How the Body Keeps Score: Mental Health, Trauma, and the Mind–Body Connection

For so many of us, especially high-achieving women, mothers, professionals, and students, the body speaks long before the mind can form words. A tight chest becomes the language of anxiety. Chronic stomachaches become the echo of unprocessed grief. Headaches, fatigue, inflammation, and sleep disturbances show up as the body’s attempt to keep us safe.

This idea, often summarized as “the body keeps score,” reflects a well-established truth in modern neuroscience: the body and mind are not separate systems. They form a single, integrated network constantly communicating through the nervous, immune, and endocrine systems. What affects one inevitably affects the other.

Trauma and Chronic Stress Live in the Body

Trauma is not just something that happens to you, it is something that happens inside you. Even after the event has passed, the nervous system can remain on high alert, creating patterns such as hypervigilance, irritability, digestive issues, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep.

Research shows that trauma influences:

• Autonomic nervous system functioning (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) (Porges, 2021)

• Inflammatory pathways, increasing risk for autoimmune issues and chronic illness (Mendoza et al., 2022)

• Stress hormones like cortisol, which can dysregulate mood, appetite, energy, and immunity (Berens & Jensen, 2022)

When these systems are overwhelmed, the body stores the emotional experience, even when the mind tries to move on.

The Mental–Physical Feedback Loop

Mental health symptoms rarely occur on their own. Anxiety may present as a racing heart or stomach pain. Depression may look like chronic fatigue or immune changes. Trauma may manifest as headaches, gut disruption, or hormonal shifts.

And when this physiological stress goes unaddressed long enough, something else can happen:

All of a sudden, we’re in an autoimmune crash.

The body becomes so overloaded by unprocessed stress and inflammatory signaling that the immune system begins attacking the very tissues it was meant to protect. Many clients describe it as “one day I felt off, and the next day I couldn’t get out of bed.” In reality, it’s the result of months, or years, of cumulative stress stored in the body finally overwhelming its natural resilience.

This feedback loop is driven by three major systems:

The Nervous System

Chronic stress reshapes neural pathways. An overactive amygdala reduces the prefrontal cortex’s ability to regulate emotions, leading to hyperreactivity or shutdown.

The Immune System

Inflammation becomes chronic. Over time, this can contribute to autoimmune conditions, flare-ups, and systemic crashes when the body can no longer buffer the stress.

The Endocrine System

Hormones like cortisol, adrenaline, thyroid hormones, insulin, and sex hormones become dysregulated under chronic stress, further weakening immune resilience.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets

Emotional experiences, especially overwhelming ones, often get stored in the body before they reach conscious awareness. Children, in particular, encode trauma physiologically long before they have the language to describe it.

This is why healing must involve bottom-up healing approaches like somatic therapy, breathwork, mindfulness, yoga, movement, and trauma-informed therapy.

Healing isn’t just psychological. Healing is physiological.

Healing Requires Both Mind and Body

Research is clear that the most effective trauma and mental health treatment integrates cognitive and somatic tools. Effective healing includes:

• Nervous system regulation

• Increasing interoceptive awareness

• Processing stored emotion in safe, titrated ways

• Supportive relationships and community

• Addressing inflammation, nutrition, gut health, sleep, and rhythm

• Rebuilding agency and meaning

You Are Not “Too Sensitive”, You Are Wired for Protection

If your body reacts strongly, it’s not a flaw. It’s a survival strategy that once kept you safe. The hopeful truth is that the nervous system is changeable throughout the lifespan.

With the right support, the body can learn new pathways of safety, connection, and regulation.

Healing is always possible and it begins from the inside out.

At Well Mind Body Integrative Psychotherapy & Wellness, our therapists deeply understand this mind–body connection. We honor the body’s wisdom, the brain’s plasticity, and the profound resilience inherent in every person we work with.

You can learn more at www.wellmindbody.co.

References

Berens, A. E., & Jensen, S. K. G. (2022). Biological embedding of childhood adversity: From physiological mechanisms to clinical implications. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 18(1), 601–627. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-071720-015325

Mendoza, C. B., Loya, M. A., & Treadway, M. T. (2022). Inflammation and trauma: A bidirectional relationship. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 101294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.12.009

Porges, S. W. (2021). Polyvagal theory: A biobehavioral journey toward understanding trauma. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 168, 80–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2021.06.004

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2023). The body keeps the score (updated ed.). Viking.

Yehuda, R., Vermetten, E., & McFarlane, A. (2020). Understanding resilience in trauma: An integrative framework. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 11(1), 1729633. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2020.1729633