The body DOES NOT store trauma like a filing cabinet.

» A contemplation on trauma, prediction, and the extraordinary adaptability of our bodymind «

What does our body remember?

I've been revisiting some of my earlier understandings of how our body holds trauma, and finding myself in a rather interesting enquiry about what it actually means for our body to 'remember' something.

In the field of somatic psychotherapy, we often speak about the body storing trauma. We talk about releasing old emotions, unwinding patterns of tension, and freeing ourselves from the physical imprints of past experiences. I've used this language myself, and it has been a useful way of understanding the relationship between our physical body and our emotional experiences.

But I'm beginning to wonder if there's another way of looking at this.

What if our body isn't so much holding onto the past, but rather, continually preparing us for the future?

This is a subtle distinction, but one that has been opening up an entirely new landscape of understanding for me, particularly in relation to the work I do with Hakomi mindful somatic psychotherapy.

Our body is continually anticipating

One of the more interesting developments in contemporary neuroscience is the growing understanding of our brain as a predictive organ. Rather than simply responding to what is happening around us, our brain is continually anticipating what is likely to happen next, drawing on our previous experiences to inform how we perceive, feel and respond to the world.

This is sometimes referred to as predictive processing, and while it is one of several ways of understanding how our nervous system operates, I find it particularly compelling when considering how we develop our coping strategies.

Essentially, our nervous system is making its best guess about the world we are about to encounter, and preparing our body accordingly.

And it does this all the time.

When we enter a room, meet someone new, encounter conflict, or even anticipate a conversation that might be difficult, our body is already organising itself around what it expects to happen.

Our muscles, breathing, posture, attention, emotional responses and impulses towards action are all participating in this preparation.

What's super interesting to me is that much of this happens outside of our conscious awareness. We don't necessarily decide to brace our shoulders, hold our breath, withdraw from connection or become particularly agreeable when someone is upset with us.

Our body has learnt what works.

And it gets on with the job.

The intelligence of our adaptations

In an earlier blog post, Our Growth Potential – moving beyond our coping patterns, I explored some of my own adaptive behaviours, and introduced a term I was playing with at the time; supported distortions.

I was interested in how our body physically shapes around our life experiences, and how the muscular and fascial architecture of our body might support the psychological strategies we develop in order to navigate our world.

I still like this term, although my understanding of what's actually happening has shifted somewhat.

Growing up, for example, I learnt that expressing my emotions wasn't particularly welcome. I became rather adept at minimising my emotional needs, managing my upsetness and presenting as someone who was easy to be around.

I wrote at the time that 'acceptable' felt like the bodyfelt synonym for 'love'.

That was quite a revealing observation for me.

Through the lens of predictive processing, I can now see this adaptation in another light. My nervous system wasn't simply holding onto old shame or unexpressed emotions. It had learnt to anticipate that belonging and connection were more likely to be available when I didn't make too much of my emotional world.

So my bodymind organised around that expectation.

Not because it was broken, or because something had gone wrong with its intelligence, but because this was a creative and necessary adaptation to the world I was growing up in.

The trouble, of course, is that our adaptations can become rather well entrenched, and what served us beautifully in one environment may continue operating long after the conditions that shaped it have changed.

Our body keeps preparing for a world that may no longer exist.

And this, I think, is where things get particularly interesting.

Recruitment patterns

I was talking with my partner recently about all this, and he offered a phrase that has stayed with me as he navigates on-going physical tensions. He spoke about the body having recruitment patterns around our muscles, shaped by the impacts of our life experiences.

I rather like that.

Recruitment is an active process. It suggests that our nervous system is continually calling upon different muscles and physiological responses to meet the demands of whatever situation we find ourselves in.

If I anticipate conflict, for example, I might recruit my shoulders, jaw and diaphragm to brace against what is coming. My breathing might become shallow, my attention narrow, and my body prepare to defend itself, withdraw, or perhaps become very still.

Someone else entering exactly the same situation might recruit an entirely different set of responses. Their body might mobilise towards engagement, their voice become stronger, their posture more expansive, their attention directed outwards.

Neither response is necessarily right or wrong.

They are simply different solutions, shaped by different histories, different expectations, and different understandings of what is needed to navigate the world.

What I appreciate about the term recruitment is that it brings us back into the present moment.

Rather than seeing a contracted shoulder as a place where an old emotion is stored, we might become curious about what the shoulder is currently being recruited to do.

