How Trauma Affects the Nervous System

For trauma survivors, the nervous system often remains stuck in fight-or-flight or freeze modes (sympathetic or dorsal vagal), making it hard to feel safe, seen and calm in relationships. The good news is that with the right kind of relationship, it’s possible to move toward healing by re-regulating the nervous system.

Trauma doesn’t just live in our memories—it reshapes how our nervous system operates (Porges, 2009). After overwhelming or threatening experiences, the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls our physiological responses to safety and danger, can become chronically dysregulated. This dysregulation makes it difficult for trauma survivors to feel safe in their bodies or in connection with others, even long after the traumatic event has passed (Porges, 2011).

According to the Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr Stephen Porges, the ANS has three main states:

Ventral Vagal (Safety and Connection): We feel regulated, calm, socially engaged, and capable of trusting others.

Sympathetic (Fight or Flight): Activated in the face of perceived danger, this state readies the body for action: heart rate increases, muscles tense, and we become hyper-alert or anxious.

Dorsal Vagal (Shutdown or Freeze): When escape or defence feels impossible, the system can collapse into immobility, leading to numbness, emotional withdrawal, and disconnection.

For many trauma survivors, the nervous system can become “stuck” in chronic sympathetic activation (anxiety, agitation, hypervigilance) or dorsal vagal shutdown (numbness, depression, dissociation). These states are adaptive, meaning they were once necessary for survival, but over time they can disrupt relationships, emotional expression, and a sense of self (Porges, 2009).

Healing is possible, and relationships can play a powerful role. When we experience safe, attuned connections that include trust, consistent boundaries, and emotional containment, our nervous system can begin to shift. Over time, these experiences help rewire the brain and body for connection over protection, allowing us to return to a state of regulation (Porges 2003).

This is why trauma-informed therapeutic relationships—and personal relationships grounded in safety—are essential in helping people move from survival into healing.

Co-Regulation in Relationships

In a healthy, supportive relationship, two people can help regulate each other’s emotions—a process known as co-regulation (Butler & Randal, 2012). When one partner is feeling overwhelmed or anxious, the other can offer calmness, empathy, and support. This helps to shift the nervous system from a state of fear or stress into one of safety and connection. Through this process, both individuals can begin to heal their nervous systems and move toward healthier emotional states.

Safety, Boundaries, and Emotional Containment

For trauma survivors, the first step in healing is feeling safe. This goes beyond just physical safety—it means creating emotional security. Trauma can make people feel constantly on edge, hypervigilant, or unable to trust others. In a relationship that prioritises clear boundaries and containment, the nervous system can begin to settle.

Setting boundaries allows individuals to feel safe because they know what to expect from each other. Healthy boundaries communicate respect and trust, which helps to regulate emotions. Without boundaries, the nervous system remains on high alert, but with them, there’s room for relaxation and connection.

Empathy and Compassion: Healing Together

One of the most powerful ways relationships can help heal trauma is through empathy. When partners can understand and respond to each other’s emotional states with care and compassion, they activate the ventral vagal system, which encourages calm and connection. A simple, empathetic response, such as listening without judgment or offering comforting words, can help soothe a dysregulated nervous system and restore a sense of safety.

Vulnerability and Open Communication

Open communication and vulnerability are essential in healing from trauma. When a partner feels heard, seen, and understood, their nervous system can shift from sensing threat into a state of calm. Vulnerability in relationships means expressing feelings honestly and being open about emotional needs. This not only builds trust but also fosters an environment where both partners feel safe to share their experiences, taking responsibility for what is theirs while remaining open and accepting of the others’ boundaries.

It can be difficult to communicate when we feel triggered, but having a partner who listens without judgment makes a huge difference. It’s through this kind of communication that relationships evolve into safe spaces where both people can heal.

Containment: Holding Space for Each Other

In the healing process, containment refers to the ability to hold space for another person’s emotions without trying to fix them or rush the process. Trauma survivors often need emotional space to express their feelings, and this process is best supported when the other partner is calm and non-reactive.

