Trauma Is Stored in the Body

How Trauma Becomes Stored in Your Body

Trauma is a cumulation of experience and emotional response to an unpleasant experience. Similar to how implicit memory is stored, trauma also creates its own pathway in the same fashion and like implicit memory, it is the emotional reaction that solidifies the pathway. Trauma is more than what happened, a car crash, breakup, death, or war, as most people may think, it is what happens inside you as a result of that traumatic event.

It takes up camp and stores itself in your entire body. If you’ve ever clenched your jaw when you were scared, tightened your shoulders when you were anxious, or felt your stomach drop while receiving bad news, you’ve experienced how trauma impacts your whole being. Your body stores these as traumatic memories and remembers when similar experiences show up even when you think you’ve healed and moved on. This is why a holistic approach is such an effective approach to healing.

Now let’s go over how trauma gets stored in the body, what it looks like in everyday life, and how you can begin to unpack and release it.

What Is Trauma?

Trauma is how your nervous system response to an overwhelming or stressful event that goes beyond your coping capability. It’s not about what happened, but how your body and mind responded to what happened.

There are three general types of trauma:

• Acute trauma: from a single event (e.g., accident, assault)

• Chronic trauma: repeated exposure (e.g., bullying, poverty, emotional neglect)

• Complex trauma: layered and relational (e.g., childhood abuse, unstable caregivers)

Here’s how and why trauma sits in the body: your body doesn’t always know when the danger is over. And that’s when the trauma gets stored.

The Evidence-Based Science on Why Trauma Lives in Your Body

The autonomic nervous system (ANS), which is the body’s built-in alarm system reacts instantly with no time to think during times when imminent danger strikes.

You react by:

• Fight

• Flee

• Freeze

• Fawn (people-please to stay safe)

This response floods your body with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Your muscles tense, you become short of breath, your digestion slows, shifting you into survival mode.

Once the threat is over, your body should return to its baseline.

However, trauma interrupts this natural cycle.

Unfortunately, if the danger was too intense, lasted too long, or if you didn’t feel safe after, your body may stay stuck in a high-alert state, sometimes for decades after the danger is gone.

This is like opening a floodgate with a broken shut-off valve that allows continuous release of those stress hormones that over time start to become toxic to your entire system leading to increased inflammation and dis-ease within the body eventually causing the development of chronic illness.

Real-Life Example: The Tension That Never Left

Here is an example from my own life. I grew up in a chaotic household where yelling, fighting, and slammed doors were just another day. When I became an adult, I was intelligent and educated, but naive and dumb when it came to the people I allowed in my life. As a result of my childhood, I learned to people-please for acceptance, to keep the peace, for recognition. I would choose the worst men to get in relationship with. I became a tight ball of tension over time, never able to fully get comfortable or relax, constantly clenching my jaw, and always believing I had to be on ready for the next tragedy that was sure to come.

I would blame my back pain and muscle tension on work.

But through therapy I learned that I was still reacting to dangers I experienced over 25-30 years ago.

The jaw clenching? Is a defense mechanism I developed over time. The shoulder tension? I find myself guarding against a perceived threat that rarely materializes. The fatigue? My nervous system never got to rest fully.

How Stored Trauma Shows Up Physically

Stored trauma presents itself through chronic symptoms like:

• Muscle tension, TMJ, migraines

• Digestive issues like IBS or bloating

• Autoimmune flare-ups

• Sleep disturbances or chronic fatigue

• Shallow breathing

• Numbness, tingling, or dissociation

• “Random” body pain with no clear medical cause

These symptoms are often dismissed, over-medicated, or misdiagnosed. But when physical healing stalls despite effort, unresolved emotional trauma might be the missing link. This is again why a holistic approach is more effective. It looks at the entire person and not just on the parts which are only the symptoms, leaving the root intact and in place, creating more unresolved symptoms.

Fascia: Trauma's Favorite Place to Hide

Trauma likes to place itself in your fascia, the connective tissue surrounding your muscles and organs.

Fascia is like a spiderweb running through your entire body. When you’re traumatized, your fascia tightens and “records” the body’s tension, especially if you didn’t get to discharge the energy after the event.

That’s why bodyworkers, somatic therapists, and trauma-informed yoga teachers often talk about “releasing” stuck energy through physical movement.

You’re Not Broken, Your Body Can Heal

Even if your trauma happened years ago, your nervous system can be rewired. Your body wants to return to safety but needs help remembering how.

Healing happens when:

• You feel safe enough to process, not suppress

• You slow down enough to notice what your body is doing

• You allow yourself to express, shake, cry, breathe, move

Talking therapy is useful, but it’s not the whole story. Trauma doesn’t start in your thoughts, it starts in your body. So that’s where the healing needs to start, too.

Exercise: 10-Minute Body Awareness Scan

Here’s a simple way to start reconnecting with your body and noticing where trauma might be stored in your body.

Set a timer for 10 minutes. Sit or lie down somewhere quiet.

1. Close your eyes. Breathe naturally.

2. Bring attention to your feet. What do you feel? Tingling? Numbness? Warmth?

3. Move slowly up your body. Up your legs, over your hips, belly, chest, shoulders, arms, jaw, face.

4. Ask yourself:

   • Where do I feel tension or tightness?

   • Are there areas I can’t really feel at all?

   • What sensations come up without judgment?

5. End by placing a hand on your heart or belly. Breathe slowly for 60 seconds.

You don’t need to fix anything right now. Just notice. Awareness is the first step to releasing.

What’s Next?

In the weeks ahead, we’ll dive into:

• The physical toll of suppressing your emotions (Week 2)

• How movement and breath work releases stored trauma (Week 3)

• Daily habits to rewire your nervous system for long-term healing (Week 4)

You don’t have to live in a body that feels stuck, tense, or overwhelmed. Your body is not your enemy and wants nothing more than to be whole. When you are in balance and complete, love works with you in pleasant ways creating wonderful experiences in your story.

Share Your Experience

Have you ever noticed your body reacting emotionally even when your mind felt “fine”? I would love to hear about your experiences, drop a comment or share your story. You never know who it might help.

Time to do a Little Work

We all know healing requires action to work, to stick, to create change. Here I challenge you to incorporate this exercise into your daily life for the next week.

• Do the 10-minute Body Scan this week (daily if possible)

• Start noticing when and where your body tenses up throughout the day

• Be curious about what your body’s trying to tell you

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