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You Can’t Heal in Survival Mode — Why Safety Is the First Step - Bessel van der Kolk Motivation | Therapy Decoded | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: You Can’t Heal in Survival Mode — Why Safety Is the First Step - Bessel van der Kolk Motivation
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Video Summary
Summary
Core Theme
Trauma is not merely a memory of an event, but the imprint it leaves on the body and nervous system, manifesting as a persistent "survival mode." True healing requires creating a sense of safety in the present, allowing the body to release its protective responses, rather than solely relying on cognitive processing.
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When people think about trauma, they
often think of memories, of painful
images or haunting recollections that
linger in the mind. But trauma is not
simply what happened to you. Trauma is
what happens inside you as a result of
what happened to you. It is not the
event itself, but the imprint it leaves
on your body, your brain, and your
nervous system. Trauma changes how you
live, how you breathe, how you relate to
others, and how safe you feel in your
own skin. In my decades of work with
trauma survivors, from war veterans to
abused children to victims of chronic
neglect, one truth has emerged
consistently. Trauma is not just
remembered, it is relived. Over and
over, the body reactivates. The nervous
system floods and the world once again
feels unsafe even when danger is long
gone. This is the essence of survival
mode. When your body keeps reacting as
if the trauma is still happening, even
years after it has passed. Healing from
trauma then is not about forgetting the
past or simply processing a painful
memory. Healing requires creating a
sense of safety in the present. It
requires helping the body learn that it
is no longer in danger. And that process
begins not with words but with
regulation, with restoring a sense of
calm, grounding, and connection. Because
you cannot reason your way out of
survival mode. You can't simply tell
yourself you're safe. Not when every
cell in your body believes otherwise. We
live in a culture that often tells us to
just move on, to stop dwelling on the
past. But for trauma survivors, the past
is not past. It's present. It's in the
flinch when someone raises their voice.
It's in the panic that arises for no
apparent reason. It's in the inability
to trust, to relax, to feel at home in
one's body. Trauma survivors don't need
to be told to move on. They need to be
helped back into their bodies. They need
to feel safe again, perhaps for the very
first time. When we're in survival mode,
everything changes. Our priorities shift
from growth, curiosity, and exploration
to vigilance, control, and avoidance. We
stop learning. We stop playing. We stop
dreaming. Because the body's only
mission is to keep us alive. And while
that is essential in the midst of real
danger, it becomes a prison when the
danger is no longer real. But our
biology hasn't gotten the message. I've
called this phenomenon the body keeps
the score. Because no matter how much we
try to suppress, ignore or rationalize
our pain, our bodies remember. They
store it in tension, in tightness, in
shallow breaths, in racing hearts, in
digestive problems, in insomnia, and in
the inability to feel present. The body
does not lie. It tells the truth about
what we have endured, whether we
consciously remember it or not. This is
why traditional talk therapy, while
often helpful, is not enough on its own
for many trauma survivors. Because
trauma is stored not just in language
and memory, but in sensation and neurobiology.
neurobiology.
You can't talk your way out of a body
that feels unsafe. You can't think your
way into calm. Safety must be
experienced, felt, and embodied. The
work of healing begins then with helping
the nervous system shift from defense to
connection, from survival to presence,
from hypervigilance to regulation. And
that means helping people find
practices, experiences, and
relationships that make their bodies
feel safe enough to let go. Because
until the body feels safe, the mind will
remain trapped in fear. Over the course
of this video, we'll explore why safety
is not a luxury, but a biological
prerequisite for healing. We'll look at
the neuroscience of trauma, the survival
responses of the nervous system, the
connection between trauma and the body,
and most importantly, how healing
happens, not just intellectually, but
somatically through movement, breath,
rhythm, connection, and attunement.
We'll explore the tools that help trauma
survivors come back into their bodies,
build resilience, and reclaim their
lives. This message is not just for
those who have been through extreme
abuse or war. Trauma comes in many
forms. It can be the result of emotional
neglect, chronic stress, racism,
poverty, or a thousand small violations
of safety and connection. If you feel
like your body is always bracing for
impact. If you struggle to relax, trust,
or feel joy. If you find yourself numb,
anxious, or disconnected from the world
around you, this message is for you.
