We all hold stories. We may tend to think of our stories as only verbal narratives, timeline memories, or images. Our stories sometimes have a beginning, middle, and end and can be communicated using words, descriptions, and explanations, but what about the body story? How is the body story told?

To better understand the body story. Let's consider the different types of memory:

• Episodic Memory: This is memory based on events. For example, recalling the who, what, where, and when of a music concert.
• Sematic Memory: This is knowledge-based memory. For example, recalling what you read in a book.
• Procedural Memory: This is skill-based memory. For example, recalling how to ride a bike.
• Sensory Memory: This is sense-based memory. For example, recalling an experience through sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, etc.

The body story is often centered around our sensory memory. In this way, our bodies are like living journals with emotional and physical imprints of our lived experience - how experiences FELT.

These forms of memory can also be explicit or implicit:

• Explicit memory works like this:
  • Involves conscious recall
  • Fades without recall
  • Is typically episodic and sematic memory
  • For example, we may consciously recall what we've learned from a book. When we don't recall that information for a long period of time, we may forget aspects of what we've learned.
• Implicit memory works like this:
  • Recall is unintentional and unconscious
  • Is more vivid and can last a lifetime
  • Often influences our behavior without our awareness
  • For example, we may suddenly and unintentionally recall how we felt the first day of school when we pass a school building and see children playing outside. We are flooded with emotion. We may or may not make the connection that this is memory of our first day of school.

For trauma survivors, our stories often feel fragmented - the different aspects disconnected from one another. We may be able to tell a story with words but are disconnected from the emotions. We often experience the body story as an implicit remembering of sensory and emotional memory: an unintentional and unconscious recall of how we FELT - both emotionally and physically - throughout our history and experience.

What can be really confusing is that we don't always know the context for our implicit sensory memories, meaning we don't have the episodic memory for the sensory memory. We don't know the what, where, when, who of the emotional and physical memories that are emerging. Also, these sensory memories show up unconsciously and unintentionally.

The Emotional + Physical Connection

Neurologically speaking, we know the emotional and the physical are connected, meaning when we feel something emotionally that influences the ways our body operates - breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow, etc. change and fluctuate with emotion.

In safe and supportive environments, we learn to acknowledge and process our emotions and their accompanying physiological responses. Our bodies can complete the physiological responses that are activated when we feel, and we can integrate the experience.

However, if we don't have safe and supportive spaces and relationships where we can support, complete, and integrate these responses, they live unresolved in the body.

Our bodies can experience nervous system states, like fight, flight, and freeze, chronically, What kind of toll does that take on the body? Emily Nagoski uses the metaphor of our emotions and their physical responses as tunnels. When we can complete the emotion, we can exit the tunnel. Completion meaning we can notice, name, understand, and respond compassionately to what we are feeling. When the emotions go unresolved, we get stuck in the middle of the tunnel.

Over time, we may begin to experience the impacts of these unresolved responses. It could look like:

• Loss of appetite and nausea
• Gastrointestinal Issues
• Difficulty sleeping/sleep disturbances
• Chronic fatigue and exhaustion
• Chronic pain
• Localized pain to specific areas of the body
• Chronic illness
• Recurring colds and flu
• Distorted body image
• Shaking, trembling, and dizziness
• Headaches and migraines
• Jaw pain and grinding teeth
• Muscle tension and soreness
• Unpredictable trauma responses: fight, flight, and freeze
• Shortness of breath or difficulty deep breathing
• Sexual dysregulation: hyper/hypo responses
• Loss of time and memory
• Generalized numbness and numbness in specific body areas
• Heightened startle response
• Emotional flooding
• Trauma triggers
• And more.

Do you relate to any of these conditions? What might your body be remembering? What story is being told here?

These conditions may or may not have medical explanations, meaning some experiences may be validated by modern medicine and others may not be. Even without a medical diagnosis, these ailments and pains are very real.

The goal here is to bring a wider perspective to our physical experiences of trauma. Of course, it is important to seek out medical support when we are physically in pain or experiencing something irregular. We can also bring the added trauma-informed perspective that the emotional and the physical are closely tied. Modern medicine can support emotional recovery and emotional recovery can support modern medicine. We can consider all the components that are at play, so we can support our bodies both emotionally and physically.

Collectively, the emotional and physical landscape of our body tells a story. Our body is a living journal. If that "felt story" is acknowledged and witnessed, it can be integrated. If that "felt story" goes unheard, it settles into the body unspoken.

As we learn how to listen to and understand the body story, we can respond in a way that can bring healing, emotionally and physically. It is about learning to witness the body story and recognize the ways the body story validates our trauma story. It is about inviting our bodies into the recovery process and learning to integrate the deep wisdom and intuition the body and the body story carry. We are often taught to disown our body story at the expense of our wholeness. One way we heal is reclaiming and integrating the body story as essential to our wholeness.

Let's be real: the trauma body story is a hard story to hear. We often fight and war with the body, because we don't want to listen OR we don't know how to listen and keep our footing. It is scary, and perhaps, we aren't sure we can survive it.

Let's consider this: What if instead of using our energy to fight and war against our bodies, we can turn our attention and energy to building the skills and capacity to hear what our bodies are saying. In this way, we allow our bodies to be on our side, as they sound the call to what needs to be healed.

It's ok to acknowledge and recognize that we aren't ready or resourced enough to hear the call, but we can learn. Befriending the Body is a step towards building those skills.

We might lean on these affirmations as we shift our relationship to our body and healing.

• My body is speaking to me, and right now, it is hard to hear the message. I don't feel ready.
• My body is on my side and wants to heal AND it is difficult to experience the pain and hard feelings associated with that healing.
• My emotions feel big and overwhelming right now, which makes sense because they have been pushed away for so long.
• I might not understand all my emotions or painful sensations, yet I can still acknowledge they are real and worthy of attention.
• I am learning how to hold my trauma body story. It is a lot to hold, and I can take it slow.
• I am learning to trust my body and believe in the idea that my body wants to heal too.

How does it feel to read these affirmations? How does your body respond?