How Trauma Lives in the Body and How Healing Can Begin
As a licensed psychotherapist specializing in holistic and somatic therapy, one of the most common questions I hear is, “Can trauma really live in the body?” The short answer is yes—but not in the way many people assume. Trauma isn't just something that happens to us. It's something that can linger within us, especially when the nervous system doesn’t get the chance to fully process and integrate what happened.
Let’s explore how trauma or adverse experiences can show up in the body—and why understanding this connection can be a powerful step toward healing.
Trauma: A Body-Based Experience
When we hear the word trauma, we often think of major, life-altering events—car accidents, natural disasters, or violence. And yes, those are traumatic. But trauma isn’t just the event itself—it’s how our body responds when something overwhelms our capacity to cope and leaves lasting injury because our lives, sense of safety, or access to something we needed to survive was threatened or it felt like it at the time.
Trauma can also result from prolonged stress, emotional neglect, chronic invalidation, or growing up in an unpredictable environment. These are often called "small t" traumas or they can be described as adverse and painful experiences, but their impact is anything but small. Something doesn’t have to be labeled trauma or meet the criteria of trauma in order to influence your behaviors, sense of safety, or to live in the nervous system. Over time, the body adapts to stay safe, often developing protective patterns that may persist long after the threat is gone.
In somatic therapy, we work with the idea that the body holds memory—not just of what happened, but how we felt, how we moved (or froze), how we coped in that moment. These responses can become “stuck” in the nervous system, and this stuck energy can show up in surprising ways.
How Trauma Can Show Up Physically
People often come to therapy after seeing multiple doctors for symptoms that don’t seem to have a clear medical cause. Things like:
Chronic tension or pain (especially in the neck, shoulders, jaw, or back)
Digestive issues or IBS-like symptoms
Migraines or frequent headaches
Fatigue or a sense of being “wired but tired”
Difficulty sleeping
Autoimmune flare-ups
Heart palpitations or shallow breathing
A general feeling of disconnection or numbness in the body
It’s essential to emphasize here: Always rule out medical conditions first. Not everything is trauma-related. If you have medical issues going on, you deserve support from a medical professional who will take your symptoms seriously and give you the full workup and testing you need to determine what is going on. Psychotherapy doesn’t replace other medical care—it complements it.
But How? Implicit Memory.
Implicit memories are ones that are not intentionally remembered or recalled but influence your behaviors, patterns, and somatic reactions. This happens because neurons that fire together wire together. For example, let’s say that your brush your teeth every night right before you go to bed or you take the same route home from work every day. You can start to do these actions without even thinking, you can find that you automatically walk back to your room to brush your teeth at a certain time and then put on your pajama without having to think about the steps or get in your car and start taking the route home without thinking about it. That is because your nervous system has formed a strong connection between brushing your teeth and a certain time of day and brushing your teeth and getting into bed and a strong connection between getting in your car and turning right out of the parking lot and the steps that follow.
Our nervous systems can form these strong connections between a certain facial expression or tone of voice a parent used to use when they were really angry about about to go off and the experience of that explosive anger along with a racing heart rate.
They can form those strong connections between quiet or silence and isolation and a sinking and heavy feeling in the stomach from that loneliness.
They can form strong connections between being in a meeting and being humiliated and rejected and tension in the shoulders as a result of the rejection.
All of these connections are based on past experiences that were so impactful that all it takes is one or two times for that connection to be made or through repeated experiences over time.
From Pathology to Protection
One of the most important shifts we make in somatic therapy is moving from a pathology-based model (“What’s wrong with me?”) to a protective one (“What did my body do to help me survive?”). This is a de-pathologizing perspective. It honors your body’s intelligence and resilience.
That chronic tension in your shoulders? It may have once been your body’s way of bracing for impact. That dissociation or zoning out in stressful situations? It might have been how you protected yourself from overwhelming emotional pain. These patterns aren’t signs of weakness—they’re signs of adaptation.
But the nervous system isn’t meant to stay in survival mode forever. Over time, those adaptations can become limiting. That’s where somatic therapy comes in.
What is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is a body-centered approach that recognizes the nervous system as central to our mental and emotional well-being. In sessions, we gently explore how emotions and past experiences are held in the body, and we work with techniques like grounding, breathwork, movement, and touch (when appropriate and consensual) to support release, integration, and healing.
This isn’t about reliving trauma. In fact, we move very slowly and carefully, often staying on the edge of what's called the "window of tolerance"—the zone where your nervous system can stay regulated while exploring difficult sensations or memories.
Healing in this way doesn’t require you to remember everything or talk endlessly about the past. Instead, it’s about coming into a relationship with your body in a new, compassionate way.
Your Body Is Trying to Talk—Are You Ready to Listen?
If you've been living with persistent symptoms, emotional overwhelm, or a sense that something just feels "off," you're not alone—and you're not broken. Your body may be holding onto something it didn’t get the chance to release.
The good news? Healing is possible. With support, patience, and a willingness to listen to your body’s messages, you can begin to move from survival to thriving.
If this resonates with you, I invite you to take the next step. Schedule a free consultation to explore whether somatic therapy, EMDR, or a therapy intensive might be a good fit for you. Whether you’re new to therapy or looking for a more embodied approach, I’d be honored to walk with you on your healing journey.
Warmly,
Lauren Ludlow, LCSW
Somatic Psychotherapist