Healing is possible, but not through
willpower alone. Not by trying harder.
The first step is not toughness, but
safety. The kind of safety that allows
your body to stop fighting, to stop
fleeing, to stop freezing. Only then can
you begin to heal. Let's begin this
journey by understanding what survival
mode really is and how it shows up in
your body and brain. Because before we
can exit it, we have to know we're in it.
it.
When the human brain perceives danger,
it doesn't ask for your permission. It
reacts instantly, automatically, and
powerfully. This reaction is what we
call survival mode, and it governs much
of what we do when we're under threat.
For many trauma survivors, this state
becomes a permanent operating system,
not just a temporary emergency response.
Survival mode is not just one thing. It
comes in several forms, each rooted in
evolution and designed to protect us.
You've likely heard of the fight
orflight response, but there's more.
There's freeze, where your body shuts
down and goes numb. And there's fawn,
where you appease others in order to
stay safe. These four responses, fight,
flight, freeze, and fawn, are all part
of the body's effort to survive
overwhelming experiences. Let's start
with fight. This is when your body
mobilizes to confront the danger. It's
the pounding heart, the clenched fists,
the surge of adrenaline that says, "I
have to protect myself." It can show up
in trauma survivors as irritability,
rage, and a tendency to overreact to
small provocations. These individuals
aren't being irrational. They're stuck
in a loop where their body believes it's
still fighting for survival. Flight is
the need to escape. The heart races,
muscles tense, eyes scan for exits. It
can show up later in life as anxiety,
restlessness, or a chronic need to stay
busy. People who are stuck in flight
mode may seem hyperproductive or can't
relax because stillness feels dangerous.
When you're always running, you don't
have to feel the fear that's chasing
you. Freeze is the body's last resort.
When neither fighting nor fleeing will
work, the brain shuts everything down.
This is not weakness. It's biology. The
freeze response is the brain's way of
numbing pain, physical or emotional, and
dissociating from the unthinkable.
People stuck in freeze often feel
disconnected, emotionally flat, or
chronically fatigued. They may struggle
to recall details or feel outside of
their body. It's not laziness. It's a
nervous system overwhelmed by trauma.
Then there's fawn. A response many
people don't even recognize as survival.
Fawning is when you learn to please, to
appease, to abandon your own needs in
order to keep others calm. This often
develops in childhood trauma, especially
in environments with unpredictable
caregivers. If love or safety was
conditional, you learned to shapeshift,
to silence your own discomfort, to put
others first no matter the cost. In
adulthood, this can manifest as people
pleasing, lack of boundaries, or
difficulty asserting your needs. All of
these responses serve the same function,
survival. But when the trauma ends and
your nervous system doesn't reset, these
responses become maladaptive. You may
find yourself lashing out, running away,
shutting down, or overaccommodating.
Not because you want to, but because
your body has never stopped bracing for
impact. The tragedy is that most trauma
survivors are not aware that they're in
survival mode. They blame themselves for
being too sensitive, too angry, too
needy, too numb. They think something is
wrong with them. But what's really
happening is that their body is still
protecting them long after the danger
has passed. The problem isn't that
they're broken. The problem is that
their system hasn't felt safe enough to
let go. And this brings us to something
profoundly important. You can't heal if
your body is still bracing for danger.
Healing requires presence, curiosity,
and self-compassion, none of which are
accessible when your nervous system is
in a constant state of alarm. Before we
can process the trauma cognitively, we
have to help the body come out of
defense. We must create the conditions
for safety. This is why trauma treatment
that ignores the body is incomplete.
Talk therapy alone often isn't enough.
It can help you understand your
patterns, but it can't always shift
them. That's because the trauma isn't
only in your thoughts. It's in your
reflexes, in your breath, in the way
your shoulders hunch when someone raises
their voice. It's in your startled
response, your hypervigilance, your
inability to rest. So when I work with
trauma survivors, my first priority is
not asking them to recount the story.
It's helping their nervous system find a
sense of safety, often for the first
time in their life. That might involve
grounding techniques, body-based
practices, or simply learning how to
notice sensations without being
overwhelmed by them. We are not rushing
into the past. We are building the
resources to tolerate the present. It's
important to remember that survival mode
is not a choice. It's not a sign of
weakness. It's not a moral failure. It's
a deeply intelligent response to danger.
