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Signs Your Body Is Releasing Trauma
You may not clearly remember a traumatic event, but your body does, evoking trembling, sudden immobility, anger, or a defensive posture. Childhood neglect, abuse, motor vehicle accidents, sexual violence, war, fire outbreaks and natural disasters all have one common denominator — trauma. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally, 7 out of 10 people1 will experience a traumatic event. This means that you are not alone.
Trauma, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR), is exposure to actual or potential situations2 such as death, severe injury or sexual violation which could be experienced directly, witnessed firsthand, learnt from the experiences of close ones, or through repetitive exposure to distressing details of traumatic encounters.
The DSM-5 definition focuses on the event without context to physical and emotional impacts. Evidence reveals that trauma lives beyond the mind, extending to the body.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) captures these nuances by defining trauma not just by the harmful or life-threatening event, but also by its lasting negative effect2 on individual functioning and mental, physical, emotional, social or spiritual well-being.
When you experience a traumatic event, it sets off a train of survival responses of fight-or-flight-or-freeze3. These responses can become inhibited, causing undischarged survival energy4 to be stored in the body as tension, chronic fatigue, panic attacks or a racing heart.
Two people may experience the same event, but one person develops4 lasting symptoms while the other doesn’t. Completion or inhibition of the survival response explains why this happens.
As healing occurs, your body completes the survival cycle by releasing stored energy. Trauma release signals progress towards safety. While filled with its discomfort and ups and downs, trauma release signals the nervous system’s need to move away from a state of heightened arousal and fear, to a state of rest and safety.
This article will help you understand why trauma is stored in the body, what progress in trauma release feels like, and when to seek professional help during trauma release.
How Trauma Is Stored In The Body
The Mind-Body-Nervous System Connection
To understand how the body stores trauma, it is important to understand the nervous system’s involvement in trauma.
The nervous system5 is the communication and command centre of the body. It receives, analyses, stores impulses and sends signals across the body. Like an electrical wiring circuit, your nervous system has the wires needed to turn on the switch.
The nervous system is made up of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. Central to trauma response is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), one of the two divisions of the peripheral nervous system. The ANS divides6 into the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) which both control involuntary body functions like heart rate, breathing, digestion, etc.
During a traumatic event, the SNS activates the body’s survival cycle6 while the PNS functions in a state of rest and digestion, giving a sense of safety. The vagus nerve is the primary nerve of the PNS. Naturally, the nervous system operates flexibly between the sympathetic and parasympathetic states based on external and internal stimuli. This is known as nervous system regulation7.
Stephen Porges’ work on the polyvagal theory3 explained the evolutionary subtypes of the vagus nerve and its role in the survival cycle. The ventral vagus nerve (VVN) is responsible for the state of safety and calmness where rest, digestion, social connection and engagement can occur. On the other hand, the dorsal vagus nerve (DVN) mediates the freeze or immobilization response and the sympathetic nervous system mediates the fight-or-flight response.
Crucial to trauma response are limbic system8 components — amygdala, hippocampus and the hypothalamus. The amygdala analyses emotions, detects threats and can override logical reasoning from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in trauma. The hippocampus controls memory, and dysregulation can cause memory fragmentation. The Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) increases cortisol levels for energy mobilization when activated by the hypothalamus.
What Happens In the Nervous System During Trauma?
Porges’ work on neuroception9 helps us understand that the brain is constantly and unconsciously scanning for threats and safety. Do I feel safe now? Is this person’s voice, face and posture safe or threatening? Is this environment safe? Your brain asks these questions constantly through neuroception.
When a traumatic event occurs, it activates the nervous system, activating the limbic system, the ANS, the HPA and the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala detects the emotion attached to an event or situation, if labelled as a threat, it signals and activates the ANS and the survival cycle of fight-or-flight-or-freeze.
When the survival response is inhibited, the amygdala stays in a threat overdrive, causing the body to remain in a state of sympathetic activation. The ventral vagus nerve3 becomes hypoactive, limiting what the body considers safe, while the HPA thinks the body is still stressed and keeps producing cortisol.
Understanding Body Memory
Bessel’s extensive research on body memory connected physical and emotional symptoms to stored survival energy from traumatic events. Basically, when the survival cycle is disrupted, the mobilized energy is stored as body memory. It is how the body remembers traumatic events, when the mind can’t remember.