A relationship that offers empathy, support, and emotional containment can provide the perfect environment for trauma survivors to heal. These relationships allow individuals to shift their nervous systems from chronic stress states into a more grounded, safe space where true emotional connection can take place. Over time, with mutual care and effort, trauma survivors can rebuild their ability to trust, connect, and experience emotional intimacy.

It’s Never Too Late to Begin Healing

No matter how much time has passed or how entrenched trauma feels, it is never too late to begin healing through healthy relationships. By learning how to co-regulate, set boundaries, communicate openly, and contain each other’s emotions, individuals can create relationships that promote emotional healing.

Healing from trauma takes patience and effort, but the power of a supportive relationship cannot be underestimated. With the right tools, such as emotional containment and nervous system regulation, relationships become a space where both partners can grow, heal, and create deeper, more meaningful connections. Trauma doesn’t have to define the way we relate to others, and with the right foundation, it’s possible to build the kind of relationship that promotes healing, safety, and emotional resilience.

References

Butler, E.A., & Randall, A.K. (2012). Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships. Emotion Review, 5(2), 202-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451630

Porges, S.W. (1995) ‘Orienting in a defensive world: Mammalian modifications of our evolutionary heritage. A Polyvagal Theory’, Psychophysiology. Received March 6, 1995; Accepted March 23, 1995, 32(4), pp. 301–318. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1995.tb01213.x.

Porges, S.W. (2003) ‘Social engagement and attachment: a phylogenetic perspective’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1008(1), pp. 31–47. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1301.004.

Porges S.W. (2009). The polyvagal theory: new insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine, 76 Suppl 2(Suppl 2), S86–S90. https://doi.org/10.3949/ccjm.76.s2.17

Porges, S.W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W.W. Norton.

The goal is to go from the diagram on the left below to the one on the right.

In the diagram on the left, in which our baggage is represented by the red squiggle, triggers are the green arrow, and our reaction is the red arrow, you can see a dysregulated nervous system – one that overreacts to the trigger. The diagram on the right represents a nervous system that is well regulated as a result of using boundaries and containment.

To reframe our experiences, we must bring attention to our triggers, our baggage, and our reactions. It’s easy to consider ourselves the victim in situations that trigger us and make us feel unsafe, but there is very little we can do to control what life throws at us. What we can do, however, is use boundaries and containment to lessen the impact that our triggers have on our baggage. When we do this, we create something like a shield around that vulnerable, wounded part of ourselves.

If we want to re-regulate our nervous system and leave that state of dysregulation, we need to connect with our bodies, and allow our reptilian and mammalian brains to finish dealing with our unfinished business, the root cause of our dysregulation.

If we are going to disengage the thinking brain and activate the mammal brain, it’s not very easy to do that while reading words. We need to go instead into the part of the brain that’s aware of sensations, which show up in our five senses; touch, sight, smell, sound and taste. They are experienced, not thought about or read about.

So, this step in freeing ourselves from dysregulation sees us using the sensations from our own body as a bridge through time. That’s right; we’re going time-travelling, back towards the original trigger that created your baggage. You are going to visit the reaction was so strong that you had to pause it. You never completely un-paused it, so the reaction is unfinished and remains dormant in your nervous system. Using sensation to time-travel back to that experience is the first step to resolving it.

Essentially, you are including in your awareness today an awareness of this same experience before today. It’s just a bigger window of awareness we’re opening up going from the now to the now-and-then. This time-travel is done by your body. No thinking required.

The nervous system is linked to the event in the past, as if it is happening right now. So you just have to train your body to listen to your nervous system, and your mind to listen to your body. With the right preparatory work, you can tap into this magical somatic dialogue at any time.

Let’s use a practical example to get a better understanding of how we can connect with ourselves and discharge our baggage.