One that worked at the time and maybe
saved your life. But what saved you then
is now costing you dearly. Your
relationships, your peace, your capacity
for joy, all can be compromised when
your body is locked in survival. But
there is hope. The brain is plastic. The
nervous system can be rewired. You can
teach your body slowly, gently that it's
safe to let go. And once safety is
restored, real healing becomes possible.
You move from surviving to living.
The body keeps the score. How trauma
becomes physical.
I titled one of my books, The Body Keeps
the Score, because that single phrase
captures the essence of how trauma
operates. It's not just a clever
metaphor. It is a physiological reality.
When something deeply frightening or
overwhelming happens to us, and we're
unable to process it at the time, either
because we were too young, too helpless,
or too shocked, that experience doesn't
disappear. It gets embedded. It leaves a
record not in your conscious mind, but
in your body's tissues, in your muscles,
in your nervous system. Trauma shows up
as tight shoulders you can never seem to
relax. A gut that twists at the smallest
sign of stress or a pounding heart that
seems to react before you even
understand why. It appears in your
posture, in the way you walk into a
room, in how close you allow someone to
stand next to you. It affects your
sleep, your digestion, your immune
system, your hormones. This is why so
many trauma survivors have chronic
physical symptoms that doctors can't
explain. They are not imagining it.
Their body is reliving something it
never got to resolve. When we experience
trauma, especially early in life, our
brain makes a decision. Survival first,
everything else later. Logical thought,
language, and memory are turned down.
Instead, the body gears up for fight,
flight, freeze, or fawn. The amygdala,
our brain's alarm system, goes on high
alert. Cortisol floods the system.
Muscles brace. Breathing becomes
shallow. And if the trauma is repeated
or prolonged, this becomes the new
baseline. Your body doesn't return to
safety. It adapts to danger. One of the
most heartbreaking things I see in
survivors is how deeply they've
internalized their symptoms. They think
they're weak for being anxious. They
feel ashamed of their hypervigilance.
They blame themselves for their
inability to relax or trust others. But
what they need to hear, what you need to
hear if this is your story, is that your
body is not betraying you. It's
protecting you. It adapted to danger
because it had to. And those
adaptations, while once helpful, are now
getting in the way of your ability to
live a full connected life. But let me
be clear, you are not broken. You are
injured. And just as physical wounds
need care, time, and the right
conditions to heal, so does trauma, that
healing does not start in the thinking
brain. It starts in the body. That's why
body-based approaches, yoga, breath
work, EMDR, sensory and motor
psychotherapy, somatic experiencing are
not alternative. They're essential.
They're based on the understanding that
safety, movement, and presence must come
before insight. In my work, I've
witnessed how powerful these methods can
be. I've seen people who couldn't
tolerate being touched finally lie down
in a yoga class and feel safe in their
own skin. I've seen combat veterans
reclaim their ability to feel calm. I've
seen survivors of childhood abuse take a
full deep breath for the first time in
decades. And that is where healing
begins. When the body learns that it is
no longer in danger, that it doesn't
have to brace anymore, that it can
return to a state of calm and curiosity.
You don't have to relive every detail of
your trauma to heal. You don't have to
retell the story again and again. What
you need is to feel safe, not just in
your mind, but in your body. You need to
gently guide your nervous system out of
survival mode and into a space where
connection, play, rest, and growth are
possible again. The body is not the
enemy. It's the doorway. The pain you
carry is not proof that something is
wrong with you. It's evidence that
something happened to you, something
that overwhelmed your ability to cope,
to make sense of it, to integrate it.
But you are not that moment. You are not
that pain. You are the one who survived
it. And your body with time and
compassion can learn to feel safe again.
So when your heart races for no reason,
when you startle at loud noises, when
you can't sleep or focus or feel
connected to others, don't ask, "What's
wrong with me?" ask what happened to me
and how did my body learn to protect me
from it? That question opens the door
not just to understanding but to
healing. And that's what we'll explore
next. How safety is not just a feeling.
It is a requirement for recovery.
Because no one can heal while their body
still believes it's in a war zone.
Healing begins the moment your body
feels it has finally come home.
safety first. Why talking alone isn't enough.
enough.
