10. Trauma Triggers in Everyday Moments - When Your Body Remembers Before You Do

When you're parenting after trauma, especially trauma that involved the other parent, there are moments where your mind knows that you're safe now, that you made it out, that the crisis has passed... But your body and your nervous system don't believe you yet.

This is the transcript for Episode 10.

Your heart is racing, your shoulders are up by your ears, you're pracing for impact, your stomach's tight, your thoughts get fast or blank or sharp; that's what happens when your body remembers danger, even when your mind doesn't perceive danger. For some of us, this can look like full-on panic attacks and for others, it looks like irritability, shutting down, going numb, or snapping at our kids even though don't want to. And if that's you, there's nothing wrong with you, this is what trauma is; it's not the memory of what happened, it's the way your nervous system learned to survive it, what it has encoded, and what it is still carrying today, months or years after the facts.

Some of us have survived years of what felt like unpredictability, manipulation, broken promises, sudden emotional explosions, threats, legal uncertainty, legal abuse, and just a constant fear of something terrible happening. The nervous system through all of that did exactly what it was designed to do: it has kept you alive by making you hypersensitive, by triggering protection behaviors, things like that which we're going to have to learn to let go.

So now your work is not to "stop overreacting" or "calm down" and "think positive", those will just make the body panic more... They make no sense to a body that has experienced trauma. Your work now is to re-teach your nervous system what safety feels like, what it feels like, not in theory, not intellectualizing it, but in sensation in your body. Trauma is in your body, we're going to have to teach the body what safety feels like.

So here's a practice you can use in real time when you feel your body going into panic mode, especially while your child still needs you:

• Step one, I like to name it, quietly, internally. "Okay, this, what's happening right now, is my survival system, it believes that something threatening is happening right now, but nothing is happening right now." So you're not shaming yourself, you're orienting yourself in time between right now, the present moment, and what has happened in the past which you may be ruminating over in your mind.

  
  

• So you've oriented yourself in time, step two, you're going to want to orient to the room. You're going to want to

  • look at three things you can see,

  • feel two things you can touch

  • listen for one thing that you can hear.

  
  

  And this is because the research has shown that your brain can only be either in survival mode or in sensory mode, it cannot do both. So if your brain is starting to flip out and go into survival mode, you want to force it into sensory mode, and that way you're forcing it away from survival mode by using your senses. This is why everybody and their dog is talking about grounding yourself and using your senses, that's why you do it. It forces your brain away out of survival mode and into perceiving the senses and being in your body and being in the present moment. That's really where you want to live: in the present moment.

  
  

• Step three is to slow your exhale only, not your inhale, just your exhale. So you'll be breathing out a little longer than you breathed in. And that signals, "we are not actually being chased right now by a saber-tooth tiger." The opposite of that breath is the short breath, the one that is high in the body, high in the rib cage, that short survival breath - which is helpful when you are being chased or you are faced with what your body perceives to be imminent danger, yes, that breath is useful, but it's not supposed to be the default breath. You can't be chronically breathing up high and short. You have to be mindful to breathe long and deep as often as you can.

  
  

• Step four is micro compassion. You'll be telling yourself, "I'm doing my best, while healing something I did not choose. I did not sign up for this." So you say it, even if you don't feel it, your nervous system will feel the tone, and it will start to believe you over time, if you keep doing that over and over.

  
  

This is something that I've been through, these are the steps that I used, and it works. And we will talk about EMDR, a specific type of trauma therapy, in Episodes 17 and 18. But these few steps I just gave you, I have heavily relied upon, and they worked for me.

"You do not need, nobody needs to be fully healed, to be a good mother"

If that were the case, we would have approximately zero good mothers on this planet. Everybody's got stuff going on, not everybody survived what we've survived, not everybody's got the level of trauma that we carry or have carried, okay, but everybody's got their stuff going on. So, thank God we don't need to be fully healed, to be good mothers! And our children do not need perfect, because they're not going to be perfect.

They need:

• for us to model what imperfection looks like, especially if it's followed up by repair, forgiveness and a hug and peacemaking,

• a mother who tries again after she's messed up,

• your presence in small increments; your full presence, in small increments. And some days you may only have 5% battery, and that 5% hold on to that, because it matters, it counts. It's love and motion, use that 5%.

  
  

Okay, my dear, you're doing something incredibly hard. You're parenting while healing, it's a lot, it's a lot, and it is Holy. That may be your cross. It's not clean, it's not calm, it's definitely not pretty, but it's real, and it gets better. I'm proud of you, I'm proud of all of us truly. Thank you for listening to this, and I'm hoping these few pointers that I'm suggesting will be making a difference in your recovery. That's all I got for today, I will be talking to you soon in Episode 11: Co-Regulation When You’re Not Regulated: Calming Your Child When You’re Overwhelmed

The contents of this blog and of this podcast is for general information and inspiration only. It reflects lived experience and summaries of publicly available research. It is not medical, mental‑health, legal, or professional advice, and it isn’t a substitute for advice tailored to your situation. Please seek support from a qualified professional who understands your needs. If you or someone you’re caring for is at risk of harm, please contact local emergency services or a trusted crisis service in your area.