Have you ever felt your heart race, your muscles tense, or your stomach drop for no clear reason? These moments are often triggers—body-based reminders of past danger.
When trauma occurs, the brain stores sensory and emotional memories in areas responsible for survival, such as the amygdala, which detects and responds to threat. Later, a sound, smell, or tone of voice can reactivate those memories, even when the situation isn’t actually unsafe. This is your nervous system trying to protect you—it just doesn’t realize you’re safe now.
Trauma can also leave the body stuck in chronic states of hyperarousal or hypoarousal. In hyperaroused states, you might feel restless, agitated, tense, shaky, or overheated—signs that your system is in fight, flight, or freeze mode. In hypoaroused states, you may feel numb, heavy, fatigued, or disconnected—signals that your body has shifted into a protective shutdown or collapse mode. Both are survival responses, but they can become exhausting when the danger has long passed.
Understanding triggers is the first step toward healing. Rather than viewing these reactions as “overreactions,” it helps to see them as signals from a body that has learned to be cautious. With the right support, your nervous system can learn new patterns of regulation and safety.
At the Trauma Clinic at CFIR, our trauma-informed clinicians work gently with these responses through approaches such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Polyvagal-based therapy, and EMDR, helping your body and brain reconnect and calm after years of being on alert.
Healing doesn’t mean never being triggered—it means learning how to recover more quickly and trust that safety is possible again.
Whitney Reinhart, M.A., R.P., is the Director of the Trauma Clinic at CFIR and a psychotherapist providing psychological services to adults experiencing a wide range of issues, with a special interest and expertise in trauma and relationships. She uses and supervises trainees using a variety of trauma-informed approaches, including sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing, and parts-based approaches.
