The Body’s Unfinished Time

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

Lying in my bed

I hear the clock tick and think of you.

Caught up in circles

Confusion is nothing new.

Flashback, warm nights

Almost left behind

Suitcase of memories

Time after...

Sometimes, you picture me

I'm walking too far ahead

You're calling to me

I can't hear what you've said.

Then you say, "Go slow"

I fall behind

The second hand unwinds

If you're lost, you can look, and you will find me

Time after time

If you fall, I will catch you, I'll be waiting

Time after time….

“Time after Time” by Cyndi Lauper released in 1983.

Trauma is the body’s unfinished tale. The time which could not move in its linear direction. So, when trauma is triggered, you act at the age when the wound was created. The body does not respond from the present moment. It responds from that time in history when the overwhelming event first occurred. In that instant the adult -self collapses and a much younger self seems to leap forward. This is a combination of neurobiology, memory and somatic time- travel.

When something frightening, shaming or overwhelming happens, especially in childhood, the nervous system prioritizes survival over integration. The body does not get to complete the emotional sequence required in response to the traumatic event. It does not get to discharge or understand what happened when the event occurred. Instead, the body and brain store that experience of incomplete discharge in something called implicit memory. The raw, nonverbal memory system is responsible for sensations, affect, behavior and posture of the body. Implicit memory stored in the body this way does not age because the brain has no concept of time. The brain does not know time. So, it remains in the body as fresh and young as you were when it formed.

When current conditions resemble the old wound, this is when implicit memory is ignited. Your adult reasoning may know you are safe, but the emotional brain (limbic brain) and the body cannot tell the difference. So, you do not act 25, 35 or 55. You may behave like a frantic 8-year-old or a helpless 13-year-old, or a calm parent may snap like a threatened 18-year-old. You act the age your body remembers. The body then is performing something miraculous and devastating both at the same time. A fall in somatic gravity. And this fall is to protect you. Most of this protective triggered behavior can be called regression. An adaptive child taking over the adult chassis. This child is the part of you that survived the original wound through strategies like fawning, fighting, shutting down, being silent, getting angry, being a perfectionist, clinging, hypervigilance, disassociating, controlling and running away into loneliness. These strategies were brilliant as a child. But as adults they become burdens because the child inside you or rather that fascia of the child inside you does not know that the danger has passed. Implicit memory simply does not have a calendar. It senses only similarity and familiarity. Not chronology. To the outside world, your behavior will look irrational but inside the body this is deemed as continuity which is why many people find it hard to seek therapy. Trauma is then not what happened outside of you. It is that which happened inside of you because of the loyalty of your own nervous system to your younger self.

When a trigger lands on the body or a memory of it or a similar situation, inside the body many things will start to unfold. The diaphragm will tighten, the jaw will lock, breath shallows down, heart starts to race, the gut will contract. The entire organism will orient towards this, and the body will choose from its archive of the past. The child physiology will recall the danger more vividly than the adult mind remembers the narrative. The brain stem (the reptilian brain at the nape of the neck) and the limbic brain which are the primitive architectures act first. The prefrontal cortex (front brain) joins last. The adult brain is last to the scene during a trigger. By the time the cortical brain can work, the child has already taken the Ferrari for a spin.

Every trauma is an incomplete motor sequence- the fight that never happened, a cry that was swallowed, a boundary never expressed, an emotion that was ignored or criticized. The energy of that interruption remains locked in the tissues, waiting for completion. The body is simply reacting to the past asking to be completed. Your entire body is a map of every age that never got to finish to become you. Healing is not about convincing the mind; it’s about updating the body’s timeline. Every trauma is formed in a relationship so healing will likewise happen, and trauma will dissolve in a relationship. With yourself and in the presence of a regulated body.

Somatic Experiencing® is a technique that uses the process of pendulation and the patience of integration and discharge to allow the body to finish what it could not and when this happens the body returns fully to the present. And at last time moves forward. Alone.

"If you are too concerned about what happened yesterday, you cannot focus on what you need to do today." – Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.