John has agreed to pick up Mary from a work drinks event and take her to a dinner with his friends. He’s supposed to collect her at 7pm. At 6.55pm, she tells everyone she has to go, gets ready and is expecting him. He doesn’t show up. There’s no call, no message, nothing. As she’s waiting by the lobby of the bar, some of her colleagues leave together and comment that they thought she’d left. They ask her if she’s ok. Mary smiles bravely and tells them that everything’s fine. But inside she’s dying. She has no idea what’s going on and having played it all cool, like she had to leave because she had another event to go to, now she’s the one standing on her own looking foolish. It doesn’t help that one of the people passing her in the lobby is her work nemesis! John finally turns up at 7.50pm. Mary is still waiting, but not exactly pleased to see him. As he walks into the bar, all flustered, and greets her, she must make a choice in what to say.

When talking about her triggers, Mary would respond well to this situation by saying:

‘When we agree to meet at 7pm and you show up at 7.50pm, that’s a trigger for me.’

In doing so, Mary makes her response about her and her own triggers, not about John. Mary could add to the communication about the trigger by also including a good description of the reaction.

And now I notice that I feel very angry, upset, hurt, confused and scared. My stomach is tight, and everything feels hot in my abdomen. I don’t feel safe.

Once you have carefully identified your trigger, and diligently noticed and safely articulated your reaction, it’s time to open up the bit in the middle, the bit that links the trigger to that reaction. For Mary, that looks something like this:

“When we agree to meet at 7pm and you show up a 7.50pm that’s a trigger for me. And now I notice that I feel very angry, upset, hurt, confused and scared. My stomach is tight, and everything feels hot in my abdomen. I don’t feel safe. This reminds me of when I was always waiting for my Mum. She was always late for me when I was younger.”

What does this help Mary to learn about herself now as an adult? She has an over-reaction to people she cares about being late for her. She obviously has some work to do on this, but in the meantime, how can she keep the triggers to a minimum, so that this work is easier to do? She can ask John to help:

“So, in the future it would really help me if you could be on time, or let me know if there’s a problem as early as possible. And what I will do to help myself is if you are late and I’m getting uncomfortable, I will just go home.”

In this story, Mary has successfully identified her trigger, manages her reaction, and opens up about her baggage. She then let’s John know about her boundaries, which he can then, if he chooses, collaborate with Mary on keeping them. By simply letting people know what your boundaries are, they may find it easier to help.

Imagine in this example that she’s not saying this to John now, but she’s actually working through this on her own, or with a friend or even a therapist. She now wants to use this statement describing the sensations she felt to do some work on her nervous system, to get better at handling these kinds of triggering events in the future.

So, while remembering what it felt like when she was waiting for John, Mary goes into her body and looks for sensations. She has already noticed that her stomach is tight and everything feels hot in her abdomen. Now is her chance to go towards those feelings, not away from them. The goal here is to stop analysing and to allow the experience to start to take over.

Once we find these sensations and focus clearly on them, we have a very important question to ask. This question is not asked of the mind; it is asked to the body. You might feel like this makes no sense at all, but just go with me here. It works. I’ve seen it work hundreds of times. What it really comes down to is just a trick of language, but it means something to us all in a way that’s hard to describe with words. You will know it when you feel it.

Once you have a clear awareness of your sensations as you recall the trigger, reaction and your baggage. Now is when you ask your body this question:

“Can you float that back in time and see where it goes?”

And then you let that hang there for a while. You might want to repeat it. Your body might resist answering. Your thinking brain might be desperately trying to get in on the act. Come back to your sensations, back to your body. Its initial response might be to draw a blank.

That’s OK; hang out with blank for a while. If you stay with it, eventually something will happen. Something will pop up on the radar.

Sometimes we think it doesn’t make sense and so we resist it. Go with whatever comes up, however crazy it may seem. The memory might be an unwelcome one and your mind might tell you not to go there, but the reality is that your body is already there. It’s not a memory anymore; it’s something happening right here right now. So, there’s no point listening to your mind telling you not to go there. You are there. And now you have a way out.

The most important thing here is to respect the pace at which your body wants to work. There is nothing to be gained by rushing anything. The body can’t do more than it can do when healing anything, whether it’s a broken toe or a dysregulated nervous system. It takes the time it takes. So if you need to, give yourself permission to do this slowly, carefully, in stages.

