The Score
Many people arrive in therapy with a similar, often unspoken question:
“Why do I still feel this way when I understand where it comes from?”
They may be insightful, reflective, and emotionally intelligent. They might know their history well, have read widely, and be able to name patterns with precision. And yet — their body still reacts. Anxiety rises without invitation. The chest tightens. Sleep remains light. Relationships feel effortful, even when nothing is “wrong.”
This is often where quiet self-doubt begins to form.
Maybe I’m not doing therapy properly. Maybe I’m resistant. Maybe something is broken in me.
This is where it helps to understand a simple but profound truth, explored widely in The Body Keeps the Score:
The body does not store experience as a story.
It stores it as pattern.
The Body Remembers Without Words
The nervous system learns long before language is available. It learns through sensation, rhythm, proximity, tone, and response. It learns by noticing what happens after it expresses a need — and what happens when it stays quiet.
If closeness once led to overwhelm, the body may brace before intimacy.
If emotions were ignored or punished, the body may tighten before speaking.
If unpredictability was present, the body may remain alert even in calm environments.
These are not memories in the narrative sense. They are expectations.
They live in posture, breath, muscle tone, digestion, and attention.
This is why you can know — logically — that you are safe, and still feel unsafe.
The body is not confused.
It is responding to what it learned when learning was necessary.
Adaptation Is Not a Flaw
When we speak about the body “keeping the score,” it can sound harsh — as though the body is holding something against us. But what it is actually holding is care.
Every response the nervous system learned had a purpose:
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Staying alert kept you protected
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Shutting down kept you intact
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Over-functioning kept you connected
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Pleasing kept you included
These responses were not chosen.
They were adapted.
And adaptations, once formed, tend to persist — not because they are stubborn, but because the nervous system prioritises continuity over accuracy. It prefers what is familiar to what is untested.
This is why change can feel slow, even when desire is strong.
Insight Lives Higher Than Survival
Understanding our past matters. Naming patterns matters. Making meaning matters.
But survival responses do not live where insight lives.
The nervous system operates beneath conscious thought. It responds faster than language, quicker than reason, and often outside of choice. When it senses threat — real or remembered — it mobilises automatically.
This does not mean talking therapy has failed.
It means it has reached its natural edge.
When we ask the body to change through explanation alone, we are asking a non-verbal system to respond to words.
Often, it cannot — and that is not a deficiency.
Nothing Is Wrong With You
If your body reacts more quickly than your mind…
If you feel flooded, frozen, or vigilant despite insight…
If calm feels effortful rather than natural…
There is nothing wrong with you.
Your nervous system is doing what it learned to do — faithfully, consistently, and with the aim of protection.
The question is not “How do I stop this?”
It is “What would help my body learn that things are different now?”
That question does not ask for force.
It asks for experience.
A Gentle Beginning
Healing does not begin by persuading the body to let go.
It begins by understanding that the body has been holding on for a reason.
When that is truly felt — not just understood — something softens.
In the next part of this series, we will explore why the nervous system learns safety in relationships, and why change so often requires another regulated presence before it can be internalised.
For now, it may be enough to pause with this:
Your body is not behind.
It is responding exactly as it was shaped to respond.
And learning can happen again — when the conditions are right.
For some people, reading this is enough for now. For others, it opens a curiosity about being met in this way. If that’s you, you’re welcome to book a free initial conversation to explore whether integrative therapy might support you.