Body memory10 can be somatic, motor, emotional or implicit. When cues, situations or threats similar to the actual traumatic event occur, these stored memories manifest even when there is no danger in the present. Experiencing these symptoms can leave an individual feeling confused and fearful if there is no understanding of why it is happening.
How Is Trauma Stored In The Body?
Body trauma can be stored as motor, somatic, emotional or implicit memory10.
- Somatic or Sensory Memory: Stored as physical body sensations of tension in the jaw, hip, shoulder and neck muscles, headaches, nausea, sudden chest tightness, shallow breathing, chronic fatigue, tightening of stomach muscles, et cetera. It may also be stored as sensory sensations associated with taste, smell, pain, touch, sound, and fragmented memory — often referred to as “flashbacks”.
- Motor Memory: This is stored as postural defensive stance and reflex, automatic actions such as flinching, startling or trembling in response to similar cues.
- Emotional Memory: Stored in association with emotions. It can be sudden sadness, grief, anger or fear without an obvious cause in the present. Feelings of heart racing and panic attacks are common here.
- Implicit Memory: This is often related to complex relational trauma such as in child abuse. The trauma is not explicitly remembered but gets stored in reactions such as freezing, numbness, hypervigilance and anxiety.
In essence, your body speaks what the mind cannot speak.
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Physical and Emotional Manifestations of Stored Trauma
Stored trauma energy can manifest physically and emotionally. Physically, this undischarged energy can manifest as:
- Clenched jaw
- Chronic pain
- Chronic tension
- Numbness
- Fatigue
- Digestive problems
It emotionally manifests11 as:
- Anxiety
- Hypervigilance
- Numbness
- Emotions of unexplained fear, sadness or anger
Why Does Trauma Release Happen?
The nervous system fails to operate flexibly between its sympathetic and parasympathetic states in the face of an incomplete survival cycle.
Events, both intentional, such as seeking therapy and engaging in trauma releasing activities such as yoga, breath work or meditation and unintentional, such as similar cues from a past trauma experience can cause body memory to manifest, triggering trauma release, urging the body to relearn safety and integrating the traumatic event.
Completing the Interrupted Survival Response
Every trauma response needs to be completed for nervous system safety to occur. Interruption in the fight-or-flight-or-freeze cycle has already been shown to have lasting multi-system adverse effects. In the face of triggers, stored energy is released which completes the survival cycle, and helps the nervous system regain its flexible and adaptive control of the ANS.
When Does Trauma Release Signal Progress?
When trauma gets released, it indicates that the nervous system is trying to integrate the experience, and reorganize itself for safety. This gradual process, when it leads to nervous system integration3, signals progress.
Integration means that the nervous system is trying to organize, connect and process the traumatic event without overwhelm. When integration successfully occurs, even when you feel similar cues from a past trauma, your brain and body now understand that it was a past occurrence, and not a present threat. Progress leads to calmness, reduced triggers, better understanding of body emotions and a healthier sense of self.
As stored sensations reappear, energy level waxes and wanes, and you start remembering the traumatic experience more vividly, making you feel uncomfortable and concerned. These are part of the normal, non-linear road to healing, not regression. Intentional, expert-guided trauma-informed therapies ease your nervous system gently towards integration.
Alternatively, if release happens faster than your nervous system can handle, often from unintentional cues or therapies that aren’t trauma-informed, it can lead to nervous system shutdown4 with manifestations of dissociation (feeling out of touch with your body and sensations), freezing and numbness.
Physical Signs Your Body Is Releasing Trauma
As healing occurs, your body releases some physical trauma signs which include:
Nervous System
- Reduced hypervigilance: As you release trauma, your amygdala’s hyperactivity reduces and nervous system regulation returns. You start feeling less heightened or startled by cues and generally feel safer.
- Neurogenic Tremors: You may unexpectedly start shaking as the threat gets fully dissolved. Stored body memory gets released through this tremor. This is similar to the tremors observed in animals after threat resolution. Trauma-informed therapies such as Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) work based on this approach.
Musculoskeletal
- Tension release: Stored energy in the neck, back, jaw, and shoulder causes muscle twitching, and tension begins to reduce as trauma is released. You may notice you stop clenching your jaw and your back pain gets better.
- Postural defensive stance and reflexes begin to relax. Your shoulders loosen, flinching reduces and your hips soften.
Respiratory
- You may notice you stop holding your breath or shallow breathing stops as the amygdala moves towards safety. Deeper breathing followed by slower, shaky breathing occurs. This signals a ventral vagus nerve activation.
