Your Body Keeps the Score: What That Actually Means

The idea that the body holds trauma has entered mainstream conversation largely through Bessel van der Kolk's work. But the phrase has become so common that it can feel abstract. What does it actually mean for your day-to-day experience?

How traumatic memory differs

When the nervous system processes a normal experience, it files it as memory: something that happened, with a beginning, middle, and end. When an experience is overwhelming, the nervous system does not complete this process. Instead of being stored as a coherent memory, it is stored as a set of bodily sensations, emotional charges, and implicit expectations.

This is why trauma does not behave like regular memory. It does not stay in the past. It can be activated in the present by stimuli that are similar to the original experience: a tone of voice, a particular smell, a touch, a dynamic. The body responds as if the original threat is still occurring.

What this looks like in daily life

• Physical tension or pain that appears to have no medical explanation
• Gut reactions to situations that your mind does not understand
• Bracing for impact in relationships even when nothing bad is happening
• Emotional responses that feel too large for the situation they arise in
• A persistent sense of not quite being safe, even in objectively safe circumstances

Why talk alone is often not enough

If the experience is stored in the body, accessing it requires the body. This is why approaches like somatic therapy, EMDR, and body-based interventions can reach what years of conversation sometimes cannot.

It is not that talking is useless. It is that talking needs to be accompanied by body awareness for deeper change to occur. At Stabilise, somatic and body-aware approaches are integrated into counselling and coaching where relevant.

What this means for your healing

Healing from trauma is not about forgetting or finding a way to stop thinking about it. It is about helping the nervous system complete the response it started. When that happens, the memory becomes part of the past, rather than an active presence in the present.

If you are in Melbourne or open to online sessions, Stabilise offers trauma-informed counselling that integrates body-based approaches. A free discovery call is the first step.