Trauma Pulls You Out of the Body. Healing Brings You Back.

For years, I believed my body was working against me. Pain, fatigue, flare-ups—each symptom felt like a betrayal, a reminder that something was “wrong.”

As a nurse, I understood the medical explanations. As someone living with an autoimmune condition, I felt the truth that no lab result could capture: my body was trying to tell me something.

Trauma pulls us out of our bodies. Chronic illness, on the other hand, is our body’s way of gently—sometimes loudly—calling us back. When we ignore the whispers, the body starts to scream. And while modern medicine often teaches us to fight symptoms, suppress them, or “fix” them, the real path to healing isn’t about erasing pain. It’s about listening, returning, and building the capacity to hold all that life—and the body—throws at us.

In this post, I want to share the lessons I’ve learned through my journey as a nurse, a woman with an autoimmune condition, and a guide for women navigating suppressed emotions, chronic pain, and the healing of their nervous systems.

Putting Pain in Boxes

One of the most common ways we survive trauma is by putting it in a box. Out of sight. Out of mind. Locked away so we don’t have to feel the rawness, the discomfort, the grief. Sometimes we put it there because the trauma is too big, too overwhelming. Sometimes we put it there because we never learned how to hold the intensity of the feeling safely.

But here’s the catch: what we put in boxes doesn’t disappear. It sits, quietly or not-so-quietly, in the body. Our muscles tense, our nerves tighten, our breath shallows. The body remembers what the mind may forget. The body holds what the heart cannot. And over time, the little boxes start to overflow.

When the Body Screams

At first, your body whispers. A twinge of pain here, a wave of fatigue there, a flare that comes without warning. Little signals that something buried is seeking your attention. If we ignore these whispers, they grow louder, more persistent.

Eventually, the body screams. Chronic pain, autoimmune flare-ups, exhaustion, anxiety, or depression—the symptoms are not the enemy. They are your body’s way of demanding to be heard, your nervous system reminding you: “I am still here. I still remember. It is time to feel.”

For decades, we’ve been taught to “fix” these symptoms—pills, protocols, detoxes, hacks, supplements. But suppression rarely heals. It silences, numbs, and reinforces disconnection. Trauma isn’t stored in the mind. It’s stored in the body, in the tight shoulders, in the clenched jaw, in the tension in the gut. Your body remembers what your mind might have tried to forget.

Healing is Coming Home

Healing isn’t about erasing pain. It isn’t about living in bliss or achieving perfection. Healing is about creating the capacity to hold life fully—the grief, the rage, the fear, the heartbreak, the joy. Healing is about returning to the body we may have abandoned.

And here’s the paradox: slow is always fast. The pace of true healing isn’t measured by how quickly symptoms disappear. It’s measured by how deeply you learn to listen, to inhabit your body, to create safety inside yourself. Step by step, breath by breath, you reclaim your nervous system, your body, and your life.

Tiny Practices That Matter

Even the smallest gestures can start to dissolve the walls we’ve built around our boxes of pain.

Try this:

Place a hand over the part of your body that feels tense.

Close your eyes and breathe into it.

Whisper to yourself: “It’s safe to be here. I am ready to feel. I am ready to rise.”

The body isn’t against you. It has been trying to bring you home all along. Your symptoms are signals, your nervous system is speaking, and your capacity to hold life is growing every time you return to yourself.

An Invitation

If these words land with you—if you’re tired of fighting your body and ready to finally listen to her whispers instead of waiting for the screams—this is the work we do inside Align & Arise.

A 6-week journey of nervous system healing, emotional release, and reclaiming safety in your body. We begin Sept 21st.

Early Bird doors close Sept 18th.

Or, if you’re craving something more personal, I also offer 1:1 sessions where we gently unravel the layers of suppressed emotion and chronic pain together. (Currently on a limited-time offer!)

You don’t have to do this alone.

You don’t have to keep fighting your body.

You can come home to yourself.

💌 Share this with someone who needs it today—you never know how much a gentle reminder can change their path.