The Body Keeps the Score: How Nervous System Work in Therapy Can Help Heal Trauma

Trauma isn’t just an experience stored in your mind — it’s an imprint on your body.

In periods of stress, the body’s fight or flight response activates. A normally regulated nervous system experiences the stress but returns to normal when the threat has passed. This period during which you have the ability to self regulate is called the ‘window of tolerance’, and most people move through several of these cycles daily. One example is rushing to get somewhere and running late but relaxing once you reach your destination on time. However, the system works very differently when the body experiences trauma.

Traumatic events push the nervous system outside its ability to regulate itself. For some, the system gets stuck in the “on” position, and the person is overstimulated and unable to calm. Anxiety, anger, restlessness, panic, and hyperactivity can all result when you stay in this ready-to-react mode. This physical state of hyperarousal is stressful for every system in the body. In other people, the nervous system is stuck in the “off” position, resulting in depression, disconnection, fatigue, and lethargy. People can alternate between these highs and lows.

For so long, trauma therapy focused primarily on understanding your past — analyzing what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and how it shaped you. But while insight is powerful, insight alone doesn’t heal your nervous system. 

The nervous system doesn’t operate through logic though— it operates through a felt sense of safety. If the body perceives a threat, no amount of intellectual awareness will convince it otherwise. 

This is why trauma therapy has shifted. Instead of just talking about experiences, nervous system work allows the body to feel what the mind already knows. 

Nervous system healing isn’t about forcing regulation, or “moving on.” It’s about slowly introducing experiences of safety so your body can release its grip on survival mode.

Somatic therapy explores how the body expresses deeply painful experiences, applying mind-body healing to aid with trauma recovery.

How does somatic therapy differ from talk therapies?

Typical talk therapies such as CBT engage only the mind, not the body, encouraging people to become aware of negative thoughts and behavior patterns and work to change them.

But in somatic therapy, the body is integrated to achieve healing. This form of therapy cultivates an awareness of bodily sensations, and teaches people to feel safe in their bodies while exploring thoughts, emotions, and memories.

Cognitive behavioral therapies focus on conscious thought and work on challenging thoughts in relation to anxiety and behaviors, helping desensitize people to uncomfortable sensations. But somatic therapy is more about relieving the tension, as opposed to desensitizing people to it.

Who might benefit from somatic therapy?

Since difficult and post- traumatic feelings often show up in the body in debilitating ways, somatic therapy aims to drain those emotions of their power, relieving pain and other manifestations of stress, such as disrupted sleep or an inability to concentrate.

These types of emotions can stem from a variety of conditions and circumstances that somatic therapy may potentially help alleviate. They include:

• post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

• complicated grief

• depression

• anxiety

• trust and intimacy issues

• self-esteem problems.

The central goal of somatic trauma therapy is to teach people how to become attuned to physical changes through focus and mindfulness.

So maybe you recognize your patterns and where they come from, but still feel stuck in them — this is where therapy can help!