When most people hear the word trauma, they think of terrible events — accidents, abuse, war, loss. But trauma is not the event itself. Trauma is what happens inside of us when an experience overwhelms our capacity to cope.

Trauma is not in the story. Trauma lives in the body.

Trauma Is an Overwhelm of the Nervous System

When something happens that feels too much, too fast, or too soon — and we don’t have enough safety or support — the nervous system does what it knows best: it protects us.

It may freeze, shut down, or disconnect. It may fight or flee. These are not choices. They are biological survival responses. And when the body cannot complete them fully, the energy of the response can remain stuck.

That’s what trauma is: unfinished survival energy stored in the body.

As Peter Levine says, “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

Trauma Is Common

Because of this, trauma is more widespread than most of us realize. It is not only extreme events.

• Developmental trauma: growing up without enough attunement, care, or safety.

• Attachment trauma: disconnection from caregivers, lack of secure bonding.

• Shock trauma: accidents, surgeries, sudden losses.

• Cultural trauma: racism, sexism, oppression, systemic harm.

• Transgenerational trauma: unprocessed pain and survival patterns passed down through families and lineages.

You don’t have to have a “big story” to carry trauma. Many people who think, “I didn’t have it that bad,” still live with the symptoms of a nervous system shaped by trauma.

How Transgenerational Trauma Works

Trauma doesn’t just stay with the person who experienced it. Research in epigenetics shows that stress can change how our genes express, and these changes can be inherited. Family Constellation work and Indigenous traditions have said this for generations: what is not healed in one generation is often carried by the next.

This might look like:

• Inheriting fears or phobias without knowing why.

• Carrying patterns of shame, silence, or disconnection.

• Feeling grief or anger that doesn’t seem to belong to your own life story.

Transgenerational trauma is not fate. It’s an invitation. By facing what was hidden, we can interrupt the cycle and give future generations a different inheritance: safety, presence, wholeness.

How Trauma Shows Up

Trauma doesn’t disappear because time passes. It shows up in patterns of survival:

• Anxiety, depression, panic, or dissociation.

• Numbness or chronic fatigue.

• Hypervigilance, insomnia, or startle responses.

• Trouble with intimacy, boundaries, or trust.

• Somatic symptoms: pain, digestive issues, autoimmune flare-ups.

These are not personal failures. They are adaptations. They are the body’s brilliant way of keeping you alive when life felt unsafe.

Shame and Disconnection

One of trauma’s deepest wounds is shame. Shame tells us: something is wrong with me. It’s the fear of disconnection — the fear that if anyone saw our true selves, we would not be loved.

This is why trauma healing is not only about releasing the body’s survival energy. It is also about restoring connection — to ourselves, to others, to our ancestors, and to the sacred.

Trauma Healing

Healing trauma is not about forcing the body to relive the past. It is about creating safety in the present so the body can complete what it could not finish.

Through somatic practices — breath, movement, touch, sound — the nervous system learns it is safe to feel again. Suppressed grief can move. Frozen energy can thaw. Boundaries can be rebuilt.

When we address transgenerational trauma, healing can ripple backward and forward: honoring what our ancestors endured, and freeing future generations from carrying the same burdens.

Trauma healing is not about erasing what happened. It’s about reclaiming choice, presence, and intimacy with life.

Final Word

Trauma is not who you are. It is something that happened, and something your body adapted to.

And because it lives in the body, healing is possible through the body. With safety, presence, compassion, and remembrance of those who came before, trauma becomes not the end of the story but the doorway to resilience, intimacy, and wholeness.

With love,
Eman 🌿