- Frequent yawning: It is a sign that the ventral vagus nerve of the PNS is being activated, signaling a return to rest-digest mode.
Gastrointestinal
- You may notice nausea, gurgling sounds, and reduced appetite followed by normal appetite as the gastric muscles unclench from trauma. The ANS makes the shift to rest and digestion.
Temperature and Sensation Changes
- You may notice your hand feeling warmer, with alternate periods of coldness. Tingling sensation returns as the body completes the survival cycle. A common sign during traumatic events is cold, clammy hands and feet because the body shuts blood away to more critical organs. But as trauma gets released, blood flow returns appropriately as PNS activities return.
Fluctuating energy levels
- Waxing and Waning Energy Levels: The ANS alternates between the energy-draining defensive SNS and the restful PNS, causing episodes of fatigue intertwined with energy bursts.
Feeling like a weight has been lifted off you
- As you release tension4 stored in your muscles and internal organs, you start feeling lighter as though a physical weight or pressure has been dropped off you. You may find breathing easier and your movement may become more graceful and peaceful.
Box Out Clinical Example of how this can show up:
Mandy experienced a traumatic childbirth where both she and her daughter’s lives were at risk. A year after the birth she is in a yoga class on all fours. The instructor comes to guide her into a pose and gently places her hand on the small of Mandy’s back. This physical position and the touch to her back triggers Mandy’s memories of feeling terrified for herself and her baby, she immediately feels sweaty and is close to tears.
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Emotional and Behavioural Signs of Trauma Release
During survival cycle completion4, your sensory memory and emotional memory release stored trauma. These may manifest as:
Emotional Waves
- Crying without an obvious trigger. This type of crying leaves you feeling better
- Sudden anger
- Unexpected relief
- Irritability
- Feeling of intense emotions including sadness and happiness
These symptoms occur as the amygdala stops overfiring, leaving your emotions unlocked and connected to the hippocampus.
Emotional clarity and regulation
- Emotional clarity: A complete defence cycle helps you clarify your emotions. You know what you feel and why. Rational thinking overrides the amygdala.
Improved memory and vivid dreams
- Fragmented memories (flashbacks) are integrated as healing occurs, helping you gain understanding and narrative memory of the trauma.
- Vivid dreams can occur as the hippocampus retains full functioning, helping you remember details of the event.
Change in daily behaviour
- Sleep gets better
- Appetite improves
- You feel the need for social connection or retreating
The body starts feeling safe enough to engage in restful activities and social connections
Mental Signs You Are Moving Forward
Improved Concentration and Focus
- You may start to reorganize your thoughts, sensations and emotions better, improving concentration and focus. The prefrontal cortex’s logical reasoning returns as amygdala hyperactivity wanes.
Increased Self-Esteem and Confidence
- Increased self-compassion: As trauma release occurs, the amygdala becomes less active, the rational voice of the prefrontal cortex takes over, and the hippocampus connects your emotions and memory. All these make you more self-aware, present and also soften your inner self-critic.
- Healthier self-esteem: Self-awareness makes you more present and capable of better decision-making improving your sense of self.
Reduction in Negative Self-Talk
- Trauma roots guilt-based belief in you. Increased hippocampal activity connects the emotion with memory, logic and reduces amygdala impact resulting in a reduction of negative self-talk. You start seeing yourself in a better light.
Emotional Stability
- As resolution occurs, the window of tolerance increases and your nervous system spends more time in regulation. Your ventral vagus nerve takes dominance, helping you regulate your emotions better.
Improved Decision Making
- As the amygdala stops seeing threat everywhere, the prefrontal cortex retains activity, leading to improved decision-making.
Greater sense of safety
- A complete survival cycle expends stored energy, which makes threats less pervasive; this signals a greater sense of safety and nervous system integration.
The Non-Linear Nature of Healing
Trauma recovery is not a straight, smooth, bumpless ride. Healing often occurs in waves, in a non-linear pattern. Some of the healing processes, such as waxing and waning energy, and the release of sensations, are not comfortable.
Regression vs Integration
Spiegel’s Window of Tolerance12 model reveals that even when the nervous system can’t oscillate appropriately between rest and activation, there are still moments when the nervous system tries to maintain a semblance of normality. Integration occurs inside this window of tolerance and as the brain relearns safety, the window of tolerance increases.
Sometimes, the body may go back to old coping patterns even when release is ongoing. This may feel like regression or moving backwards, however, it signals another layer of the nervous system necessary for integration.
