Welcome back, beautiful soul. In Part 1, we talked about how trauma doesn’t always look like what we expect, especially for women in relationships. If you recognised yourself in those words, you might be wondering: “Okay, so now what? How do I make sense of what’s happening in my body and mind?”
Let’s take a look at that together.
What Your Body Remembers
You might be surprised to know that your body holds onto these experiences even when your mind tries to move forward. It’s like your nervous system has its own memory bank, and it’s always working to keep you safe, even when you don’t need protecting anymore.
You might notice yourself
- Always being on high alert: scanning rooms, people’s faces, voices for signs of danger
- Freezing up: finding yourself unable to speak or respond when you need to
- In fight or flight mode: feeling agitated, angry, or desperately wanting to escape
- Immediately trying to fix or please jumping into caretaker mode before you even realise what’s happening
- Feeling disconnected: like you’re floating above your body or watching from somewhere else
Sound familiar? These aren’t flaws in your character, they are your nervous system’s way of trying to protect you and keep you safe.
The Extra Challenge for Women
What makes this particularly complicated for us as women is that we’re often raised to prioritise relationships above our own well-being. We learn that being “good” means putting others first, keeping the peace, not making waves. So, when a relationship is hurting us, we have all these thoughts swimming in our minds, from it wasn’t that bad to other people have it worse to I should be grateful.
Sound familiar? These thoughts feel so reasonable, don’t they? But they can keep us trapped in patterns that continue to hurt us.
We’re taught that love means sacrifice, that good women don’t complain, that we should be grateful for any attention or affection we receive. But what if some of what we’ve been calling love was actually harmful to your nervous system?
When Trauma Keeps Happening
Many women experience what’s called Complex PTSD, which develops from ongoing, repeated trauma, especially in relationships. This might show up as:
- Your emotions feeling completely unpredictable (either overwhelming or completely shut down)
- Believing that you are broken and the flaws is just who you are
- Feeling the yo-yo of struggling to trust but also being terrified of being alone
- The world just doesn’t make sense any more and you find yourself questioning
If this sounds like you, please know, this makes complete sense given what you’ve been through.
You’re Not Broken! You Are Responding
If you’re recognising yourself in these words, I want you to know that you are not broken.
Your nervous system is responding exactly as it should to overwhelming experiences. Every single one of these responses, the hypervigilance, the people-pleasing, the emotional numbing, they all developed to protect you. They served a purpose, even if they don’t feel helpful now.
Think of it this way, if you lived in a house where the fire alarm went off randomly and frequently, you’d eventually learn to always be listening for it, right? Your nervous system learned to do the same thing with danger signals in relationships.
You adapted and survived. That’s not broken. that’s incredibly strong.
There Is Hope
With the right support, trauma responses can heal, and you can:
- Learn to feel safe in your own body again
- Reconnect with that inner wisdom you’ve always had
- Set boundaries that actually feel good
- Trust your own perceptions and experiences
- Feel genuinely safe in relationships
- Remember who you are underneath all these protective responses
Healing isn’t about forcing yourself to get over it or pretending it didn’t matter. It means learning to live with a nervous system that feels safe, even when you’re not in danger.
You Deserve to Feel Safe
You deserve to feel safe in your own body. You deserve to trust what you know. You deserve relationships where you feel seen, heard, and valued for exactly who you are. Trauma responses might be part of your story right now, but they don’t have to be the end of your story.
If this is resonating with you and you’re ready to start exploring what healing might look like, remember that reaching out for support isn’t weakness, it’s one of the most courageous things you can do.
Taking the Next Gentle Step
Sometimes the hardest part is just beginning to understand what you’ve been through. If you’re feeling ready to explore your experiences in a supportive way, without pressure or judgment, that’s exactly what healing looks like. It starts with one small step. One moment of curiosity about your own experience. It is a moment in time where you choose to treat yourself in the way you would a friend.
You’re already on your way.