What is it preparing for?

What does it anticipate?

And perhaps more importantly, what might allow it to discover that another response is possible?

This is a rather different enquiry from trying to get the shoulder to relax!

Moving beyond our habitual responses

In Hakomi, we are interested in bringing mindful awareness to the ways we organise our experience, particularly those habitual patterns that operate outside of our conscious choosing.

We slow things down, and become curious.

What happens in my body when I imagine expressing a need? What happens when someone offers me kindness, or when I anticipate being misunderstood? What happens to my breathing, my posture, my capacity to remain present?

And what might my body be expecting in those moments?

We aren't necessarily looking for something to release, although emotional release and physical relaxation can certainly be part of the process.

We are interested in discovering the underlying organisation, and creating conditions where something new can be experienced.

In Hakomi we call this a missing experience.

If my nervous system has learnt that expressing my emotional needs leads to disconnection, then an experience of being genuinely met, while allowing those needs to be present, offers something rather extraordinary.

New information.

My bodymind has an opportunity to discover that the world doesn't always respond in the way it has come to expect.

Of course, one lovely experience doesn't necessarily undo decades of adaptation. Our nervous system is rather committed to what it knows, particularly when those patterns have served to keep us safe.

But through repeated experiences of safety, connection, permission and support, our expectations can begin to change.

And as those expectations change, so too can the ways our body organises itself.

Expanding our repertoire

There's another aspect to this that I find particularly hopeful.

If our body is continually recruiting different responses to meet the world, then perhaps healing isn't primarily about getting rid of our old patterns.

Perhaps it's about expanding the repertoire of responses available to us.

Our capacity to brace, withdraw, become vigilant, self-reliant or emotionally contained isn't necessarily something we need to lose. There are times when these responses are entirely appropriate, and rather useful!

What becomes limiting is when they are the only responses available.

When our shoulders brace before we've even registered what is happening. When our voice disappears in the presence of conflict. When our impulse towards connection is overridden by an equally familiar impulse to retreat.

The possibility of healing, then, is not to become someone without protective patterns, but to become someone who has greater freedom to respond to the actual conditions of the present moment.

Sometimes we may need our strength, our boundaries, our capacity to withdraw and attend to ourselves.

And sometimes we may discover that we can soften, reach towards another, express our needs, or simply remain present with something that once felt intolerable.

We are increasing our options.

I find myself thinking of a choir here. Not every voice is needed for every note. Sometimes the basses carry the melody, sometimes the altos, and sometimes the whole choir joins together.

The beauty is in the availability of the voices, and their capacity to respond to the music.

Perhaps our bodymind is rather like that.

Our protective adaptations have their place, but they needn't be the only voices singing.

What future are we preparing for?

Circling back to this enquiry about what our body remembers, I'm finding that the predictive-processing perspective offers a useful shift in how I understand our relationship with the past.

Our history matters enormously. Our early relationships, experiences of safety and danger, belonging and exclusion, nourishment and deprivation, all contribute to the ways we come to understand ourselves and our world.

But rather than imagining these experiences as discrete packets of emotion stored somewhere in our body, waiting to be triggered or released, we might consider how our history continues to inform what our nervous system expects will happen next.

Perhaps what our body remembers is not simply what happened, but what it learnt to expect.

And that expectation shapes how we meet Life.

Where I have learnt to anticipate rejection, I find myself withdrawing before connection has had a chance to develop. Where I expect my needs to be unwelcome, I will minimise them before anyone has the opportunity to respond. And when I anticipate that being visible will bring criticism, I will very likely organise myself around remaining unseen.

These are intelligent solutions, given the world in which they were learnt.

But what if the world is different now?

What if there is enough safety to be visible, enough permission to have needs, enough relational support to allow our vulnerability to be present?

And what if, through new experiences, our nervous system begins to anticipate something other than the familiar difficulties of our past?

I wonder if contentment itself can become something our body learns to expect.

Or belonging.

Or the possibility of being met.

I find that rather beautiful.

Because it suggests that our bodymind is not simply an archive of everything that has happened to us, but a living, adaptive intelligence, continually participating in what might become possible.

And perhaps the work of healing is not so much about freeing ourselves from our past, but allowing our body to discover that the future doesn't have to be a repetition of it.

There's something wonderfully hopeful in that.

Hopeful. And Real.