When the Body Still Believes It’s Not Safe to Be Seen
What happens when your body remembers abandonment
If you were groomed to put everyone else’s needs before your own…
If you learned that love was something you earn by disappearing, staying quiet, or shutting down…
Then your body might still be living by those rules—even after you know better.
You might seem calm on the outside.
But inside, you feel anxious.
Heavy.
Sad.
Overwhelmed.
It may be the voice of a younger version of you still living inside your body—afraid of being abandoned.
Still believing love only comes when you disappear.
The Somatic Echo
There’s a term for this I use often: somatic echoes.
These are the places in the body and energy field where your life has left an imprint.
Not just memory, but frequency.
Not just story, but sensation.
The somatic echo carries the charge of early experiences—especially the moments that were painful, scary, or unresolved.
And when that echo belongs to a younger self who never got to be seen, it can quietly start running the show of your life.
How It Shows Up
You might feel anxiety or guilt when sharing you’ve been hurt.
Because there was never a safe place for your heart to land.
Maybe as a child, your hurt feelings were ignored, minimized, or turned against you.
So now, even in safe relationships, you don’t feel safe.
You feel guilt around setting boundaries.
Because somewhere along the way, you learned that your body didn’t fully belong to you.
That your “no” wasn’t allowed.
So now, when you try to reclaim it, your inner child trembles.
Guilt rises. Shame follows.
You hold on too long—to people, jobs, relationships.
Even when they drain you.
Even when they harm you.
Because letting go feels like loss.
And some part of you still remembers being left during your most tender moments.
So now, you stay.
Not because it’s working, but because their presence—even if it’s only physical—is familiar.
And that familiarity feels safer than the risk of abandonment.
Or maybe you attach too quickly.
Or ghost when things get real.
Two sides of the same coin.
Both rooted in fear.
Fear of being left.
Fear of being truly seen.
Fear of being seen and then left.
And when that echo activates, you’re no longer in the present.
Your body is re-enacting a moment it believes is still happening.
Is This Still Helping Me?
The truth is—these imprints live in real places.
They’re not abstract.
The way your shoulder tightens when a conversation gets intimate.
The way your stomach flips when you feel too exposed.
The ache in your neck before setting a boundary.
These are not random.
They’re somatic echoes of what once helped you survive.
And sometimes, the survival echo is still calling the shots.
That’s why it’s so important to pause and ask yourself:
Is this still helping me?
This response, this shutdown, this fear—
It may have protected you then.
But is it helping you now?
Is it supporting the version of life you’re choosing to build today?
Becoming a Place of Safety
If the answer is no, then here’s the invitation:
Become the safety your inner child never had.
Not by fixing her.
Not by rushing her.
But by showing her—through your presence, your breath, your boundaries—that you’re here now.
That she no longer has to run.
No longer has to disappear.
No longer has to choose survival over connection.
Disconnection from self is what costs us the most.
And that’s what these patterns are really about.
Not just people-pleasing.
Not just anxiety.
But disconnection from your own aliveness.
When you become a place of safety for your younger self, your body exhales and truth emerges.
Journal Prompt
Where are you shrinking in your life?
Where do you feel it in your body—and what might expanding look like instead?
Take your time.
Breathe into the places that feel tender and allow what’s there to be “there”.
It often knows the way home before your mind can make sense of it.
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Thank you for being here—truly.
Toni aka
The Trauma Doula