Your Body Is Keeping Score

Apr 15, 2025

For the past 13 years, I have had chronic neck and shoulder pain.

On my very first day of work in August 2012, I stepped into the shower, and suddenly, my neck spasmed. I could barely move my neck. Over the course of a few days, the pain receded but the discomfort has never gone away. Even to this day.

In fact, I continued to have spasms on a fairly regular basis.

I thought it was postural. Sure, I don’t have amazing posture. But other people I know who similarly have medium-to-generally-ok posture don’t live with chronic pain.

So I was suspicious.

Every so often, the spasms would return. Unpredictably. Or so I thought.

Eventually, I began to see a pattern: the worst flare-ups happened after visiting my parents in Florida. Often after playing tennis; I thought, perhaps, it was sports related so I stopped playing for a while. Or perhaps it was related to lifting weights - my neck would always feel tender after. Maybe travel stress? The spasms would occur at other times too but those were the most obvious to me.

In late 2023, I read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk and it began a massive transformation of what I now know to be true.

Body Memory

If you haven’t read it, here’s the core idea:

Unprocessed trauma doesn’t just live in our minds; it’s stored in our bodies. When we suppress emotions like fear, anger, or grief, our nervous system holds onto them. Over time, they show up as pain, tension, illness, or chronic dysregulation. Until we feel and release those emotions, our bodies will hold the memory for us.1

That’s what was happening to me. My body had been keeping score and I had no idea.

Here’s How it Works

If you grew up in a household in which you never felt safe, you felt abandoned, you experienced trauma regularly - your body is keeping score.

Similarly, maybe you’ve been through an awful experience. Something you have nightmares about or where you feel emotionally stuck. Maybe you can’t sleep, maybe you flinch at loud noises, maybe you’re chronically exhausted; these are signs your body is keeping score.

For most people, that’s exactly what happens. Thing is, most people also never release.

Most of us don’t feel our emotions and therefore, we don’t let them go. If you don’t feel it, you can’t release it. It remains stored.

My dear reader, does any of this sound or feel familiar?

Your Body is Speaking to You

Putting this into practice, let’s say you’re a child and you’re getting yelled at by a very scary parent. What happens? Perhaps your breath shallows. Perhaps your whole body goes rigid like you’re bracing yourself. Perhaps your hips and glutes tighten. Your shoulders raise.

Now imagine, you don’t realize any of this is happening. Your body is simply on auto-pilot.

When I was a child, this is what happened to me, nearly every day.

It became a habit.

My neck and shoulders were storing all my anger, my sadness, my fear. The spasms were a reaction. A sign from my body that it was in pain - that I was in pain.

The Pattern Emerges

When visiting my family in Florida as an adult, I would revert back to older versions of myself. I love my parents but they have enormous personalities and no filter. Growing up in that kind of house meant I never felt safe to be myself.

So I made myself small, afraid to be seen.

I quieted my voice, afraid to be criticized.

I kept myself tightly wound, afraid to make mistakes.

I was bracing for what I couldn’t see.

I’d been holding onto anger towards my parents because it was an unsafe emotion.

I thought if I ignored it it would go away. But that’s not how it works. My body was holding it for me; she was keeping score.

Befriending Anger

At the end of 2023, I started doing somatic movement work with my friend and mentor, Kathi. Working with her taught me so much about my body. In particular, it taught me that I needed to befriend my anger. I had never learned to experience healthy anger and I didn’t know what it could do for me.

Our society teaches us that anger is bad. My family taught me that anger was only explosive. I had never seen what healthy anger looked like. I’d learned it was dangerous and needed to be repressed; avoided. Working with Kathi gave me tools to express my anger in healthy ways.

I learned that anger is where my boundaries come from. If I can’t feel anger, I can’t feel when someone crosses my boundaries.
Anger is self-worth. If I can’t feel anger, I can’t understand that my needs matter and I deserve better.
Anger is a messenger. When you learn to listen to its wisdom, you can assert yourself with confidence and power.
Anger was the gift I needed to figure out exactly who I was and how to rebuild my life that had been crumbling around me.

When you learn to feel anger without letting it consume you, it becomes a clarifier. It signals what your values are. It shows you what’s not ok. It gives you back your voice.

And now I have much clearer boundaries with my family. It’s brought us so much closer and it’s allowed us to have a much healthier relationship.

red and blue fire digital wallpaper — Anger is a righteous fire | Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

The Wisdom of the Body

Our bodies are always talking to us. For so long, we’ve been told mind over body. But it’s incredibly wrong. It’s destructive. Our bodies are much wiser than our minds; our bodies are evolutionarily, much older. They have an inner wisdom that tells us exactly what we need. The key is to remember that you even have a body; and learn to listen.

Take a moment right now.

Scan your body: are you clenching anything? Your jaw, your shoulders? Maybe your hips or glutes? Maybe your hand? Let it go.

We’ve all been programmed, from the very moment of our birth, by the experiences we go through. No matter what, we experience trauma. You don’t need to go to war to have PTSD or C-PTSD, anxiety, depression, or any mental health issue.

We inherit trauma from our families and we experience our own throughout the course of our lives. If you’re carrying aches, chronic tension, an inability to sleep, jumping at loud noises; you’re not broken - your body is keeping score.

Your mission is to unravel it all.

So How Do We Heal?

So how do you do that? Slowly.

I will share some things I’ve learned along the way:

First and foremost: feel your feelings or they’ll get stored. Next time you have big feelings, before you react, pause. Take a deep breath. If possible, close your eyes and ask, “what am I feeling?” Acknowledge it. And then respond from that place.
Your body is always talking to you. It knows before your mind if something is right or something is off. Learn to trust it. Start small.
Learn to calm and regulate your nervous system in a healthy way: go on a walk, take a bath, spend time in nature, listen to calming music, phone a friend, create art, write down 3 things you’re grateful for today. Pick one or do them all.
Cultivate safety in your body: do a 5 minute root chakra meditation (at the end of the linked post), do 10 minutes of yoga, give yourself a big hug.

My dear reader friends, you are not too late to start listening. You are not too late to learn. You are not alone. I will leave you with this poem - I hope it helps you understand that your body is always there for you.

The Lighthouse

My body is my lighthouse

When I get lost

she guides me home

When I wander she says

I am here

When my mind takes over she says

Come back

My body guides me

So I can safely voyage

So I can return to her

Again

and again

When I wander from her, she doesn’t scold

She doesn’t say, “I told you so”

She doesn’t manipulate or scream

She doesn’t raise her voice or become mean

My body is kind

My body is wise

My body is my beacon

She waits patiently for me to come back

She knows I always do

She knows I always will

She is a safe place to land

And when I do return

She simply says to me:

Welcome back

Welcome home

I’m always here

I’ll always be your home

- Written May 9, 2024

If this piece resonated for you or you’ve been on your own journey with somatic healing, I’d love to hear what has helped you or what you’re still learning to trust. Please share your experience in the comments; I read everything.

Love,
Natalie

A Guide to Knowing Yourself

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