The Body Remembers, Even When You Don’t

Issue 44 - Read Time: 3 Minutes 59 Seconds

How Can You Find Out Why You Have Trauma You Don’t Remember?

If you’ve ever had the sense that something’s off, like you’re reacting strongly to things that “shouldn’t” bother you, or feeling numb when you want to feel connected, you might wonder:

Is something wrong with me? Am I broken?

Or the deeper, more haunting question: What happened to me?

The tricky thing is, we often don’t remember. Not because nothing happened, but because trauma doesn’t always leave a clear cognitive trail.

Big T vs. Small t Trauma

Let’s break this down.

Big T trauma refers to significant, identifiable events. A car accident. A sudden death. An assault. These moments are often remembered vividly, and we can clearly label them as traumatic.

Small t trauma is more subtle. These are moments that may not look like “trauma” from the outside, but they’re felt deeply in the body, especially when they happen over and over.

Think about:

• Coming home from school to an emotionally unavailable parent.

• Eating lunch alone, wondering if anyone saw or cared.

• Being praised for achievement but never comforted in failure.

Small t trauma is about what your nervous system had to adapt to, not what the world labels as traumatic.

And while big T trauma can rupture your sense of safety all at once, small t trauma tends to erode it over time.

The result is often the same: chronic dysregulation, internalized shame, and a fragmented sense of self.

So How Do You Know If You Have Trauma You Don’t Remember?

The body remembers what the mind forgets.

You might not recall a specific moment, but your nervous system might still be operating from it. Unremembered trauma shows up as patterns:

• You feel more regulated alone than with people you love.

• You shut down or space out in moments of intimacy.

• You go blank when emotions rise in you or others.

• You stay stuck in overthinking or productivity as a way to avoid emotion.

• You carry a vague sense of “wrongness” you can’t explain.

These aren’t personality flaws. They’re adaptations.

But What About the Story?

Here’s where we hit a tricky crossroads.

Because of our love and affinity for story, we often want to tell it. We want a clear beginning, middle, and end. We want resolution. We want a narrative that explains why we are the way we are.

But trauma healing doesn’t always follow the structure of story, especially when it comes to the erosion-based nature of small t trauma.

In fact, story can sometimes become a distraction. An intellectual pursuit that pulls us away from what can only be resolved through feeling.

It can even become a form of dissociation: “If I can just understand this enough, maybe it will all go away.”

Now, I’m not saying story has no place. It does. Language is part of how we make meaning. But we need discernment.

• Is the story getting you closer to feeling and integration?

• Or is it pulling you further into the loop of analysis, explanation, and distance from the body?

Sometimes, in an effort to understand, we start assigning motives to the people who hurt us. We psychoanalyze them, hoping it will resolve us. And in doing so, we move even further away from the Self.

In somatic work, we have to let go of the story, at least for a while, and let the body do its thing.

This is difficult. The ego wants to know. It wants control. It wants to understand every angle.

But healing often requires surrendering to what is beyond the intellect. Letting the body unwind what it never got to complete.

What Helps?

You begin to remember, not always through stories, but through sensation. Through the way your jaw clenches, the way your breath shortens, the way you instinctively pull away from love.

This is why somatic therapy, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and trauma-informed relational work can be so powerful.

They help you track what’s happening now, so you can begin to untangle what happened then.

We don’t recover old memories just to relive them, we recover access to parts of ourselves we had to exile in order to survive.

And here’s the thing: the memory might never come back in the way you think. You may never get a clear image, a timeline, or a story that satisfies the mind’s hunger to “know.”

But the body knows. And healing comes when we stop demanding that it tell us what happened, and instead start offering it space to feel what’s happening now.

What returns is not always the story, it’s the capacity.

The capacity to stay present with a racing heart.

To breathe into the shame that used to shut you down.

To meet your own pain with gentleness instead of fear.

That’s what integration looks like. Not perfect recall, but a nervous system that finally feels safe enough to stay with itself.

JOIN THE COMMUNITY:

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ATTUNEMENT COLLECTIVE

Thank you!

I love that you are interested in exploring yourself in the pursuit of growth and expansion. 

And I love that you are diving deeper into the unconscious patterns that limit our capacity as a species to transcend this paradigm. 

You are becoming the change you want to see in the world and that is incredibly inspiring!

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your journey ✨✨

With Love,

Christian

Raise your consciousness - change the world.

Exploring the human condition , breaking down the blockages that limit our capacity to give and receive love.