If I could offer just one truth to every
trauma survivor, it would be this. You
cannot heal if your body still believes
it's unsafe. We live in a culture that
overvalues words. We believe that if we
can talk about something enough, we can
think our way out of it. We assume that
healing happens in the head, in
conversation, in cognition, in
understanding. But trauma isn't stored
in the thinking brain. It's stored in
the emotional brain, the survival brain,
and most importantly, in the body. And
if the body doesn't feel safe, the mind
can't truly relax. Many of my patients
have already told their story in therapy
to friends, sometimes over and over
again, and yet they still don't feel
better. Why? Because no amount of
talking can override a nervous system
that's stuck in fight, flight, or
freeze. You can understand your trauma
intellectually and still be triggered by
a sound, a smell, or a facial
expression. You can know rationally that
you're not in danger, but your body will
respond as if you are because that's
where the trauma lives. So healing
doesn't begin with words. It begins with
safety. Not just external safety, but
felt safety. That means your body needs
to experience moment by moment that it
is no longer in danger. That the war is
over. That you don't need to brace,
hide, or shut down anymore. This is why
trauma recovery is fundamentally a
process of retraining the nervous
system. When people are traumatized,
they often become disconnected from
their own internal cues. They stop
feeling hunger or fatigue. They lose the
ability to tell whether someone is safe
or not. Their body becomes a
battlefield. They avoid. The first step
in healing is gently reconnecting,
learning to feel again, to notice again,
to sense again. This doesn't happen
through logic. It happens through
experience, through practices that
invite the body back into the present
moment. Breathing exercises that calm
the vagus nerve, gentle movement that
helps discharge stored tension, rhythmic
activities like drumming, walking,
dancing, all of which regulate the
nervous system. Even something as simple
as placing your hand over your heart and
breathing deeply can be profound. These
practices don't just feel good, they
rewire the brain. Therapies like EMDR
and sematic experiencing work because
they go beyond talk. They help people
access the sensations and memories held
in the body and process them in a way
that allows the nervous system to
complete what was once interrupted.
Trauma freezes us in time. These methods
help unfreeze us. It's also why
relationship is so essential. Safe
connection with another human being is
one of the most powerful tools we have
for healing trauma. In fact, trauma
often happens in relationships through
betrayal, abuse, neglect. So, it makes
sense that healing must also happen in
relationships, but not just any
relationship. It has to feel safe,
predictable, attuned, consistent. In my
practice, I've seen people slowly begin
to trust again. Not because I gave them
advice or solutions, but because I
showed up consistently with presence and
care. I created a space where they could
finally feel seen without being judged.
That's what a safe therapeutic
relationship is, a new experience of
being held, regulated, and respected.
Something many trauma survivors never
had. Now I know that safety can sound
abstract. So let me make it concrete.
Safety in this context looks like this.
Being able to breathe fully without
bracing. Feeling the ground beneath your
feet and knowing you're not about to
fall. Being in the presence of another
person without scanning for threat.
Being able to say no without fear.
Having space between a trigger and a
reaction. Feeling like your body belongs
to you. If those things sound foreign to
you, I want you to know that's not your
fault. Your body adapted. It protected
you. And it can learn a new way. The
truth is trauma healing is not about
going back to who you were before. It's
about becoming who you were always meant
to be before the fear, before the
hypervigilance, before the shutdown. But
that process begins always with safety.
And you don't have to rush it. The body
heals in the present, slowly, gently, in
layers. There is no one-sizefits-all
path. Some people begin with movement,
others begin with breath. Some start
with therapy, others with art or animals
or nature. But the common thread in all
effective healing is this. The nervous
system begins to feel safe again. When
that happens, everything changes. Your
body starts to relax. Your thoughts
become clearer. Your emotions feel less
overwhelming. You start to notice joy,
real joy, not just the absence of fear.
You can sleep, you can eat, you can
love, you can laugh. These aren't
luxuries. They're signs that your system
is coming out of survival. So, if you've
been stuck, if talk therapy hasn't
worked for you, it doesn't mean you
failed. It means your body is asking for
something deeper, something more
fundamental, something it never got.
