TRAUMA AND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM
- Josi
- Aug 12
- 2 min read
LIVING IN A BODY THAT REMEMBERS
A GinkgoMinds Blog by Jo Oswin
You can forget the details. You can delete the photos, burn the letters, rewrite the story.
But your body? It keeps the file.It doesn’t need the timeline. It remembers how it felt.
And when something reminds it—a tone of voice, a slammed door, a smell, a touch—it doesn’t ask, “Is this rational?”It asks, “Are we safe?”
TRAUMA DOESN’T LIVE IN THE EVENT — IT LIVES IN THE RESPONSE
People think trauma is the thing that happened.The assault. The breakup.
The abandonment. But trauma is what happened inside you in response.
It’s the stuckness. The shutdown. The loop. The part of you that couldn’t fight or flee—so it froze. And the part that still hasn’t fully thawed.
Trauma isn’t in your mind. It’s in your body. And your nervous system is doing everything it can to protect you—even if it costs you intimacy, joy, or presence.
THE BODY REMEMBERS THROUGH REACTION, NOT REASON
Maybe you flinch when someone raises their voice. Maybe you smile when you’re scared. Maybe your chest tightens when someone says “I love you” because love never used to feel safe.
These are not personality quirks. They’re protective patterns.
Your nervous system doesn’t care if the danger is gone. It cares whether it feels familiar. And familiar doesn’t mean safe—it means survivable.
WHEN SAFETY FEELS UNFAMILIAR, YOU MIGHT SABOTAGE IT
Healing isn’t just about avoiding red flags.It’s about learning to stop running from green ones.
From slowness. From softness. From someone who sees you and doesn’t want to use you.
But if your body’s baseline is chaos or fear, then peace might feel boring. Or even threatening.
You might pick fights, push people away, or disappear.Not because you want to destroy connection—but because your body isn’t sure it’s allowed to rest.
🖤 COACHING PROMPT FOR TODAY
WHAT DOES MY BODY STILL BELIEVE IS DANGEROUS, EVEN WHEN MY MIND KNOWS IT’S SAFE?
Be honest. Be curious. Don’t try to logic your way out of it. Just listen.
Write it down. Then ask: What would safety feel like, if I had never learned to fear it?
That’s the nervous system we’re rebuilding.
Inside Patreon, we explore this in real-time. Somatic work, trauma rewiring, nervous system repair. This is more than mindset. This is memory work. And it starts in the place you’ve tried to leave:
Your body.
xx Josi

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