Trauma is not only an emotional wound — it is a physiological event that reorganizes the body at every level: electrical, hormonal, immune, metabolic, and structural.
Long after the moment has passed, the body keeps replaying the pattern, because trauma is stored not in memory but in biology.

Trauma is the echo of a threat that never fully resolved.
It is the body’s survival machinery stuck in “on” to protect you.

To understand trauma, you must understand the body as an ecosystem — a landscape of voltage, fascia, breath, nerves, minerals, hormones, and immune signaling. Trauma disrupts the coherence of this entire terrain.
Below is a breakdown of how this happens.

𝟏. 🔥 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐮𝐦𝐚 𝐁𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐍𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭
The first place trauma takes root is the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

When the body experiences something overwhelming — a shock, chronic stress, childhood instability, a medical event, emotional neglect — the ANS flips into survival mode:
Fight 🜂 (mobilize, adrenaline, heat)
Flight 🌬️ (escape, hypervigilance, scanning)
Freeze ❄️ (immobilization, numbness, low metabolism)
Fawn 🌾 (appease for safety)

These are not choices; they are electrical reflexes.

And when trauma is chronic or unresolved, these reflexes become the default baseline of the nervous system.

The consequences ripple through the whole body.