Trauma Lives in Your Body (Not Just Your Thoughts)

Have you ever been in a situation where you knew (logically) you were safe, but your body clearly missed the memo?

Suddenly, your heart speeds up. You feel a tightness in your throat/neck or chest. Maybe you hear yourself snap at someone or shut down altogether before you could even think. 

And afterward you wondered:

“Why did I react like that?”

This is one of the most confusing parts of trauma.

Understanding something logically doesn’t always change how your body responds, and this is because trauma doesn’t live only in your thoughts.

It’s stored in your nervous system.

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Fight, Flight, Freeze: Your Body’s Survival Settings

Your nervous system has one primary job: keep you alive.

Cavemen and women were wired for survival, and in today’s world, our survival instincts are still turned on when we are under threat (whether that threat is physical, mental or emotional).

When your brain senses threat, it automatically shifts into one of these modes:

Fight:
Irritability, anger, snapping, defensiveness, wanting to push back or rage.

Flight:
Anxiety, restlessness, racing thoughts, overpowering procrastination, the urge to escape.

Freeze:
Zoning out, numbness, shutting down, feeling stuck or unable to respond.

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This is why you can be calm one second and completely overwhelmed the next. Or why you can feel totally in control of your choices (productivity, focus, positive communication, mindful eating) and then all of the sudden find yourself reverting back to habits you swore you were going to change (that app you deleted is magically back on your phone. Staying up too late. Emotionally eating. Getting defensive with loved ones).

Stop beating yourself up! These reactions are not behavioral choices. They are reflexes.

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Why Logic Doesn’t Stop Panic

This is the part so many people struggle with.

You might tell yourself:

• “I’m safe now.”
  
• “This isn’t a big deal.”
  
• “I’m acting like a child.”
  
• “I shouldn’t be this upset.”
  
• “I know better.”
  
  

But it doesn’t change the reflex. 

Reflexes ≠ Thinking

When you’re triggered, the part of your brain responsible for reasoning and perspective (Prefrontal Cortex) temporarily steps aside. The nervous system takes over (Amygdala and Vagus Nerve). So telling yourself to “Calm down” will probably just lead to frustration and feelings of inadequacy.

People who have consultations with me often say things like:

• “I’ve been in therapy for 20 years, and I’m still struggling to change.”
  
• “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I still feel it.”
  
• “I can explain my triggers perfectly, but I can’t stop them.”
  
• “Talking about it helps… but it doesn’t change my reactions.”
  
  

If that’s been your experience, you’re not doing therapy wrong.

You’re experiencing the difference between understanding trauma and healing trauma.

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Trauma Is Stored as Sensation, Not Just as a Story

Memories are more than just stories we remember and tell people. Memories come with all 5 senses. What we saw, felt, smelled, heard, and tasted. Those parts of memories can not always be described in words that make sense (especially memories under the age of 6). When something overwhelming happens, your brain doesn’t always file it away as a neat, organized memory.

So later, when something reminds you of that experience — even in a small way — your nervous system responds as if it’s happening all over again. 

Triggers for these memories are not always obvious. People may think that if you’ve been in a house fire, seeing a movie or new clip of a house fire would send you into a triggered state. What people don’t realize is that triggers can be so much more obscure than that.

A bonfire smell in the air,
Turning on a curling iron, 
A siren passing by,
Not being absolutely sure you turned off the stove before leaving the house.

That’s why:

A tone of voice can make you panic
Conflict can make you shut down
Stress can suddenly feel unbearable
Your child’s meltdown can feel like an emergency

Not because you’re weak. But because your body was reprogrammed that way by a previous experience.

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This Is Where Traditional Talk Therapy Can Hit a Wall

Talk therapy is incredibly valuable. It helps you understand your history, make sense of your patterns, learn new skills, feel supported and validated.

But most traditional therapy works top-down — through insight, thinking, and language.
Trauma, however, is often stored bottom-up — in the nervous system and the body.
So you can gain years of insight and still feel hijacked by old reactions.

That doesn’t mean therapy failed.
It means your nervous system may need a different kind of help.

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EMDR as Bottom-Up Healing

This is where EMDR therapy comes in clutch.

EMDR doesn’t rely on analyzing or re-telling your story over and over.

Instead, it works directly with how the brain and body store traumatic experiences.

EMDR helps the brain:

• reprocess stuck memories
  
• Greatly reduce the emotional and intensity attached to them
  
• update old “danger” messages
  
• move experiences from “happening now” to “over and finished”
  
  

In other words, EMDR helps your nervous system learn what your mind already knows:

You survived. You’re safe now.

That’s why so many people describe EMDR as feeling different from talk therapy — less about explaining, and more about real-time internal shifts.

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‍Main Take-Away?

If you’ve ever felt frustrated that you “should be over it by now,” I want you to hear this:

Your reactions are not a personal failure.

They are learned survival responses.

And anything your nervous system learns, it can also unlearn.