Reclaiming Your Body After Identity-Based Trauma

For many folks with marginalized identities, their trauma isn’t isolated to a single event, but is often the result of complex, ongoing, compounding factors. Existing in a body that the world tells you is unsafe, bad, or wrong causes not only mental and emotional distress but it impacts your physical wellbeing as well. You might notice constantly feeling on edge, scanning for threats, ongoing muscle tension or pain, exhaustion, shame or hostility towards your body, or even numbness. Working with your body is a critical aspect of trauma healing. 

Unfortunately, threats against marginalized folks are rising as our socio-political climate is increasingly targeting PoGM, bodily autonomy, gender expression, reproductive rights, immigration status, and access to healthcare. For many, this experience isn’t new, but with the intensity and frequency of these threats accumulating, we need to talk about how to care for our bodies in ways that will allow us to continue to resist without burnout. 

Identity-Based Trauma Lives in the Body

Our nervous systems were not built to sustain a ‘fight or flight’ state indefinitely. When safety becomes conditional, we often lose our connection to ourselves and it will begin to influence how we relate to others. Taking time to intentionally help your body ‘reset’ after becoming activated is critical to help those protective systems go offline so you can rest, engage in community, digest effectively, and heal. 

Noticing when your body needs this kind of reset is a valuable first step. It’s best to get intimately familiar with your body’s specific signals, and there are some common ones we can start with: 

• Chronic tension and pain (anyone else living with their shoulders in their ears?)

• Difficulty relaxing

• Shallow breathing

• Heart racing

• Heightened startle response

• Difficulty accessing pleasure

• Loss of appetite or digestive issues

• Fatigue

• Changes in sleep

• Frequent illness

• Reduced libido

• Brain fog or difficulty concentrating

• Increased reliance on substances

• Irritability

• Self-isolation… the list could go on. 

Feeling like this all the time is not normal. Noticing that you’re unable to relax when you’re at home or in spaces you would normally feel safe is a good indicator that your body needs some extra support.

Reclaiming Your Body Is Not About Forcing Safety

It’s unreasonable to expect that you won’t continue to experience these feelings when ongoing external danger is present. You need your protective states! And that doesn’t mean healing is impossible when safety feels intermittent. We have to be honest and realistic about the conditions we’re healing within while also acknowledging the reality that our bodies need additional ongoing support under the circumstances. 

As a relationship focused therapist, I prefer a relational approach. When you live with identity-based trauma, understandably, your relationship with your body can feel fraught. Like other relationships, the closer we get, the higher the stakes can feel because of how aware we become of our interdependence.

Our lives depend on each other and betraying that truth is how we all end up in collective suffering. While that interdependence can feel scary, we also know that the way through is care for each other. Your body is the living, breathing, sentient container for all that you are. The more proficient we become at loving all of the messy, imperfect, and magical parts - the better we'll love each other too.

How would you relate to someone you care about who is in distress? Forcing presence, pushing through discomfort, trying to override, minimize, or ignore your body's responses can compound the issues. Approaching gently with softness, openness, and nonjudgement are helpful. Slowly practicing the acts of noticing and naming what you’re experiencing without expectation for change can be supportive. From there, maybe extending some gratitude for how this body is trying to protect you. Once there’s some trust, we can focus on choice, consent, and collaboration. 

What Reclaiming Your Body Can Look Like

Choice can sound like, “Do I want or need to stay in this state, or am I ready to try and shift?” Choice and agency mean you get to decide what happens next and at what pace. Try to avoid controlling tactics or forcing yourself and instead ease into these practices. A frequent focus of my work with folks who are engaged in trauma healing is “pendulation.” 

This means practicing moving between states like comfort and discomfort, thinking and feeling, immobilized and mobilized, focus and disengagement, connectedness and isolation, even grief and joy. The more we practice these state changes, the more empowered we can feel to shift when we need to make a transition. 

For me, I often need some support to change my state. I find movement practices to often be the most effective and most accessible way for me to ‘complete the stress cycle’ when I’m already in pain or feeling drained. This doesn’t mean you need to spend an hour on your yoga mat. Simply putting on music that you want to move to and just allowing yourself to flow for a few minutes can make a big difference. A short walk, light stretching, even a guided progressive muscle relaxation can help. Getting outside, working with your breath, and connecting with people/pets you love and trust are also proven ways to help your nervous system regulate. 

If that’s too much, try getting back to the basics. Stop doomscrolling. Make sure you’re well hydrated and fed. I’m also a big fan of showers and baths, to support a state change. Cozy up in your comfiest clothes or wrap yourself up in a blanket like a burrito. Prioritizing getting enough sleep will support every other system of your body. Rest is resistance (@thenapministry). To oversimplify it all, try practicing noticing what you might want or need and be generous in your response. Be gentle with yourself as you go, you can only do so much, and this work should be grounded in compassion for where you’re at. 

Therapy That Supports Reclamation

If you're feeling stuck in a negative relationship with your body and feel under-resourced to improve, therapy can still be an option. You shouldn’t have to navigate it alone. Trauma-informed therapy should feel collaborative and consensual. It should honor the impact of systemic oppression, move slowly (at the pace of safety and trust), and prioritize nervous system regulation over insight alone. Ideally there would be an emphasis on transparency, collaboration, and empowerment. 

You are the expert on your body, your own nervous system, and your experiences. Collaboration in therapy means your choices and your feedback are welcome. It won’t always go perfectly, but when you bump into something that doesn’t feel right for you, your therapist should be responsive to that rupture. The goal is for you to understand the purpose of the work you are doing and feel supported in your ability to practice on your own. 

How We Can Help 

Healing from identity-based trauma takes time and a specific type of care. Whether you’re navigating chronic stress, body disconnection, or the impact of systemic oppression, our trauma-informed therapists are here to walk with you. We offer specialized approaches to healing from trauma that are tailored to your pace and lived experience.

We’re committed to making therapy more accessible to all through our Affordable Counseling Program, because everyone of all identities deserves a space to feel seen and empowered in their healing.

Author Biography

Jessica Carpenter is a therapist with Catalyss Counseling who works with adults who have experienced stress, grief, trauma, and a variety of relationship issues, including communication and conflict resolution, jealousy and betrayal, affair recovery, LGBTQIA+ community, and polyamory/non-monogamy. Jessica is also a licensed massage therapist, yoga therapist, and TRE provider. She is passionate about making wellness accessible to everyone. Follow Catalyss Counseling on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

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Here at Catalyss Counseling, we want to meet all of your counseling needs in the Denver area. Our supportive therapists provide depression counseling, therapy for caregiver stress, grief and loss therapy, stress management counseling, couples counseling, and more. We also have specialists in trauma and PTSD, women's issues, pregnancy and postpartum depression or anxiety, pregnancy loss and miscarriage, and birth trauma. For therapists, we can also provide clinical supervision with Firelight Supervision! We look forward to connecting with you to help support your journey today.