaline are flooding your system around the clock, and these hormones suppress appetite, disrupt sleep architecture, and impair cognitive function. This is not a choice your body is making. It is a biological emergency response that does not care about your Tuesday meeting or your grocery list.
The stress response also disrupts your gut-brain axis, which is why eating feels not just unappealing but physically revolting. Your digestive system has essentially shut down non-essential operations to redirect energy to threat detection. Your body is preparing to fight or flee. Digestion is not a priority during battle.
Eating When You Can’t Eat
I’m not going to tell you to eat three balanced meals a day. I know you can’t. I’m going to tell you the bare minimum your body needs to keep running.
The survival nutrition strategy:
Liquids first. If you cannot chew, drink. Protein shakes, smoothies, broth. Your brain needs glucose and your body needs protein to manage the cortisol flood. A single protein shake is better than nothing, and nothing is what you’re probably consuming right now.
Small, frequent, easy. Forget meals. Think in terms of small amounts every two to three hours. A handful of nuts. A piece of cheese. Two crackers with peanut butter. A banana. You are not trying to enjoy food. You are trying to give your brain enough fuel to function.
Avoid caffeine on an empty stomach. I know. Coffee is the only thing that feels normal right now. But caffeine on a cortisol-saturated, food-deprived system will spike your anxiety, increase heart palpitations, and make the shaking worse. If you need caffeine, put something — anything — in your stomach first.
Set alarms. You will not remember to eat. Your hunger signals have been suppressed by cortisol. Set a phone alarm every three hours that says: eat something. Even if it’s three bites. Even if it makes you gag. Your brain cannot function without fuel, and right now your brain is the only thing standing between you and bad decisions.
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The insomnia of betrayal trauma is not ordinary insomnia. It is your nervous system refusing to stand down from guard duty. Your amygdala has decided that the threat is ongoing — which, if the affair is recent and the truth is still emerging, it is correct about — and it will not allow your body to enter the vulnerable state of deep sleep.
What actually helps:
The 4-7-8 breathing technique. Inhale for four counts. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight. This directly activates the vagus nerve and signals your parasympathetic nervous system to lower heart rate and blood pressure. It is not a cure. It is a physiological lever that can shift you from hyperarousal toward the window where sleep becomes possible.
No screens in the last hour before bed. This is the hour when you are most vulnerable to pain shopping — scrolling his phone, checking her social media, reading old texts. The blue light compounds the cortisol problem, and the content compounds the trauma loop. Put the phone in another room. Physically. Not on the nightstand.
Accept fragmented sleep. You are not going to sleep eight hours. Stop trying. If you can get two three-hour blocks with a gap in between, that is enough for now. During the gap, do not reach for your phone. Do a body scan. Breathe. Listen to a guided meditation or white noise. The goal is not sleep — the goal is rest.
Talk to your doctor. If you have gone more than two weeks with fewer than three hours of sleep per night, talk to your doctor. Short-term sleep medication is not weakness. It is medical intervention for a biological crisis. Your brain cannot heal without sleep, and your brain is trying to heal from the worst injury of your life.
Functioning When You Can’t Function
The brain fog is real. It is not laziness. It is not distraction. It is your prefrontal cortex being suppressed by a sustained cortisol flood, and no amount of willpower will override it.
Strategies for getting through the day:
Write everything down. Your working memory is compromised. Appointments, tasks, conversations — write them down immediately. Use your phone’s notes app, a physical notebook, sticky notes on the dashboard. Do not trust your brain to hold information right now. It is using all available bandwidth for something else.
Cancel what you can. If there are social obligations, volunteer commitments, or optional meetings you can cancel without consequence — cancel them. You are operating at a fraction of your capacity. Protect that fraction for what actually matters: your children, your job (to the extent you cannot take leave), and your basic survival.
Tell your doctor. You do not need to disclose the details. You can say: “I am going through a severe personal crisis and I am experiencing insomnia, inability to eat, and cognitive impairment.” That is enough. Your doctor can help with short-term medication, blood work to check what the stress is doing to your body, and documentation if you need to take medical leave.
Give yourself a daily minimum. On the worst days, your daily minimum might be: get out of bed, eat something, drink water, be present for the kids for thirty minutes. That’s it. That is enough. You do not need to be productive. You do not need to be impressive. You need to keep the machinery running until the crisis passes its peak.
When to Seek Medical Help
The physical symptoms of betrayal trauma are real and they can become medically serious if they persist.
See a doctor immediately if:
You have not eaten more than a few bites in over a week. You have lost more than ten pounds in two weeks without trying. Your resting heart rate is consistently elevated. You are experiencing chest pain that does not resolve with breathing exercises. You have not slept more than two to three hours per night for more than two weeks. You are having thoughts of harming yourself.
These are not emotional symptoms you should push through. These are medical symptoms that require medical attention. Betrayal trauma is a psychological injury, but it creates physiological consequences that are just as real as the injury itself.
The Only Promise I Will Make
The eating comes back. The sleeping comes back. The ability to think in straight lines comes back.
Not tomorrow. Not on your schedule. Not because you willed it or earned it or did the right things. It comes back because your nervous system is designed to regulate, and when the acute threat begins to recede — when the cortisol flood begins to ebb — your body will start to remember how to feed itself, rest itself, and function again.
You are not permanently broken. You are acutely injured. And acute injuries, with proper care, resolve.
In the meantime: eat something small. Drink water. Try to rest, even if you cannot sleep. And forgive yourself for every moment that falls short of the standard you used to hold yourself to. That standard was set by a version of you who was not carrying this. This version is doing something much harder.
You are keeping yourself alive in a crisis. That is not the bare minimum. That is the whole thing.
