The Body Keeps the Score (Literally)
A stick figure sitting confidently in a therapy chair saying 'I have processed it. I understand it. I am completely over it.' with a satisfied expression
A full-body X-ray view of the same stick figure showing glowing red areas: shoulders hiked up, jaw clenched, stomach knotted, lower back seized -- each labeled with a tiny padlock
The stick figure at the dentist being told 'You are grinding your teeth again' and at the doctor being told 'Your back pain has no structural cause' -- looking confused both times
The stick figure in a somatic session, hands on their stomach, feeling a wave of sensation move through their body while tears fall -- not from sadness but from release
A person insists they are 'over it' while their body stores the trauma in their shoulders, jaw, stomach, and lower back like a series of locked filing cabinets.
Explanation
You have done the work. You have talked about it in therapy. You understand what happened, why it happened, and how it affected you. Cognitively, you have processed it. You are over it. Except your shoulders are up around your ears. Your jaw is clenched so tight your dentist has concerns. Your stomach is a permanent knot. And your lower back went out again last week for no apparent reason. You are 'over it' from the neck up. From the neck down, the trauma is still very much in session. Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing framework explains why this happens. When you experience a threat, your body mobilizes a massive amount of survival energy -- adrenaline, cortisol, muscle tension, the urge to fight or flee. If that energy gets discharged (through movement, shaking, crying, or completing the escape), the nervous system returns to baseline. But if the response gets interrupted -- because you froze, because you had to stay calm, because you were a child with nowhere to go -- that survival energy gets trapped in the body. It does not expire. It just waits. And it expresses itself as chronic tension, pain, and a body that startles at triggers your conscious mind has long moved past. Somatic Experiencing works by gently reconnecting you with these stored sensations and allowing the incomplete survival responses to finish. This might look like noticing a tremor in your legs and letting it happen instead of suppressing it, or feeling the urge to push away and following that impulse in a safe environment. The goal is not to re-traumatize you. It is to let your body finally receive the memo that the danger has passed.
Key Takeaway
You can understand your trauma intellectually and still carry it in your body -- healing requires letting the body finish what it started.
A stick figure placing their hands on their tense shoulders and asking 'What are you holding?' instead of just taking another painkiller
The stick figure in a safe setting, noticing a tremor in their hands and choosing to let it happen instead of suppressing it
The stick figure feeling a wave of release -- heat, tears, tingling -- as stored tension begins to move through and out
The stick figure standing with relaxed shoulders and an unclenched jaw, looking lighter, the body's filing cabinets finally unlocked