Safety, presence, regulation. Your body
needs to learn that it's okay to exist,
that the danger is gone, that you can
rest, and you can. Healing is not
linear. Some days will be hard. Some
memories will rise when you least expect
them. But every moment of safety, every
breath you take with ease, every moment
of connection, they all count. They all
matter. They are the building blocks of
a new life. In the next part, we'll
explore why childhood trauma is so
devastating and how it shapes your
brain, beliefs, and relationships long
into adulthood.
The power of safe relationships, how
When people ask me what is the most
important factor in healing trauma, they
often expect a technical answer. Perhaps
a type of therapy, a specific
medication, or a novel brain scan. But
my answer is always the same. Safe
connection. The single most important
ingredient in healing from trauma is a
feeling of safety in relationship.
Trauma by its very nature is isolating.
It separates you from others. Even if
you're surrounded by people, you feel
alone in your pain. And if your trauma
involved betrayal, if those who were
supposed to protect you were the source
of harm, that isolation becomes even
deeper. The world feels unsafe. People
feel dangerous. Vulnerability becomes
something to avoid at all costs. And
yet, it is precisely that vulnerability
in the presence of safety that opens the
door to healing. This isn't just a
poetic idea. It's how the human nervous
system works. Our brains are wired for
connection. We are social creatures and
our biology evolved to regulate itself
through relationships. A calm voice, a
compassionate gaze, a warm touch. These
are not just emotional comforts. They
are neurological regulators. They tell
our bodies, "You are safe." Now when a
child is scared, the first thing they do
is look for a caregiver, not just for
protection, but for regulation. The
caregivers's calmness becomes the
child's calmness. That's co-regulation.
Our ability to use the nervous systems
of others to regulate our own. And it
doesn't end in childhood. As adults, we
still need safe, attuned relationships
to bring our systems back into balance.
This is why trauma that occurs in the
context of relationships like abuse or
neglect must be healed in the context of
relationships. You cannot heal
relational wounds in isolation. You may
find insight alone. You may practice
techniques alone. But deep emotional
healing requires being seen, heard, and
felt by another human being who is safe,
present, and non-judgmental.
For many trauma survivors, this is the
most difficult part of the healing
journey. Trusting another person,
letting someone in, risking connection.
But it is also the most transformative.
When a survivor experiences a safe
relationship, whether in therapy,
friendship, community, or love, their
nervous system learns something
profound. Not all people are dangerous.
Not all closeness leads to pain. I can
be connected and still be safe. In
therapy, this is called the therapeutic
alliance, the relationship between
therapist and client. And while many
models of therapy exist, the healing
power of that relationship is consistent
across the board. When the therapist is
attuned, accepting, and reliable, the
client begins to internalize safety.
Their nervous system, once stuck in
fight or flight, begins to rest. The
body learns it doesn't have to brace for
danger all the time. It's important to
say that safe connection doesn't mean
perfect or flawless. It means
consistent, caring, and responsive
enough to allow for repair when ruptures
happen. Because no relationship is
without mistakes, even in therapy. But
the key is repair. When a rupture
happens and the other person responds
with honesty, care, and accountability,
it sends a powerful message to the
trauma survivor. You're not too much.
You're not broken. We can move through
this together. If you've been
traumatized, you may have developed what
we call relational adaptations.
You might keep people at arms length.
You might people please to stay safe.
You might become hypervigilant to others
moods or withdraw completely. These are
not flaws. These are survival
strategies. But over time, if we want to
move from surviving to living, we have
to replace these adaptations with
something new, something that allows for
connection without fear. This is why
group therapy, peer support, and somatic
communities can be so powerful. They
offer repeated lived experiences of
safety in the presence of others. They
recondition the nervous system through
realtime interaction. They give the body
what it never got, the experience of
being in relationship without having to
disappear, perform, or protect. If you
are healing from trauma, I want you to
hear this. You are not meant to do it
alone. You were hurt in relationship and
you must be healed in relationship. Not
because you're weak, but because you're
human. Because your body, your brain,
your heart, all of them are wired to
thrive through connection. And the more
you experience safe, attuned connection,
the more your nervous system will
believe, I am safe now. I can rest. I
can heal.
The body keeps score and it's always honest.
honest.
You may forget what happened. You may
block it, rationalize it, or silence it.
