If The Body Keeps The Score... Nobody Taught Me How To Read It

The chronic pain, mystery illnesses, and medical gaslighting that nobody told you were actually your nervous system screaming for help

My therapist cost me $126,000. Not in session fees — in blackmail. But before she destroyed my life, she taught me one thing that might have saved it: trauma lives in your body, not just your mind.

Too bad she used that knowledge to weaponize my nervous system against me.

For five years, she had a front-row seat to every wound, every fear, every moment of shame I'd ever carried. She knew exactly which buttons to push. And when I lost my job at Fidelity in April 2023, she pushed them all.

But this isn't about her. This is about what happened to my body when trauma took up permanent residence. This is about the symptoms nobody prepared me for, the illness that wasn't illness, and the language I had to learn to save my own life.

The Symptoms Nobody Warns You About

Here's what they don't tell you about trauma: it doesn't just fuck with your head. It rewrites your entire operating system, and your body keeps the receipts.

"Your body is keeping score of every betrayal, every violation, every moment you couldn't fight or flee. And it's been trying to tell you."

For years, I thought my chronic back pain was from bad posture. The muscle spasms that would lock up my shoulders? Stress from work. The digestive issues that had me doubled over after every meal? Must be IBS. The heart palpitations that sent me to the ER twice? Anxiety, they said.

They weren't wrong. They just weren't complete.

What nobody told me was that my body was screaming the truth my mind couldn't process: I was living in a constant state of survival.

When you're raised in chaos, survival mode becomes your default setting. Your nervous system doesn't know the war is over. It doesn't understand that the screaming has stopped, that you're not eight years old anymore, that you're safe now.

Except I wasn't safe. Not really. Because I kept recreating the chaos, finding new wars to fight, new threats to survive. My body knew before I did.

The Invisible Symptoms of Stored Trauma

Let me paint you a picture of what unprocessed trauma actually looks like in a body:

The Freeze Response Nobody Recognizes:

• Chronic fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. I slept 12 hours and woke up exhausted.

• Brain fog so thick you forget your own phone number.

• Numbness in your extremities that makes you drop things constantly.

• Temperature dysregulation where you're always freezing or burning up, no in-between.

• The inability to cry even when you desperately need to.

• Time blindness that makes you lose hours, days, sometimes weeks.

• Complete disconnection from hunger and thirst cues.

The Fight Response Turned Inward:

• Autoimmune conditions where your body literally attacks itself.

• Chronic inflammation that shows up in bloodwork but has "no cause."

• Skin conditions that flare during stress: eczema, psoriasis, hives.

• TMJ from clenching your jaw for years.

• Digestive disorders from a constantly activated nervous system.

• Migraines that feel like your skull is trying to escape.

The Flight Response With Nowhere to Run:

• Restless leg syndrome that makes sleep impossible.

• The inability to sit still where even meditation feels like torture.

• Chronic muscle tension that massage can't release.

• Panic attacks that feel like heart attacks.

• Insomnia because your body won't let you be vulnerable.

• Hypervigilance that exhausts your adrenals.

• A startle response so severe you jump at your own shadow.

"When trauma has nowhere to go, it goes into your tissues, your organs, your cells. It becomes you."

My Body's Secret Language

During the worst of my abuse, when my former therapist was extorting me while I lived in terror of losing my career, my body started speaking in tongues I couldn't translate.

The shaking started first. Not normal tremors but full-body convulsions that would hit without warning. I'd be sitting at my desk, trying to work, and suddenly my hands would shake so violently I couldn't type. My legs would give out walking to the bathroom.

Then came the numbness. Entire parts of my body would just switch off. Like someone had cut the power lines.

The doctors ran every test. MRIs, blood panels, neurological exams. Everything came back "normal."

"You're just stressed," they said. "Try yoga."

But nothing about living under constant threat is normal. Nothing about having your former therapist threaten to destroy your professional license unless you pay her six figures is normal. Nothing about being isolated from everyone who could help you is normal.

My body knew what my mind couldn't accept: I was being tortured.

The physical symptoms escalated. I lost 30 pounds without trying. My vision would blur without warning. I developed tremors that looked like Parkinson's. My blood pressure spiked so high I needed medication.

Night terrors became my new normal. I'd wake up screaming, drenched in sweat, reliving threats that weren't in the past — they were in my present. Classic PTSD symptoms, except the trauma wasn't over. It was ongoing.

Every system in my body was screaming SOS, and I was too dissociated to hear it.

Why Your Chronic Illness Might Be Trauma in Disguise

Here's the fucked up truth: trauma doesn't need your permission to take up residence in your body. It moves in like a squatter and starts redecorating.

Studies show that people with unresolved trauma are:

• 2.5x more likely to develop autoimmune diseases

• 3x more likely to have chronic pain conditions

• 4x more likely to have digestive disorders

• 6x more likely to attempt suicide

But here's what the studies don't capture: the years we spend chasing diagnoses, swallowing pills, trying elimination diets, doing yoga, meditating, and wondering why nothing fucking works.

