Stop Holding It All In
Your Body Is Keeping Score And It’s Time to Listen
Hey friends,
Every week, we break down a book, or cultural phenomenon and tell you what you need to know.
You’ve probably heard someone say “the body keeps the score” in a TikTok, a podcast, or therapy session. But what does that actually mean?
This week, the book behind the meme: The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who’s been studying trauma for 40+ years AKA The book with cover art by Matisse.
This book has been on the bestseller lists for years and for good reason: it explains why so many people secretly feel like they’re falling apart and what to do about it.
Maybe you lie awake at night replaying things that happened years ago. Or maybe you feel nothing at all, just numb, and disconnected. Or maybe you’re just always exhausted?
That’s your nervous system doing its job.
Your body is keeping a running tally of every overwhelming moment you’ve ever experienced. And it’s affecting how you show up today.
Here’s what you need to know.
💡 WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
📌 Trauma isn't just "in your head"—it physically rewires your brain and body.
✅ Trauma is incredibly common. Research shows that about 70% of adults have experienced at least one traumatic event, and many of us have experienced multiple traumas.
Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between a tiger and a toxic relationship. When overwhelmed, it floods your body with the same survival chemicals our ancestors needed to outrun predators. Except now there’s nowhere to run so those chemicals just… stay.
✅ Your body literally "keeps the score." Trauma isn't just stored as memories, it's encoded in your physiology, affecting everything from your immune system to your heart rate to your digestion. Trauma doesn’t just live in your memory it lives in your body.
Long after the threat is gone, your nervous system may still be stuck in survival mode, constantly scanning for danger. People don’t just remember trauma, they relive it.
✅ Traditional talk therapy often isn't enough. Since trauma affects the primitive, non-verbal parts of your brain, just talking about it may not lead to healing. You can’t think your way out of trauma because trauma lives below the level of thought. You have to work with your body’s alarm system, not against it.
✅ Healing requires reconnecting with your body. Recovery happens when you learn to feel safe in your body again and process traumatic memories without being overwhelmed.
📌 "Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.
🔬 The Science of Trauma: It's Not "All in Your Head"
Psychology used to focus on the mind but thanks to brain-imaging technology and advances in neuroscience, we now understand that trauma's effects are physical realities:
Brain Scans Show Changes PTSD sufferers show measurable differences in brain activity, particularly in the areas that process fear and emotion.
The Vagus Nerve Connection This key nerve connecting brain and body plays a crucial role in trauma. When it's dysregulated, people struggle to calm themselves down after becoming upset.
Hormonal Disruption Long-term activation of stress hormones harms virtually every system in the body, contributing to heart disease, immune disorders, and chronic inflammation.
Genetics and Epigenetics And it doesn’t end with you. Trauma can actually affect gene expression, potentially passing vulnerability to stress down to future generations.
📌 "We now know that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive."
🧠 How Trauma Hijacks Your Brain and Body
📌 "The body keeps the score: If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, and if mind/brain/visceral communication is the royal road to emotion regulation, this demands a radical shift in our therapeutic assumptions."
When you experience trauma, several key things happen in your brain and body:
Your Alarm System Goes Haywire The amygdala (your brain's danger detector) becomes hyperactive, making you constantly on alert for threats, even when you're safe. This creates a persistent sense of danger that colors every experience.
Your Rational Brain Goes Offline The prefrontal cortex (responsible for rational thinking) becomes less active during trauma, which is why traumatized people often struggle to think clearly about their experiences.
Your Stress Response Gets Stuck The body's fight-flight-freeze system, designed to activate temporarily during danger, stays permanently switched on flooding the body with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
Your Sense of Time Fractures Traumatic memories aren't stored like normal memories. They exist as fragmented sensory impressions (images, sounds, physical sensations) that feel like they're happening right now rather than in the past.
Your Body Becomes a Prison Many trauma survivors feel disconnected from their bodies or unsafe in them. They may numb themselves through addictions, self-harm, or dissociation to escape the physical sensations that remind them of trauma.
🔑 KEY TAKEAWAYS
Trauma changes the brain.
Your brain literally rewires itself around survival
It activates the amygdala (fear center), numbs the prefrontal cortex (logic), and floods your body with stress chemicals over and over. This makes it hard to stay calm, focus, or feel joy.
High performers often hide deep dysregulation.
High performers are often high survivors. People who seem fine, productive, smart, even cheerful, often have nervous systems stuck in survival. They’ve learned to over-function to avoid feeling.
The drive to achieve can be your nervous system’s way of staying one step ahead of feeling unsafe. Success becomes a survival strategy.
Safety is the foundation for everything.
You can’t truly heal unless your nervous system believes you’re safe. Not just logically, viscerally.
You can’t convince your body it’s safe with spreadsheets and rational thinking. You have to show it through consistent, body-based practices,
Talk therapy isn’t enough.
You need body-based practices like EMDR, yoga, breathwork, and movement that help process trauma where it actually lives in your muscles, breath, and sensory systems.
You can’t do it alone.
Trauma happens in relationships, and healing often happens there too. Regulating your nervous system is easier when you’re connected to safe, attuned people.
Healing happens in relationship
Trauma often occurs in relationships, and healing requires them too. Your nervous system learns to regulate by being around other regulated humans.
🧍♀️ WHERE TRAUMA LIVES IN THE BODY AND WHAT IT’S TRYING TO TELL YOU
📌“The body keeps the score — in your gut, your chest, your muscles, your breath.”