But your body doesn't forget. Your body
is the most honest witness to your life.
It carries everything. The fear, the
shutdown, the flinching, the bracing,
the breath you didn't take, the tension
in your shoulders when someone raises
their voice, the way you dissociate when
you feel cornered, the ache in your
chest you can't explain. These are not
random. They are memories. They are the
language of the body speaking what the
mind cannot yet say. In trauma work, I
often say the body keeps the score. And
it does so with remarkable precision.
Not to punish you, not to sabotage you,
but because the body is always trying to
protect you, always adapting, always
preparing for the worst based on what it
has survived in the past. It is trying
to keep you alive, even if that means
never letting you fully relax again.
Here's the truth most people miss.
Trauma isn't just something that
happened to you in the past. It's
something that continues to live inside
you in the present, in the body, in the
way you breathe, the way you react, the
way you hold yourself. That's why
healing trauma is not just about
talking. It's about listening. listening
to your body because the body holds
everything the conscious mind tries to
avoid. You may not remember what
happened when you were sick, but your
body does. You may not remember why your
stomach tightens in crowds, but your
body does. You may not know why you
panic when someone raises their voice,
but your nervous system remembers, and
it responds instantly, often without
your permission, long before your
rational brain has time to catch up. The
problem is most people try to outthink
their trauma. They try to heal from the
neck up. But trauma is not stored in the
thinking brain. It's stored in the
survival brain and the body. That's why
insight alone is not enough. That's why
talking alone is not enough. That's why
you can go to therapy for years,
understand everything logically, and
still feel like nothing has changed.
Healing requires more than insight. It
requires integration. It requires
experiences that help your body feel
what your mind knows. That's what safety
provides. Not just the absence of
danger, but the presence of regulation,
the ability to feel without becoming
overwhelmed, to remember without
reliving, to move without freezing.
That's where somatic therapy comes in.
body-based healing that doesn't just ask
what happened, but what does your body
need to feel safe now? It might look
like breath work, movement, grounding,
or touch. It might mean learning how to
notice sensations without judgment, how
to stay present with discomfort instead
of fleeing from it, how to feel your
feet on the ground when your mind wants
to run. These are not small steps. They
are revolutionary acts of reclaiming
your body from the grip of trauma.
Because for many survivors, the body has
not felt like a safe place for a very
long time. It was the scene of the
crime. It carries the pain, the shame,
the helplessness. And so,
understandably, many people disconnect
from their bodies. They numb. They
dissociate. They live from the neck up
trying not to feel too much. But healing
asks us to come home to the body. Not
all at once, not forcefully, but gently,
gradually, with curiosity and compassion
to feel the ground again, to breathe
fully, to notice without judgment what
is happening inside. This is not easy.
In fact, for many, it's the hardest
part. Feeling is hard when feeling has
meant danger. But it is also where
freedom lies. Because the only way out
of trauma is through the body. When we
work with trauma, we must remember that
we are not just working with the past.
We are working with the present-day
survival responses that were once
adaptive. The flinch, the freeze, the
rage, the shutdown. These are not signs
of a broken person. They are signs of a
person who adapted to overwhelming
conditions. But those adaptations once
life-saving can become prisons. They can
keep you stuck even when the danger is
long gone. That's why we need to give
the body new experiences. Not just new
thoughts. Experiences of safety, of
agency, of connection. Experiences where
the body learns, I don't have to brace
anymore. I can relax. I can feel. I can
move. I can exist without fear.
One of the most powerful interventions
we can offer is not a technique. It's
presence. To sit with someone, to
breathe with them, to attune to their
body, to co-regulate with them until
their body begins to believe it is safe
again. Because trauma is about terror in
isolation. But healing is about safety
in connection. And that begins in the body.
body.
Why talking isn't enough. the limits of
cognitive insight.
There is a well-meaning but misguided
belief in modern mental health treatment
that if you can just talk about it,
you'll heal. That if you can put your
pain into words, explain it, analyze it,
understand it, then you'll finally be
free of it. But trauma doesn't work like
that. Not fully. Talking can help.
