"Your body keeps a physical memory of all of your experiences.
You have lots of memories stored in your brain that you can recount at any given moment. You can recall names, faces, where the event took place, what it smelled like. But over time, these memories fade or change as time passes and we mature. However, even when the memory begins to fade from your brain, it lives on in your body in the form of physical sensations and behavior patterns.
The body doesn't forget.
The events of our lives leave physiological imprints in our bodies, especially when we experience trauma or situations of extreme stress that cause the body to fight, flee, or freeze in order to cope.
In a perfect world, we would be able to release the trauma or soothe the stress response soon after it was triggered. But we don't live in a perfect world, so we're all walking around with physical imprints of past experiences (good and bad) stored in our bodies. Most of us don't know how to release them because we don't even realize they exist!
You may feel your body tense up when you have to ask for help or borrow money, or your face may get hot when you're asked to speak in front of a crowd. The sensation is your body remembering.
It's remembering a past experience when you asked for help and it didn't go well. Maybe someone made you feel ashamed because you “should be able to handle it yourself.” Perhaps you were called to the front of your third grade class and asked a question you didn't know the answer to, so you felt embarrassed and humiliated.
The body doesn't have words to express itself, so it responds with physical sensations.
You can forget, block, or intellectualize the memories that are stored in our brains, but how do you work through the memories being stored in your body?
Animals shake when they experience trauma or anxiety. Think of a dog who's been in a fight with another dog: Once the fight is over, both dogs will shake to calm their nervous systems and quiet the fight, flight, or freeze response. This enables them to move on without the physical memory of the situation.
Humans, however, don't naturally do this. Instead we carry our stress, anxiety, and trauma around with us every day and use food and other addictive behaviors to soothe ourselves and quiet the emotional discomfort.
There's nothing wrong with turning to food or other means to soothe yourself, but typically habitual behaviors provide a short-term solution, and you'll continue to feel the discomfort until you release the memory from your body.
I am a recovering sugar addict. I used to stuff myself with cake, cookies, and ice cream any time I felt sad, angry, or alone. The sugar high helped me cope with difficult emotions and soothed the pain of a childhood marred with stress and abuse.
It was a behavior that eventually made me sick. Chronic yeast infections, migraines, and fatigue were the norm for ten years before I realized sugar was making me sick. I eliminated it from my diet, but the changes in my physical health were minimal.
In order to truly heal my body, I had to address the emotional issues that caused me to self-medicate with food. I did this by creating an emotional tool-kit.
In order to release the emotions and create a more peaceful state of being, it's important to create an emotional tool-kit to help regulate your nervous system and soothe the discomfort.