Trauma Lives in the Body

Trauma is not measured by the size of the event. It is measured by what your nervous system had to do to survive it. A car accident, a difficult birth, a critical parent, a betrayal, a long illness, a hard church experience — any of these can leave fingerprints on your biology.

How Trauma Shows Up

• Hypervigilance, jumpiness, trouble relaxing

• Going numb under stress instead of feeling

• Chronic gut and pain symptoms

• Sleep that never fully restores

• Relationships that swing between too close and too far

Five Whole-Person Steps

1. Learn to recognize your nervous system state — fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

2. Daily nervous system regulation — breath, walking outdoors, prayer, journaling.

3. Safe relationships — one trusted person is medicine.

4. Bottom-up therapies like EMDR, somatic experiencing, or trauma-informed somatic work.

5. Psychiatric support for the layered anxiety, depression, or sleep issues that almost always come with trauma.

Respectfully, Beth Makar, RN, Dual-MSN, PMHNP-BC · Integrative Mind Body Psychiatry · integrativemindbodypsychiatry.com