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Blog / Video #7

Humans have an ability that other animals do not, which is to think, mull over things and come to conclusions. Gazelles, for example, are threatened by predators, but never by their own thoughts. I can be safe from predators, fed, warm, dry, and yet still in a state of panic. How do I manage that?

A lot of our mental health issues, physical health issues, relationship issues, and even reality issues depend on how successfully we are dealing with the scale and timing of our response to threat. A gazelle with a nice warm house, a fridge full of food and a locked front door would be in nervous system heaven. We can be a basket case, and the reason is because sometimes our biggest threat is ourselves.

The Thinking, Human Brain

These days, in a modern western country, there is not a great deal of life or death threat for us to deal with. However, our nervous systems are still running hot, causing us all sorts of secondary problems. One of the biggest culprits in this is our thinking, human brain. I can make myself panic with a simple thought. It could be that nobody loves me, or that I’m going to get fired, or that I’m poor, fat, lazy and stupid. Whatever the thought, my body can react to it in exactly the same way as if I saw a lion on the horizon. I have created my own internal threat.

This internal threat can then trigger a dysregulated nervous system into a massive reaction. This reaction is typically unhelpful. It is out of scale with the problem and makes our bodies feel like things are worse than they are. We might then follow this up with further thoughts, which are feeding off these signals of danger from our bodies. This then escalates and, before we know it, we are off to the races with a full-blown panic attack. It’s not very smart, or helpful.

Trying to untangle this knot raises the question; which came first, the thought or the panic? People seem to disagree about this. There is a useful therapeutic tool, CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), which seeks to interrupt this kind of thinking. The activation it causes will lead to either a mobilised response (like fight or flight) or a shut-down response (like freeze). Psychologists often call these states anxiety or depression. So, CBT has gained huge popularity as a treatment for anxiety and depression. But is it?

Chicken or the Egg?

Why do you think we create these internal threats in the first place, these thoughts which we find so threatening? Two people get made redundant on the same day from a company. The next morning one wakes up early and is excited to get on with his day and find a new job. The other lies in bed, terrified that he will never find another job. Which one do you think finds another job? Why are these two people so different?

The first person has a well-regulated nervous system. He is responding appropriately to the level of threat. It’s not overwhelming. It’s just a problem to solve, so he is active, up early, and sets about solving it. The second person is overwhelmed. His system crashes because his feeling (his neuroception) of threat is too great. This is a classic sign of a dysregulated nervous system.

This shows that our thinking can be largely derivative of how healthy, resilient and regulated our nervous system is. Therefore, many of the problems which are exasperated by catastrophic thinking, or poor behaviour patterns, can be alleviated by regulating the nervous system first, before addressing your thinking and behaviour.

The difference, in my view, is that stopping the thinking and/or behaviour only stops us pouring petrol on the fire. The nervous system is the fire. So if you only do CBT, and don’t work to regulate the nervous system which is triggered by these thoughts, you cannot be free of anxiety or depression. You are only holding it at bay.

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Blog / Video #4

One of the great amusements about psychotherapy in popular culture is that it is all about your mother, or childhood, or past and so on. Often people are told to “just get over it” and “forget about the past”. They are encouraged to move on and not dwell on things which happened a long time ago.

And, who wouldn’t want to do that? It’s certainly no fun reliving the past when it was worse than the present. At least that is what our human, thinking brains tell us. Of course, it turns out that it is not that simple, and if you understand how the mammal and the reptile in us responds to threat, it is easy to see why.

The Threat Cycle

What goes up must come down. That’s as true of the systems in your body as it is of a child’s party balloon. For example, when you are on a treadmill, your heart rate goes up, and then when you come off it, your heart rate goes down. You hope that it returns to where it came from. There’s a medical term for this (from Greek), homeostasis, which just means back to the same place. Every system in your body works like this, your temperature, your blood pressure, your hormones, all of it.

So when you experience some stress, or a mammal is confronted by a threat, something starts in the body which should then return to normal. This is called your activation and it is basically your accelerator to respond to threat. If you get away from the threat, it should look something like this.

