Throughout most of my preteen years, social anxiety had a large presence in my life. I had gone from an exceptionally shy child to an even more introverted adolescent, which made these vital ‘coming-of-age’ years challenging and often painful. I frequently felt out of place, awkward and lonely. And, my body felt it too. The thought of school would elicit stomach aches, constant nail-biting, and most uncomfortably, I started picking at my thumbs until they bled. Not to mention the aches and exhaustion I felt when I came home from school every day, which seemed to come more from emotional growing pains than physical ones. It felt as though every period of emotional adjustment in my life was paralleled by physical discomfort in my body.
Throughout transitional periods in my life, such as moving countries, changing schools, and making new friends, that habit of picking at my thumbs has acted as a kind of release for those feelings I don’t always immediately address. At one point, after trying various ways to manage my anxiety, I came across the more holistic practice of acupuncture. During one of my sessions, the practitioner, upon noticing the cuts on my fingers, told me that in old Chinese medicine that particular point in my body was associated with grief. What really stayed with me most from the experience was this notion that sadness can be rooted in my body, not just my mind. This was the first time I became conscious of my body experiencing my feelings before I realised them consciously.
This is something that I still struggle with in my adult(ish) years, having felt the same anxieties at times when starting university, and the habit still takes hold of me subconsciously in moments of uncertainty or when I feel out of place- even now that I’ve become more rooted in myself and left my shyness behind. But simply just having the awareness of that connection existing between my past feelings and my present habits and hurts has helped me recognize the emotional aches and anxieties, so I know when I need to understand them again. This begs the question: to what extent are our feelings connected to our bodies’ wellbeing?
THE Mind-body Connection
We’ve all experienced those strange moments when our bodies seem to know something before our brains catch up. This can take many forms: your stomach dropping when you receive a certain text, your heart racing before an exam, or the tension that quietly settles into your body during a stressful week. Sometimes, the physical sensation arrives before we’ve even found the words for the feelings behind it.
This can be understood through the idea of the mind-body connection. This term describes the relationship between our psychological, emotional and physical experiences, and the way they can influence one another. Our brains are constantly receiving information from inside our bodies, and interpreting those sensations alongside what’s happening around us. This means that an emotional experience can produce a very real physical response, just as a physical sensation can influence our understanding what we are feeling.
Sometimes, experiences we haven’t quite processed can also resurface during seemingly unrelated moments. A situation in the present can remind our nervous system of something we’ve experienced before, even when we can’t make the connection consciously right away. ‘Implicit memory’ explains this: not every experience in your life is stored as a clear, conscious story, and past experiences can instead influence the way we react to similar situations.
Research also suggests that the connection between bodily sensations and emotional interpretation is a really important part of the mind–body connection. Perhaps this is why the idea of your body ‘remembering’ feels so intuitive. Maybe sometimes, our bodies simply express what our minds haven’t been able to put into words yet.
Memory and Stored trauma: Why Do We Sometimes Feel an Emotion Physically Before We Understand It Mentally?
This is perhaps why we so often hear about how the body ‘stores trauma’. But what does this actually mean? It doesn’t necessarily mean that a traumatic memory is physically sitting somewhere in our muscles, waiting to be discovered. Instead, it can refer to the way difficult or stressful experiences shape our nervous systems’ response to similar situations in the future. Difficult experiences can exist on a spectrum, so there isn’t one defined experience that can linger in your mind and body. We can also experience lasting sensations linked to remembered events that once produced strong emotional or bodily responses. The feelings are real, even if the explanation isn’t immediately obvious.
The Student Body
An area where this mind-body relationship can become obvious is in our student lives. Between deadlines, relationships, homesickness, and the broader uncertainty of figuring ourselves out, our bodies can end up carrying a lot alongside us. Sometimes, it’s super noticeable: the sleepless nights, headaches or constant tension. Other times, it’s far more subtle, manifesting as nail biting during a seminar, feeling unusually exhausted after socialising, or experiencing that particular brain-fog feeling when your mind has had enough.
What I’ve come to understand is the importance of being aware of my body, and allowing myself the space to process the feelings I might otherwise sit with and leave unaddressed. What has honestly helped me is becoming more mindful of how my emotions show up physically. That means listening to my body, noticing when old habits or reactions return, and recognising that they can sometimes reveal feelings I haven’t yet fully acknowledged. A practice that I’ve found is a particularly wonderful tool for bringing the mind and body together in harmony is yoga. The use of mindful breathing, in order to promote a deeper awareness of the physical sensations occurring in the body, whilst being given the space to think and process, can be incredibly beneficial for greater bodily attentiveness. Not to mention how it can help relieve built-up tension in your muscles.
Perhaps, rather than seeing these sensations as something to suppress or overcome, we can begin to see the body as a resource: something to listen to and befriend, rather than something separate from the emotional experiences we carry.