Understanding can help. Language is
powerful. It gives shape to what was
once unspoken. It gives you a sense of
control, meaning coherence. But insight
alone doesn't heal trauma. Why? Because
trauma lives in parts of the brain that
language doesn't reach. When we
experience trauma, the brain shifts the
prefrontal cortex, the part responsible
for reasoning, reflection, and verbal
expression shuts down. Meanwhile, the
amygdala, the fear center, becomes
hyperactive. The body floods with stress
hormones. The rational mind goes
offline. The emotional and sensory brain
takes over. In that moment, you are no
longer forming a narrative. You are
surviving. Your brain is encoding
sensations, images, smells, body
movements. Your trauma is stored in the
implicit memory system, not as a story,
but as fragments, triggers, bodily
responses, flashes of emotion. And these
implicit memories are not easily
accessed through talk alone. That's why
someone can say, "I know it wasn't my
fault." And still feel deep shame in
their body. That's why a veteran can
describe a battlefield in perfect
detail, but still wake up shaking from
nightmares. That's why survivors of
abuse can explain everything that
happened and still freeze when they hear
a certain voice or smell a certain
cologne. Because trauma is not just a
story you tell. It's a state your body remembers.
remembers.
So what does this mean for healing? It
means we need more than cognitive
therapy. We need therapies that work
with the body, the senses and the
subconscious. We need methods that can
access the nonverbal parts of the brain,
the right hemisphere, the lyic system,
the brain stem. This is why techniques
like EMDR, eye movement, desensitization
and reprocessing, yoga, neuro feedback,
sematic experiencing, art therapy and
rhythmic movement are so powerful. They
reach the places that words cannot. They
speak the language of the body, the
language of sensation, rhythm and
movement, the language trauma speaks.
I've seen people spend years in talk
therapy, gaining insight after insight,
and still remain stuck, still triggered,
still numb, still unable to relax or
connect. Not because they're doing
something wrong, but because their
therapy is only speaking to the thinking
brain, not the survival brain, not the
body. This is not a criticism of talk
therapy. It's a call for expansion.
Because when it comes to trauma, the
goal isn't just to understand what
happened. It's to experience yourself
differently in the present. It's one
thing to say, "I know I'm safe." It's
another to feel it in your chest, your
breath, your muscles. It's one thing to
say, "I'm allowed to set boundaries."
It's another to feel empowered in your
body when you say no. It's one thing to
say, "I deserve love." It's another to
stay present and regulated when someone
offers it. This is what real healing
looks like. Not just new thoughts, but
new experiences. Not just information,
but integration. This is why safety
matters so much. Not just physical
safety, but emotional, relational,
nervous system safety. Because only in
that state can the brain begin to
rewire, can the body begin to release,
can the trauma begin to be processed
instead of reenacted. Safety is not the
end goal. It is the beginning. the
foundation, the soil in which healing
grows. Without it, therapy can become
another performance, another mask,
another place where you say all the
right things while your body still lives
in a war zone. But with it, with real
embodied safety, something miraculous
happens. The body begins to feel. The
brain begins to integrate. You begin to
shift, not because you're forcing
yourself, but because something deep
inside is finally letting go. That's
when you realize you're not broken. You
were protecting yourself and now finally
you're allowed to stop.
Safety first because you deserve to feel alive.
alive.
Let me leave you with this. You cannot
heal in survival mode because healing
requires slowness, gentleness, and
choice. Your body is not your enemy.
Your symptoms are not signs of weakness.
They are the imprints of what you had to
do to survive. And now survival is no
longer the only option. Now you get to
heal slowly, tenderly, without pressure,
without performance, not to prove
something, not to get over it, but
because you deserve peace. You deserve
wholeness. You deserve to feel alive.
Safety isn't a luxury. It's the soil
from which all healing grows. So if
you're struggling, don't ask, "What's
wrong with me?" Ask instead, "What
safety has been missing?
What compassion has never been given to
me? What part of me is still waiting for
permission to come out of hiding?" That
is where the healing begins. And if no
one ever told you before, and let me say
it now, you are not broken. You are not
weak. You are not too much. You are a
survivor carrying a story your body had
no words for. And now maybe for the
first time, you're allowed to rest.
You're allowed to feel safe. You're
allowed to come home to yourself because
you can't heal in survival mode. But you
can heal when you finally feel safe. And
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