A threat cycle

If this is in your past, then you are done with it. You have returned to where you came from. And so this experience is a memory, but not one that you feel much about when you think of it. This is exactly what critics of psychotherapy would like, for you to leave it in the past. You have had many, many experiences like this. You probably don’t even remember them. They are done. It’s over.

So, what goes wrong when you don’t feel like this about the past? Mammals and reptiles have a fight or flight response to threat, but they also have a freeze response. This kicks in when the threat gets so great that they can’t accelerate any more. At that point they take all of this accelerated energy and cram it into a frozen well, like slamming on the brakes but keeping the engine running at top revs.

If the threat is survived, then the brakes come off, and the activation immediately kicks in, sending the mammal back into fight or flight, discharging all of that frozen energy. It looks like this.

A threat cycle going through freeze

So long as everything returns back to where it came from, this event is also over. It is in the past. You won’t be bringing it up in therapy. So we still don’t know why some things stay with us so troublingly, while other events just seem to fade from view. The answer is that not every frozen event makes it back to this pattern of discharge. Sometimes the energy gets stuck in us for good, because we are unable to complete the discharge process.

A threat cycle going through freeze and not discharging

The problem with this is that the body doesn’t end up back where it started. It ends up back in the middle of the threat cycle, with the charge of fight and flight energy stuck in a frozen state in the body. It has not returned to homeostasis. This has lots of consequences.

Unfinished business

This energy, which has not been discharged yet, is now waiting to be activated again. So the event, which set the whole threat cycle in motion, is not yet finished. This means that, in your body, you are still experiencing the episode. When people say can’t you leave the past behind, they don’t realise how right they are. The threat is still being experienced right now. You have unfinished business in your nervous system, today, but from an event many years ago.

So in fact, no one in psychotherapy is trying to drag up the past. What they are doing is trying to do is to take what is happening right now, in the room, in your body, and help you to leave it behind in the past where it belongs. A lot of therapists don’t even know that this is what they are trying to do, but we all have the same bodies!

If you have unfinished business in your nervous system, check out the blogs in the blog section of The Invisible Lion website, or my book The Invisible Lion and you will find lots of case-studies and techniques for healing to try to make sense of what you have been going through

And how, finally, to start to leave it where it all belongs; in the past.

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Blog / Video #1

Consider the following story:

“Imagine you are walking along, minding your own business, when across the road you see a man running. He’s waving his arms wildly, screaming, turning this way and that, looking over his shoulder. He’s disheveled. He seems feral, wild. He’s frightening.

People get out of his way. They avoid him, crossing the road as they see him coming. You feel the urge to do the same because this guy makes you feel really uncomfortable. You tell yourself that he is crazy, that you are not like him.

You are just about to look the other way when you see something.

Around the corner bounds a lion. A fully grown, roaring lion. And it’s running after the man. Suddenly, you see the man differently. You understand that he is in danger. You want to help him. You are not alone. Other people see the danger. They also want to help.

No one thinks the man is crazy anymore. They are no longer afraid of him.

The man has not changed. He is still running wildly, terrified, blind with panic. Yet everything else has changed. His behaviour is exactly the same as before. His body is doing exactly what it was doing before. And somehow he has gone from crazy to normal, from being avoided to being helped.

What if you are the same? What if everything you think is wrong with you is actually normal, but just belongs to a different context? What if you are not crazy, or difficult, or sick, but just can’t see the lion?

The man’s behaviour is normal. His body is working perfectly. His reaction and choices are sane. But without being able to see the lion, he becomes a problem to solve.

You are reading this book because you are running away from a lion you can no longer see.

Nobody’s crazy. People want to help. They just can’t see the lion.”

Nobody is Crazy

In this story the same man is crazy, and then not crazy. By crazy, what we are really trying to say is that his behaviour doesn’t make sense. He seems panicked, or irrational, and then when we see the lion, he is normal. The difference between us labelling him as anxious or healthy is in fact context. This suggests that anxiety is not an illness, but the body expressing a confusion about what level of threat is in the environment.