Importance of Patience and Compassion
A good understanding of the non-linear nature of healing helps you understand why you feel better after processing one emotion and need more time to process another layer. Patience and self-compassion are important in gracefully navigating this healing process.
How to Support Yourself During Trauma Release
Self-care is very important during the trauma release process, helping you cope better with trauma release.
Physical Care
- Improved nutrition
- Gentle movements
- Rest
- Hydration
- Grounding: Placing your feet firmly on the floor, splashing cold water on your face helps bring you back to the present
Emotional Care
- Co-regulation: Talking to a trusted person helps regulate the nervous system better. Having communal support from trusted friends and family also causes co-regulation.
- Journaling: It puts your thoughts, emotions, and sensations into writing, helping you lift them off.
- Creative Expression: Dance therapy and gentle movements have been found to help nervous system regulation.
If you feel your body is releasing trauma too quickly, feel flooded by your emotions and sensations, or overwhelmed and unable to cope, seeking professional trauma-informed care can help you integrate appropriately and avoid a nervous system shutdown.
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Spain When to Seek Professional Help
Overwhelming trauma release necessitates professional help. Here are some red flags to keep an eye on:
- Flooding: an overwhelming of the trauma release signs
- Frequent dissociation
- Frequent panic
- Numbness
- Symptoms interfere with daily functioning
Trauma release is safer with a trusted expert like a trauma-informed psychotherapist, giving the dual benefits of co-regulation and trauma-informed therapy. Such an expert digs deep into the trauma, asking questions like, ” What happened to you?, and not ” What’s wrong with you?”
Therapeutic approaches
Trauma-informed therapy focuses on body memory and is based on the neuroscience of trauma. It applies either a Bottom-Up4 (working from the body to the brain) or a Top-Down (working from the brain to the emotions and body) approach in healing trauma. Yoga, meditation, mindfulness, etc, also help the nervous system relearn safety by releasing stored survival energy.
Trauma-informed therapies include:
- Eye Movement Reprocessing and Desensitization (EMDR):
This uses expert-guided bilateral eye movements2 to reprocess trauma memory.
- Somatic Experiencing (SE):
This method aids trauma release by helping individuals focus on their internal sensations4 such as sense of position and movement in space (proprioception), as well as internal organs’ signals (interoception).
- Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE):
Developed by Dr Berceli, neurogenic tremors are induced through a series of activities, which lead to release of body trauma.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS):
It improves self-compassion by helping the different parts or subpersonalities13 of an individual interact. This is particularly useful in complex developmental trauma.
- Trauma Informed Cognitive Based Therapy (TF-CBT):
It gradually changes an individual’s thought process2 about the traumatic experience. This method blends traditional CBT with trauma-informed approaches such as grounding, breathing, etc.
Mandy Revisited:
Following the yoga class she chats with the teacher about her reactions. She decides she will access therapy. She undertakes EMDR with a psychologist. The therapy helps her to learn that she went through something really scary but that both she and her daughter are safe now. She learns that because she was on medication during the labour her body may have remembered more of the trauma more explicitly than her mind. Getting back into some of the positions she was in during labour triggered her trauma response. She continues her yoga practice and begins to journal about her memories and experiences of the birth. She also learns to ground and soothe herself so that she feels able to cope if and when memories or bodily sensations arise.
Trauma is both physiological and psychological. When your mind cannot remember the trauma, your body remembers it through somatic, emotional, implicit and sensory body memories manifesting as discussed symptoms. Releasing this survival energy is crucial to the healing journey, hence, a good understanding and recognition of trauma release signs and why it happens helps your healing process.
Healing is a wavy journey, with its ups and downs. Despite these ups and downs, healing is occurring. Trauma-informed therapies help ease the healing process.
Trauma is overwhelming; reading about it is understandably overwhelming, too. As you grant yourself grace and self-compassion to read about trauma and understand it, extend the same grace to your body as it navigates this non-linear journey of healing.
FAQ
Expert Board Member
Trauma can be so tricky and the physical aspects of it can impact upon lives. Sometimes people are not explicitly aware that they have been through anything traumatic — more likely when they have experienced lots of adverse events in childhood. Research into the impact of Adverse Childhood Events demonstrates that people who have experienced them are more likely to experience physical conditions such as migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, polycystic ovaries, back problems. This article is a lovely overview of the way trauma can be released from the body and how it might show up.
