Your body has its own timeline. And it does not care about your insights.
By Abi Beri | Integrative Somatic Therapist
[Reading time: 12 minutes]
You have read the books. You have done the journaling. You have been in therapy — good therapy, even — and you understand your patterns. You can trace them back to childhood. You can name the wound. You can explain, in impressive detail, exactly why you are the way you are.
And yet.
You still get triggered by the same things. Your body still tenses in the same situations. You still feel that familiar anxiety, that familiar shutdown, that familiar knot in your stomach — even though you know better.
If that is you, welcome. You are in the right place. Because today I want to explain why that happens — why knowing is not the same as healing, why you can understand something perfectly and still feel stuck. And more importantly, what actually works instead.
The Problem With Thinking
Somewhere along the line, we got this idea that the mind and body are separate things. You can thank a French philosopher called Rene Descartes for this. I think, therefore I am, he said. Not I feel, not I exist in a body that has wisdom of its own. Just: I think.
This idea has shaped Western culture ever since. It is why we value thinking over feeling. Why we trust logic over intuition. Why, when we are struggling emotionally, our first instinct is to try to think our way out.
If I can just understand why I feel this way, I will be able to stop feeling it.
If I can analyse it enough, figure it out, get to the bottom of it — then I will finally heal.
Here is the thing: this approach works brilliantly for some problems. If your car breaks down, thinking is exactly what you need. But trauma is not a car. Your nervous system is not a machine. And the parts of your brain that hold traumatic memories do not speak the language of logic.
Your Nervous System: A Friendly Introduction
Your nervous system is basically the communication network of your body. It is constantly receiving information from the world and deciding how to respond. And here is the crucial part: most of this happens below conscious awareness. Before you think. Before you choose.
This is actually a feature, not a bug. If a car is speeding towards you, you do not want to have to consciously analyse the situation. Your nervous system sees the threat and moves you before you have even registered what is happening.
The problem is this same system cannot always tell the difference between a speeding car and your mother-in-laws tone of voice.
Polyvagal Theory: The Science of Feeling Safe
Dr. Stephen Porges developed something called Polyvagal Theory that has revolutionised our understanding of trauma. He identified three main states your nervous system can be in:
Ventral Vagal (Safe and Social): This is the good stuff. You feel calm but alert. Connected. Open. Present. Your digestion works, your immune system functions, you can think clearly and connect with others. This is where we are designed to spend most of our time.
Sympathetic (Fight or Flight): When your nervous system detects threat, your heart rate goes up, breathing gets faster, stress hormones flood your system. You might feel anxious, irritable, restless. This is brilliant if you are being chased by a bear. Less helpful in a work meeting.
Dorsal Vagal (Freeze/Shutdown): If the threat is overwhelming, your system pulls the emergency brake. You might feel numb, disconnected, foggy, exhausted. Like you are watching life from behind glass. This is an ancient survival mechanism — playing dead when you cannot fight or flee.
The shift between these states happens through what Porges calls neuroception — unconscious perception. Your body is constantly scanning for cues of safety and danger, making split-second decisions before your conscious mind has any say.
This is why you can be at a perfectly nice dinner party and suddenly feel anxious for no apparent reason. Your body picked up on something your mind has not clocked.
Why Insight Is Not Enough
Now we can understand why knowing is not the same as healing.
The parts of your brain that process trauma — the amygdala, the brainstem, the limbic system — do not speak the language of logic and insight. They speak the language of sensation, of feeling, of body-based experience.
You can tell yourself I am safe now a thousand times. But if your body does not feel safe, nothing changes.
You can understand, intellectually, that your father’s criticism was about his own wounds. But when someone raises their voice, your stomach still clenches.
This is not failure. This is just how the nervous system works. The body has its own timeline. And that timeline does not care about your insights.
The Body Keeps the Score
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s famous book title says it all: the body keeps the score. Every overwhelming experience gets recorded in your body — in your muscles, your tissues, your nervous system, the way you hold yourself and breathe.
Trauma is not just a memory. It is a physiology. It is a pattern of activation that keeps looping because it never got to complete.
Think about an animal in the wild. A gazelle escapes a lion and then shakes — literally trembles to discharge the survival energy. Then it goes back to grazing. The event is complete.
Humans do not do this. We override the shaking. We push down the tears. We hold it together. So the energy stays trapped. The survival response never completes. And the body stays braced for a threat that, on some level, it still believes is coming.
What Actually Helps: Somatic Approaches
If thinking your way out does not work, what does? This is where somatic therapy comes in. Somatic means of the body — these approaches work with the body, not just the mind.
Instead of trying to think your way to healing, you learn to feel your way there. The conditions for this are surprisingly simple: safety and awareness.
Safety first. Your nervous system will not let go of its protective patterns until it feels safe enough to do so. This is non-negotiable. You cannot force release. This is why co-regulation — being with another calm, grounded human — is so powerful. Your body borrows their regulation.
Awareness second. Once safety is established, you bring gentle attention to what is happening in your body. Not analysing. Just noticing. What sensations are present? Where is there tension? Numbness? When you bring kind, curious attention to a sensation without trying to fix it, it often shifts on its own.
The body releases what it has been holding when it finally feels witnessed.
Watch: Why You Cannot Think Your Way Out of Trauma
I have created a detailed talk exploring all of this — the nervous system, polyvagal theory, why insight is not enough, and what actually helps. It includes a gentle somatic practice you can try.
What This Means for You
If you have been beating yourself up for not being over it by now — please stop. Your body is not broken. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect you.
If you have been frustrated that all your insights have not translated into felt change — that makes complete sense. You have been working with one part of the system while ignoring the other.
Healing is not about thinking harder. It is about learning to inhabit your body with more safety, more compassion, more presence. It is about befriending your nervous system instead of fighting it.
This takes time. It takes patience. It takes gentleness. But it is possible. I see it happen every day in my practice in Dublin, Naas, and Newbridge.
Working Together
If you are ready to try a different approach — one that works with your body, not against it — somatic therapy can help.
We do not just talk about what happened. We work with how it lives in your nervous system now. We create the conditions for your body to finally complete what it has been holding, to release what it no longer needs to carry.
I offer somatic therapy sessions in person in Dublin, Naas, and Newbridge, and online throughout Ireland and internationally.
Your body knows how to heal. It has been waiting for you to give it the conditions it needs.
[BOOK A SOMATIC THERAPY SESSION]
In-person: Dublin | Naas | Newbridge
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