I spent thousands on functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, acupuncturists, chiropractors, supplements that promised to "reset" my system, and elimination diets that left me afraid of food. Each specialist had a theory. None of them asked about trauma.

"You can't heal a trauma response by treating it like a medical condition. You can't medicate away memories stored in muscle."

The medical system isn't designed to recognize trauma's physical manifestations. It's designed to treat symptoms, not stories. So we get labeled: difficult patient, anxious, hypochondriac, drug-seeking. We get prescribed antidepressants for grief, muscle relaxers for armoring, sleeping pills for hypervigilance.

Meanwhile, our bodies keep screaming the truth in the only language they know.

The Mind-Body Connection That Changed Everything

The breakthrough came when I finally understood: my symptoms weren't random. They were messengers.

The back pain? Carrying burdens that weren't mine. My whole life, I'd been the family hero, the overachiever, the one who fixed everything. My spine literally couldn't support the weight anymore.

The digestive issues? Unable to "stomach" what was happening. Every time I swallowed my truth, my gut rebelled.

The numbness? Dissociation made physical. When you can't escape a threat, sometimes the only option is to leave your body.

The heart palpitations? A cardiovascular system on constant red alert, ready to run from dangers that lived in my memories, not my present.

Once I started listening, really listening, to what my body was trying to tell me, everything shifted.

How to Start Reading Your Body's Language

Step 1: Stop Pathologizing, Start Listening

Your symptoms aren't the enemy. They're your body's attempt to protect you from what it perceives as danger. That chronic pain might be your body's way of saying "stop" when you can't. That fatigue might be forced rest for a system that's been running on adrenaline for decades.

Step 2: Map Your Triggers

Notice when symptoms flare. What happened right before? Who were you with? What memory surfaced? I started keeping a body journal, tracking sensations alongside events. The patterns were undeniable. Back pain after phone calls with family. Migraines before important meetings. Stomach issues after any confrontation.

Step 3: Feel Without Fixing

When sensation arises, resist the urge to immediately medicate or distract. Sit with it. Breathe into it. Ask it what it needs. This is the hardest part. We're conditioned to make discomfort go away. But sometimes the discomfort is the message.

Step 4: Move the Energy

Trauma is stuck energy. Shake, dance, scream, run. Do whatever helps that frozen energy start to flow. I started with tiny movements. Wiggling my fingers when I felt numb. Rolling my shoulders when they locked up. Eventually, I could shake my whole body, letting years of trapped fear move through and out.

Step 5: Find Safe Connection

Healing happens in relationship. Find people who can hold space for your body's truth without trying to fix you. This is crucial. You need witnesses, not saviors. People who can sit with your shaking without rushing to stop it. Who can hear your body's story without needing to edit it.

The Plot Twist Nobody Expects

Here's the mindfuck: sometimes the people we trust to help us heal are the ones keeping us sick.

My therapist, the one who extorted me, knew exactly how trauma worked in the body. She knew that keeping me in a constant state of hypervigilance would make me easier to control. She knew that threatening my safety would trigger every old wound.

She used my body against me.

During our sessions, she'd identified all my triggers. Fear of abandonment. Terror of public humiliation. The way I'd freeze when threatened. She catalogued my trauma responses like ammunition.

Then she pulled every trigger.

She threatened to expose my secrets to my employer. She isolated me from friends and family. She created such an elaborate web of threats that my body stayed locked in permanent fight-or-flight. The physical symptoms weren't just from past trauma anymore. They were from ongoing torture.

But she also, inadvertently, taught me its power.

"Your body remembers everything. Once you learn its language, nobody can use it against you again."

The Healing That's Actually Healing

Recovery isn't about making symptoms disappear. It's about understanding what they're trying to tell you.

My back still hurts sometimes, usually when I'm carrying too much responsibility for others. Now I notice it and ask: What am I carrying that isn't mine?

My digestion still rebels, typically when I'm swallowing feelings instead of expressing them. Now I pause and ask: What truth am I not digesting?

My hands still shake, often when my body senses danger before my mind does. Now I trust it and ask: What is my body knowing that I'm not seeing?

The symptoms haven't vanished. They've become allies. Early warning systems. Wise counselors speaking in sensation instead of words.

Your Body Is Not Your Enemy

If you're reading this with a body full of mysterious symptoms, chronic conditions, and medical gaslighting, know this:

Your body is not broken. Your body is not lying. Your body is not the problem.

Your body is keeping score because that's how it keeps you alive. Every symptom is a breadcrumb on the trail back to what happened to you.

You don't need another diagnosis. You don't need another medication. You don't need another specialist who doesn't ask about your story.

You need someone to believe that your body is telling the truth.

Start with yourself.

Listen to the wisdom in your weakness. Honor the intelligence of your illness. Your body has been trying to save you all along.

It just needed you to learn its language.

— Cody Taymore

Kill The Silence

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