Have you ever said to yourself, I know better. So why the fuck am I still doing this? It’s time to explore the somatic healing after abuse.
You have read the books. You have done the therapy. You intellectually understand every pattern, every manipulation tactic, every cycle you have been through. And yet, at the exact moment you need your body to show up for you, it freezes. Your mouth says yes when every part of you is screaming no. You find yourself drawn back to the very people and situations that hurt you.
This is not weakness. This is not a character flaw. And it is not something you can think your way out of.
Trauma does not live in your head. It lives in your body.
Listen to the full episode:
Why Talking About Trauma Is Not Enough
Most of us have been taught to prioritise logic. To journal. To affirm. To analyse. And while all of that has its place, trauma does not give a shit about logic.
It lives in your breath. It lives in your cells. It lives in your nervous system and your energetic field. And no amount of insight, journaling, or Instagram healing accounts will fully reach the place where it actually lives.
If you have ever felt stuck despite doing all the right things, this is probably why. The missing piece for so many women in abuse recovery is somatic and energetic work. Healing that works in the body, where trauma actually occurs, rather than only in the mind.
This was the shift that changed everything for me, and it has changed everything for the tens of thousands of hours I have spent working with clients since.
What Somatic Healing Actually Means
Somatics is not ice baths. It is not cold plunges. While those things have their place, they can actually be counterproductive for people with relational trauma, putting the nervous system straight back into a shock response rather than building genuine safety.
When I talk about somatic work, I am talking about your nervous system. Your survival instincts. The raw, primal part of you that was shaped by how safe or unsafe it was to simply exist in your body.
Your body speaks in sensations, not words. It speaks in contractions, in shutdown, in freeze, in rage, in fawn. It holds onto what the mind cannot yet cope with processing.
If you grew up around chaos, or in a family that required performance, obedience, or silence to earn love, your nervous system received a very clear message early on: abandon yourself. That is how you stay safe.
So now, as an adult, when it is time to speak your truth, it feels like death. When it is time to leave the person hurting you, your legs will not move. When someone asks you to hold a boundary, your whole system floods with threat signals.
That is not you failing. That is your very smart, very loyal nervous system doing the only job it was ever trained to do. Keep you alive.
What helped you survive back then is not necessarily helping you thrive right now. But it deserves respect, not blame.
The Question That Changed Everything for Me
For a long time I asked myself, why am I like this? What is wrong with me?
The shift came when I changed the question to: what does my nervous system think is unsafe right now?
That one reframe moves you out of self-blame and into curiosity. And curiosity is where healing actually begins.
That shutdown you keep blaming yourself for? Your body saving your life the only way it knew how. That freeze when you try to make decisions? Not laziness. Not weakness. Survival mode. You did not choose it. You adapted to it because you had to.
Understanding Your Energetic Body
If the word energetics makes you uncomfortable, stay with me for a moment.
Try this right now. Put your hands together as if you are about to clap, then move them slowly toward and away from each other without touching. Keep going until you feel a ball of warmth or resistance building between your palms.
That is energy. It is real. It is physical. And it is not woo woo.
How Your Energy Body Holds Information
Your energetic body is constantly receiving and processing information that your logical mind often overrides. You have probably experienced it without having a name for it:
- Walking into a room and knowing something is off before anyone has said a word
- Feeling drained after a conversation that was not emotionally heavy, but involved unspoken manipulation
- Sensing someone looking at the back of your head and turning around to find you were right
- Feeling heavier in your body around certain people, even when everything looks fine on the surface
That is not paranoia. That is your energy body giving you information. And you have been conditioned to dismiss it.
Getting back in touch with your energetic body is one of the most powerful things you can do in recovery. Because your body never forgot the truth. It has just been punished for knowing it.
Why You Cannot Logic Your Way Out of Trauma Responses
This is one of the most important things to understand in abuse recovery.
You cannot out-journal your own biology. You cannot out-manifest a nervous system that is running a survival programme. Insight is valuable, but insight alone is not enough.
When you are in a trauma response, your body is louder than your brain. And that is exactly as it should be. It is trying to protect you. The work is not to silence that, but to learn its language and gently teach it that safety is available now.
That is what somatic and energetic healing does. It moves recovery from theory to embodiment. From talking about it to actually feeling it shift in your body.
Three Somatic and Energetic Practices to Start With
Practice 1: Taking Your Somatic and Energetic Pulse
This is a simple check-in you can do anywhere, anytime you have a few minutes of privacy.
Sit comfortably with one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Take a breath and feel into where you are right now. Where is the anxiety sitting? Where is the fear? Where is the sadness?
When you locate a sensation in your body, go to it. Put your hand on it and get curious. Ask it:
- Does it have an age?
- Does it have a shape or a density?
- Does it have an image, a sound, or a feeling?
- Is there something it wants to tell you?
You do not need words. It might speak in pictures. It might just be something you feel and quietly know. Listen gently and without judgment.
This simple practice, done consistently, has more power than most people realise.
Practice 2: Establishing Your Energetic Boundary
Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Imagine a dome of light surrounding your entire body, like a protective force field. Breathe it in. Feel how cleansing and protective it is.
As you exhale, say out loud: my energy is mine. I decide what comes in.
Sweep your arms in a wide circle around your body, all the way around, above your head, out in front, side to side. Imagine the boundary becoming more vibrant and more solid with every breath.
You can repeat this while walking, rocking, or any time you feel your energy has been intruded upon. It is quick, it is effective, and it works.
Practice 3: The Residue Release
This one is for all the accumulated energy you carry from difficult environments, draining people, high conflict situations, or simply surviving a day that put you straight back into survival mode.
Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Imagine a swirling vortex on the floor in front of you. Make it as vivid as you like.
Now, with full body awareness from head to toe, imagine every bit of negative energy draining from you in streams, droplets, or vapors.
Picture it moving down through your body and out into the vortex, pulled away completely.
Feel the lightness as it leaves. When you are empty of it, fill that space back up with the protective dome of white light from Practice 2.
This is especially helpful if you are still in a living or co-parenting situation with someone difficult, working in a draining environment, or feeling overwhelmed by the cumulative weight of everything you are carrying.
The Shift From Surviving to Thriving
Here is what somatic and energetic healing is really about. It is not about bullying yourself into being more confident, more regulated, or more assertive. You cannot hate yourself into change.
It is about building safety from the inside out. Starting with sensation. Noticing without numbing, overriding, or writing a ten-page justification for why you feel what you feel. Your body is doing what it is doing. That is information. Start there.
And here is the thing about healing that often gets lost in the noise of recovery content online. You do not have to heal like everyone else. All you have to do is come back to you.
Your body is not the problem. It is the portal. It is not just where trauma ends. It is where healing begins.
Stop blaming yourself for how your body protected you. Stop forcing yourself to just get over it. Start trusting your body as the wisest voice in the room.
Because it is.
This episode is part of The Messy Middle podcast. The somatic and energetic practices mentioned here are explored in much more depth in the Somatic Keys course. If you have questions you would like answered on the show, submit them anonymously via the form on the website.
Connect and follow for more on Instagram @theerikaleon
