Many think trauma therapy is just talking about painful past events until the memories lose their sting. But that’s a misconception. Trauma therapy isn’t about rehashing the past. It’s about creating the safety to build capacity for healing trauma through processing emotions. They are stuck emotions that were too overwhelming to deal with at the time. This post explores trauma healing, why the body stores trauma, and how art and somatic therapy can help you reclaim your energy and sense of self.
Trauma Isn’t Just About the Event
I discussed this the other day and wanted to share it with you. There is a misconception in common culture that if somebody’s been through a traumatic event, you send them to therapy so they can talk about it, and that will make it better. However, trauma therapy isn’t really about rehashing the event. It’s slowing down to feel safe in your body so that you can do trauma healing through processing emotions.
Why Talking Alone Isn’t Enough – Healing Trauma Through Processing Emotions
In therapy, through the relationship with the therapist, you create a secure enough container in your life to hold your emotional and psychic energy. This way you don’t feel like you’re emotionally overflowing, inundated, or flooded. That container offers the space and security many clients lacked in childhood, allowing space for the healing to happen.
Building the Container for Healing
The Role of Safety in Trauma Therapy
When triggered, you have big or uncomfortable emotions in response to something happening in your current life. Still, often, there is a connection between what you’re feeling and the original traumatic event. What causes trauma is when you aren’t safe enough or not allowed to be able to process the emotions you’re feeling.
Creating Space to Hold You for Trauma Healing through Processing Emotions
In therapy, we build the capacity again that’s space to sit with the uncomfortable emotions so that they can flow through you and finally be processed. Emotional processing means reflecting on the original event and what the emotion was trying to tell you so that you can put it into context and provide your younger self with that missing piece. It might be a realization, safety, validation, soothing, or something specific to your unique situation.
How the Body Stores Trauma
Bessel van der Kolk’s Insights on the Mind-Body Connection
When we can finally process the emotion, that’s what makes it unstuck. It’s like a cyst formed around a foreign object, and somebody’s body finally comes to the surface and rejects the foreign object. When you release that old, stuck emotion and put the situation into context to satisfy that unmet need, a considerable amount of psychic energy is released.
Emotional Symptoms, Physical Symptoms, and the Body’s Messages
That’s what trauma healing is. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk said, the body stores trauma; this can show up as emotional symptoms, depression, anxiety, overwhelm and exhaustion, immune disorders, and other physical and mental symptoms.
When working through trauma, it’s important to remember that healing is not linear. Rest takes time and energy to heal. Just like you must get extra sleep and fluids when you are sick with a cold, psychological healing requires time and concerted effort.
Rest, Self-Care, and Emotional Check-Ins in Trauma Work
When you are doing emotional work, it’s important to remember that rest, self-care, and emotional check-ins are not just luxuries. In fact, they’re essential tools in trauma healing. My free guide to my newsletter subscribers is an example of an emotional check-in tool that utilizes art.
Suppose you are too overwhelmed, tired, or foggy to engage in deeper emotional processing; therapy steps in. Sometimes, the emotional load is too much to bear on your own. Therapy addresses this issue by helping you hold space when you can’t carry it alone.
Therapy allows for those moments when you feel depleted or too disconnected from your body and emotions. It’s a place to take a breath, slow down, and gently work through what feels too big to process independently. In this safe, supportive environment, you can check in with how you’re feeling emotionally and physically, permitting yourself to be where you are without pressure to do more than your body can handle.
Why Art and Somatic Therapy are Powerful Tools
The Language of the Body: Awareness of Sensations and Movement
What I love about our therapy is that it engages with your body and your awareness of sensations and movement. Art therapy is a type of somatic therapy. It allows you to start understanding the language of what your body is trying to tell you through symptoms.
Art as a Container for Healing and Expression
Art can express nonverbal emotions in nuanced ways, and it goes beyond words. Art is also a container that holds you and helps you transform stuck emotions into the freedom and empowerment of embodied healing.
Trauma and Its Symptoms: Distraction, Brain Fog, and Constant Busyness
Somatic therapies such as art therapy provide valuable outlets for releasing emotions stuck in the body. The trauma manifests with emotional and physical symptoms.
Some of the most common symptoms include distraction, a lack of focus, brain fog, and fatigue. These symptoms can cause a disconnect or disassociation, making coping with everyday life harder. On the other hand, I’ve also seen my clients cope by staying in a constant state of hyper-arousal where they are always busy. This busyness is a coping mechanism to deal with feelings of agitation caused by trauma in an effort to run away from the “bad feelings” and burn off excess energy that is the driving force of anxiety. These clients go through intense activity followed by meltdowns and exhausted crashes. These behavior patterns are instinctual coping mechanisms to avoid facing overwhelming or uncomfortable emotions. These feelings, however, are your trauma, asking to be processed, and your child self begging for your attention. When we avoid these emotions, they linger and resurface in ways that disrupt our lives.
In therapy, we create space for you to confront these feelings in a controlled and safe environment, allowing you to gradually process and integrate the trauma without being consumed by it. By learning to stay present and tune into what your body tells you, you reclaim your focus, energy, and, ultimately, your sense of self.
Working with Your Body and Emotions to Heal From Trauma for Good
Healing from trauma is a deeply personal process, and it’s not about simply “getting over” what happened. It’s about creating the safety and space to process what was too overwhelming to handle before. Through somatic and art therapy, we work with the body’s wisdom and the healing power of creative expression to release stuck emotions and reclaim a sense of freedom, empowerment, and embodiment.
If this resonates, I invite you to learn more about my trauma-informed art therapy work with individuals and groups. Healing is possible—and it can start with taking the first step.
Ready to explore how trauma-informed art therapy can support your healing journey? Schedule a call with me so we can chat about how I can best support you in your healing journey. Let’s create the space to reconnect with yourself and your body.
Maggi Colwell
Maggi is a licensed art therapist at Columbus Art Therapy who assists their clients to discover more of themselves through dream analysis, art therapy, shadow work, and depth psychotherapy. They specialize in working with grief and loss as well as c-PTSD. Click the button to sign up for Maggi's newsletter to get notifications about new blogs and upcoming events including workshops, groups, rituals, and art.