Why the Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets

If you’ve found your way to this blog, it may be your body quietly asking to be understood. Take a few moments to read these words, and, in doing so, offer your body the compassion and support it has been waiting for.

Have you ever wondered why your chest tightens in certain conversations? Why your stomach drops when someone raises their voice? Why your shoulders stay tense even when “nothing is wrong”?

This is the quiet truth most of us are never taught: the body stores trauma the mind chooses to forget. And until we learn how to listen, it keeps speaking, through anxiety, chronic tension, inflammation, fatigue, and emotional overwhelm.

Let’s talk about it.

What Does It Mean That the Body Stores Trauma?

When we experience emotional trauma, whether it’s childhood neglect, heartbreak, chronic stress, or a single overwhelming event, our nervous system responds instantly. The brain may suppress the memory to protect us, but the body absorbs the impact.

This concept is widely discussed in trauma psychology, including in the work of experts like Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. His research highlights how unresolved trauma is not just a psychological issue, it becomes physiological.

Trauma doesn’t disappear. It gets encoded.

Your nervous system shifts into survival mode: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Stress hormones flood your body. Muscles contract. Breathing changes. If the experience isn’t processed safely, the body never fully resets.

You move on mentally. Your body stays stuck.

The Mind Forgets to Protect You

The brain is brilliant. It knows that remembering everything would be unbearable. So, it files painful experiences away, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously.

You may not remember the tone of voice that made you feel small at age seven. But your body remembers how small you felt. You may not recall every stressful season of your life. But your nervous system remembers what it felt like to survive it.

This is why people often say, “I don’t know why I react this way.” Because the memory isn’t always cognitive. It’s stored in the body.

Signs Your Body Is Holding Unprocessed Trauma

Unresolved trauma stored in the body can show up in subtle and not-so-subtle ways:

• Chronic muscle tension (especially jaw, neck, shoulders)

• Digestive issues with no clear cause

• Autoimmune flare-ups linked to stress

• Panic responses to mild triggers

• Difficulty relaxing, even in safe environments

• Feeling emotionally numb or disconnected

• Recurring patterns in relationships

  
  

This doesn’t mean something is “wrong” with you. It means your nervous system learned to protect you, and it never got the signal that the danger passed. Your body isn’t broken. It’s protective, and it deserves appreciation, compassion, and love for everything it has endured.

The Nervous System Never Lies

One of the most powerful shifts in trauma healing is understanding the role of the nervous system. When you live in chronic stress, your body adapts. Cortisol stays elevated. Muscles stay guarded. Inflammation increases. Sleep is disrupted. Over time, this state becomes your “normal.”

You might call yourself anxious, reactive, sensitive, or emotionally intense. In reality, your nervous system is stuck in survival mode. The body doesn’t respond to logic. It responds to safety.

You cannot think your way out of trauma. You have to feel your way through it, gently, safely, and with support. It isn’t always easy, but help is available to guide you through the process.

Why We Disconnect from the Body

Many of us learned early on that feeling was unsafe. We stay busy. We override exhaustion. We push through discomfort. We live from the neck up, but healing requires coming back into the body.

This can feel confronting at first because stored emotions begin to surface, grief, anger, fear. Not because something new is happening, but because something old is finally being felt.

That is not regression. That is release.

How to Help the Body Let Go of Trauma

Trauma healing is not about rehashing every memory. It’s about teaching the nervous system that it is safe now.

Somatic practices that support trauma release include:

• Breathwork to regulate the stress response

• Gentle movement like yoga or walking

• Trauma-informed therapy

• Emotional regulation exercises

• Mindfulness and body awareness practices

• Safe relational experiences that rebuild trust

  
  

When the body feels safe, it begins to soften. Tension unwinds. Breathing deepens. Sleep improves. Reactions lessen. The body does not cling to pain out of stubbornness. It clings because it thinks it is protecting you. When it learns it no longer has to, it lets go.

The Most Powerful Truth

If you have ever felt frustrated that you “should be over it by now,” please hear this:

Healing takes time. There is no rush.

It is incredibly hard to “get over” pain you may not even know you are carrying. That is why addressing the root cause, returning to your body, sitting with yourself, even when it feels uncomfortable, is so important. Take your time.

Your body is remembering what you survived, and the fact that it has held it for you, sometimes for years, is a form of extraordinary resilience. But survival is not the same as living.

When you gently return to your body, regulate your nervous system, and let emotions move rather than bury them, you shift from surviving to healing, from where you are to where you are meant to be. From reacting to responding. From trauma to transformation.

Your Body Is Not the Enemy

It is your strongest ally.

The tension, the anxiety, the fatigue, these are not random symptoms. They are messages. Invitations. Signals that something once felt unsafe, and here is the hopeful part: the body that learned trauma can also learn safety.

Neuroplasticity means change is possible. Regulation is possible. Peace is possible.

You do not have to carry what your body has been holding alone.

Sometimes healing begins with a simple shift:

Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” Ask, “What happened to me?” And then, even more gently: “What does my body need now?”

That question alone can change everything.

 If this resonated with you, know that you do not have to navigate it alone. Support is available, and healing is possible. If you feel ready to explore this work gently and safely, I would be honored to walk alongside you.

Best wishes,

Helen