Is it right therefore to talk about anxiety as a mental illness? Or even as poor mental health?

This might seem annoying if you have spent many years trying to get validation for your poor mental health, but the idea is profound. The story above tells us that anxiety, for example, isn’t something going wrong. This is not like having a virus, or cancer, or a broken bone. This is the body functioning perfectly. It is doing exactly what it is meant to do, but just in the wrong situation. It turns out that we could say the same for depression, OCD, ADHD, addiction, and personality disorders, among others.

Every moment of your life you are doing something very important to your survival; you are assessing threat. Over many millions of years every organism on this planet has evolved to survive by doing exactly that. So threat detection is at the core of our biological processes.

The Invisible Lion story above is really just a metaphor about that threat detection process gone wrong. Dr Stephen Porges calls this process “neuroception”. This is a made-up word which helps us to understand that it has nothing to do with thinking, or “perception”. Instead, it is about how the body and our senses are reading our environment. We don’t think it, we feel it. If you’ve ever felt anxious, you know that you can’t turn it off just by telling yourself there’s nothing to worry about. This is the difference between neuroception and perception.

Therefore, anxiety is faulty neuroception. And since neuroception is done in the body, why do we call this a mental health problem? It’s actually something which is going wrong lower down the brain stem in the anatomy.

Your body is not making up the lion, it is just reacting to it late. It can feel like something which happened thirty years ago is happening right now, even if you are just waiting at a bus stop.

The solution to this confusion is always the same; to get out of your head and into your body. This is why there is a new generation of body-based psychologies (such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and EMDR). And why there is a resurgence is traditional practices, like yoga, meditation, mindfulness, Tai Chi etc.

Get Into Your Body

All over the world, people restore their mental health and well-being by getting in touch with their bodies. In the west we tend to try to think our way out of the problem. This is like putting water in a car radiator when it has a flat tire. It’s a great solution for the wrong problem.

So, if you suffer from poor mental health, you have my sympathy (I’ve been there), but try to start understanding your problem differently. Your body is confused about the level of threat in your environment. Turn your attention inwards to your sensations, to get clearer in that place, rather than outward to fixing the world.

You can start with the simplest practice of all, a Body Scan. Below is a transcription of a Body Scan video that can found on YouTube and in the resources section of the The Invisible Lion.

“Come into a comfortable seated position on your yoga mat.

Sit tall. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and exhale fully with a sigh.

Let your hands rest on your lap, or on your thighs. And as you begin to breathe in and out through your nose, feel your stomach expand on the inhale and extract on the exhale.
As you breathe let your thoughts fizzle away, and bring your awareness to the space between your eyebrows. Relax that space.

Bring your attention to your jaw. So the mouth is closed but the teeth are apart. Relax your jaw.

We’ll begin the body scan from the top of the head.

As I say the parts of the body, just visualise relaxation, and if you feel any tension there, see if you can send your breath there like a laser, releasing any tension, or any stress or holding in that particular area.

Bring your attention to the top of your head. The forehead, the cheeks, the mouth, the back of the head, the top of the shoulders, the front of the chest, the upper back, the middle back, the lower back, the stomach, and the ribs.

Bring your awareness to your shoulders, the biceps, the triceps, the forearms, your hands.

Bring your attention to your hips, feel yourself firmly rooted into the mat.

Bring your attention to your thighs. The right thigh, The left thigh, The right knee, the left knee. The right shin, the right calf muscle. The left shin, left calf muscle. The right ankle, the left ankle. The right foot, the bottom of the foot, the top of the foot, the right toes. The left foot, the bottom of the foot, the top of the foot, the left toes.

Scan your body from your head to your toes, feeling yourself in total relaxation. Join your hands in prayer position and take a moment to acknowledge the sense of calm that you feel, and note that it has the power to carry you throughout the rest of your day, When you’re ready, seal in your practice with ‘Namaste.’”

You can download this post in a handy 2-page PDF to print and share with friends, family, clients or colleagues. Follow this link to download now.

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