Even if you’re mentally fine, your body might still be reacting like it’s under threat. Trauma shows up in specific physical zones and often speaks the language of tension, tightness, or numbness. Here’s where it hides:
💥 Chest
Tightness, heaviness, shallow breath
→ Often tied to grief, panic, or emotional shutdown
→ You may be protecting your heart — literally closing off vulnerability
🧠 Jaw & Neck
Clenching, grinding, chronic tension
→ Suppressed rage, fear, or unspoken words
→ Fight or freeze energy with nowhere to go
💨 Breath
Breath-holding, rapid breathing, frequent sighing
→ Hypervigilance, anxiety, or waiting for the other shoe to drop
→ Your body is scanning for danger on autopilot
🧷 Gut
Bloating, nausea, IBS, appetite swings
→ The gut-brain axis is disrupted
→ This is where anxiety, shame, and fear often live
🪨 Shoulders & Upper Back
Tension, tightness, “carrying the weight of the world”
→ Chronic bracing against impact
→ Your body still thinks it has to be on guard
🦴 Pelvis & Lower Back
Pain, instability, chronic discomfort
→ Linked to safety, boundaries, and control
→ Common in those with sexual trauma or a history of powerlessness
These symptoms aren’t random, they’re messages.
Your body isn’t broken. It’s trying to tell you something.
🔍 TOOL: BODY SCAN CHECK-IN
Want to decode what your body’s holding? Try this 2-minute scan:
Sit quietly and close your eyes
Take three slow breaths
Scan each of the zones above — chest, jaw, breath, gut, shoulders, pelvis
Ask:
What am I feeling here?
Is there pain, tension, tightness, or nothing at all?
Can I soften this area by just 5%?
Don’t try to fix or analyze it. Just notice. Even numbness is information.
Repeat every day for a week and see what shifts.
Listening is the first step. Releasing comes next.
🧰 THE HEALING TOOLKIT
Van der Kolk tested dozens of approaches. Here’s what actually works:
🎯 EMDR
Helps your brain reprocess stuck memories without re-traumatizing you
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a type of therapy that helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories by using back-and-forth eye movements (or tapping or sounds). It mimics the way the brain processes memories during REM sleep, helping you file painful experiences away without the emotional charge. Numerous studies show it helps the brain process traumatic memories that have been "stuck" in the nervous system.
🫁 Yoga and Mindfulness
Literally rewires your stress response through controlled movement and breathing.
Research shows that certain yoga practices can help trauma survivors reconnect with their bodies in a safe way, calming overactive stress responses and building greater body awareness.
🧠 Neurofeedback
Brainwave feedback to retrain your nervous system
This technology allows people to see their brain activity in real-time and gradually learn to regulate it, strengthening the areas weakened by trauma. It's like watching a movie that pauses when your brain freaks out so you can train your brain to stay calm and focused. It strengthens the brain’s ability to self-regulate.
🫀 Somatic Experiencing
Helps you gently release stored survival energy without having to relive the trauma verbally.
Techniques like Sensory Motor Psychotherapy help people identify and release trauma stored in the body through physical awareness and movement. This method helps you complete the fight/flight/freeze cycle in a safe, titrated way
🎭 Movement Therapy
Theater, dance, and creative expression help you access emotions that words can’t reach
Trauma often shuts down creativity and play. This method helps people “speak” what they can’t say, using action instead of words.
🍄 Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Early research on MDMA and other psychedelics shows promise for PTSD therapy.
🧍🏽Safe Relationships
Nothing regulates the nervous system like a calm, present human
Not therapy, but essential. Regular connection with people who make you feel seen, safe, and not judged can help retrain your nervous system.
You don’t need all of them. Pick ONE that resonates and start there. Your nervous system needs consistency, not perfection
📌 "For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present."
🔄 How Healing Actually Happens
Trauma recovery follows several key steps:
Establishing Safety First you need to feel physically and emotionally safe in the present moment. This includes stabilizing your life and learning techniques to manage overwhelming emotions.
Reconnecting with Your Body Healing requires becoming friends with your body again, learning to recognize and tolerate physical sensations without being overwhelmed by them.
Processing Traumatic Memories Once someone can maintain emotional stability, they can begin processing traumatic memories with techniques that access the brain's deeper emotional centers.
Rebuilding Connection Trauma often causes isolation, so rebuilding healthy relationships is crucial for healing. This might involve group therapy, supportive communities, or repairing family bonds.
Reclaiming Personal Power The final stage involves creating a new sense of self and purpose—one defined by strength and resilience rather than by trauma.
📌 "Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives."
💡 REMEMBER THIS:
📌 "As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself."
📌 "The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves."
📌 “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health.”
📌 “Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.”
📌 “You can be fully in charge of your life only if you can acknowledge the reality of your body.”
🔑 TL;DR
💡 Your body is keeping score of every overwhelming experience
💡 Trauma physically rewires your brain and body, creating changes that can't simply be "thought away."
💡 High achievement can mask deep nervous system disregulation
💡 Healing requires body-based practices, not just therapy
💡 You’re not broken you’re just stuck in old survival patterns
💡 With the right tools, your body can become your greatest ally
❓SHOULD YOU READ IT?
✅ Yes, if you’re ready for a dense read. It’s not light. It’s not quick. But it’ll change the way you see yourself, your relationships, and the people around you.
Start with the audiobook if the print version feels too heavy.
🤍 BEFORE YOU GO...
If this resonated, feel free to tap the heart or share it with someone who might need it. I write these to help people feel a little more seen and if it helped you, maybe it’ll help someone else too.
Healing doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s just taking one breath. Softening one muscle. Noticing one pattern.
Your nervous system learned to protect you in impossible circumstances. Now it can learn to help you thrive!
Thanks for being here. I really mean that.
Ok now i understand why i cry in pigeon pose every. time.