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Trauma Within the Body: How It Shapes Our Physiology, Memory, and Relationships

Writer's picture: Penny Waller Ulmer, R. PsychPenny Waller Ulmer, R. Psych


Trauma is not just something we remember—it is something our bodies carry, repeat, and protect us from. Long after an event has ended, its impact remains imprinted in our nervous system, our reflexes, and our relationships.


For many, trauma is not a coherent story of the past, but a felt experience that intrudes on the present—a tight chest when someone raises their voice, a frozen body when conflict arises, an inexplicable sense of danger in a seemingly safe environment. These reactions are not simply emotional—they are physiological survival strategies, developed when the brain and body were overwhelmed and unable to process what was happening (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).


The Body’s Role in Storing Trauma

When faced with threat, the nervous system responds automatically: fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. Ideally, once the danger has passed, the body returns to a balanced state. But trauma disrupts this cycle, leaving defensive responses incomplete and the body stuck in survival mode (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).


1. The Autonomic Nervous System and Trauma

Trauma affects the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls involuntary functions like heart rate, digestion, and muscle tension. Instead of adapting to everyday stress, a traumatized nervous system remains hyperactive or unresponsive, leading to symptoms like:


📌 Hyperarousal (Fight-or-Flight Mode) – Feeling constantly on edge, startled easily, difficulty sleeping, racing heart (Fisher, 2019).

📌 Hypoarousal (Freeze or Collapse Mode) – Feeling emotionally numb, physically disconnected, fatigued, or unable to take action (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).

These states create a nervous system that responds to the world as if it is still dangerous, even when there is no immediate threat (Fisher, 2019).


2. Trauma as Body Memory

Unlike ordinary memories, which can be recalled as stories, traumatic memories are encoded as sensations, reflexes, and movement impulses. This is why survivors may experience:


✔ Sudden physical discomfort when reminded of past events (tight throat, nausea, trembling) (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).

✔ Feeling frozen or unable to move when triggered (Fisher, 2019).

✔ Startling at loud noises or unexpected touch, even when safe (Fisher, 2019).


These responses are the body’s way of trying to complete unfinished survival reactions, often outside of conscious awareness (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).


3. Structural Dissociation: When Trauma Fragments Experience

For some, trauma does not just live in the body—it divides the self. Structural Dissociation, a theory by van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele (2006), explains how extreme trauma can create separate parts of the personality:


🔹 One part manages daily life—going to work, raising children, appearing functional (van der Hart et al., 2006).

🔹 Another part holds the trauma responses—carrying fear, pain, and defensive impulses that get activated by triggers (van der Hart et al., 2006).


This explains why survivors may feel completely fine one moment and overwhelmed the next, as different aspects of their experience take control at different times (van der Hart et al., 2006).


How Trauma Shapes Relationships and Behavior

Because trauma rewires how we perceive safety and connection, it deeply impacts relationships, attachment, and self-perception:


🔹 Avoidance of connection – Emotional closeness may feel overwhelming or dangerous, leading to distancing behaviors (Fisher, 2019).

🔹 Hypervigilance in relationships – Being on constant alert for rejection, betrayal, or harm (Fisher, 2019).

🔹 Recreating past dynamics – Subconsciously repeating old patterns of conflict, neglect, or harm in new relationships (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).


These patterns are not personality flaws—they are adaptations to a nervous system that has learned survival is more important than connection (Fisher, 2019).


What This Means for Healing

Understanding trauma’s effects on the body changes how we approach healing. Trauma is not just a story that needs to be told—it is an experience that needs to be processed at a bodily level (Fisher, 2019).


By working with nervous system regulation, body awareness, and completing survival responses, healing can happen not just in the mind, but in the body as well (Ogden & Fisher, 2016).


Trauma may shape us, but it does not have to define us. Healing is possible—not by forcing the past away, but by helping the body learn that the present is finally safe (Fisher, 2019).






References

Fisher, J. (2019). Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in the Treatment of Trauma. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.

Ogden, P., & Fisher, J. (2016). Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment. Norton & Company.

Van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., & Steele, K. (2006). The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation of the Personality and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization. Norton & Company.


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