People arrive able to tell me the whole thing. Dates, order of events, who said what. They have told it to a doctor, a sister, perhaps a counsellor before me. And somewhere around the third sentence their breathing changes and their hands go still, and we both notice it at the same moment.

That is the part that confuses people most. You understand what happened. You are not confused about it. So why does your body behave as though it is still going on?

Understanding is not the same as settling

Insight is genuinely useful, and I would never talk anyone out of it. But insight lives in one part of you, and the alarm system lives in another — an older, faster part that does not deal in explanations. It deals in signals: a tone of voice, a smell, a particular quality of silence, a time of year.

When something has been overwhelming, that system does what it is built to do. It stays ready. Long after the danger has gone, it goes on scanning, because as far as it is concerned nobody has confirmed the all-clear. You can know the war is over and still flinch at the door.

What that looks like in an ordinary week

Rarely dramatic. Usually just tiring:

  • Sleep that will not come, or comes and then leaves at three in the morning
  • A jaw, a neck or a stomach that never really lets go
  • Jumping at things and then feeling foolish about it
  • Going numb or far away in the middle of an ordinary conversation
  • Snapping at the people you love least deservingly
  • Avoiding something small and specific, and building your week quietly around avoiding it

People often think this is a character problem — that they are anxious, difficult, weak. It is far more often a body doing its job with out-of-date information.

Why retelling the story sometimes doesn't help

Talking is not useless. Being heard properly matters enormously, and for a great many people it is most of what they need. But describing an event again and again, to friends or in counselling, can leave the body exactly where it was — sometimes more stirred up than before, if the telling is all uphill and there is nothing at the top.

That is not a reason to stop talking. It is a reason to include the body in the conversation.

What body-based work actually involves

Much less than people picture. No lying on a floor, no re-enactments, no touch. You sit in a chair, or in your own front room over a video call, and we pay attention to what is happening in you as we talk.

Often the first work is the least dramatic and the most valuable: finding out what steady feels like in your particular body, so that you have somewhere to come back to. Only then, and slowly, do we go near the difficult material — in small pieces, with pauses, with plenty of time at the end to arrive back in the room. You stay in charge of the pace throughout, and you can stop.

It is not fast and it is not a cure. What it does is give the alarm system a chance to receive some newer information. You can read more about how I work this way on my somatic counselling page.

Old things count

A great many people decide their own history does not qualify. It was long ago; other people had it worse; nobody died. But bodies do not rank events, and something that happened at nine can still be organising how you sit in a room at fifty-nine.

If it still moves you when you touch it, it counts. That is the whole test.