Trauma Stored in Your BODY: It's Not Just Your Brain!

Name: Trauma Stored in Your BODY: It's Not Just Your Brain!
Uploaded: 2026-06-12T15:39:01+00:00
Duration: 45 s
Channel: Jake Burhans
Description: In this segment, Jake Burhans explains Bessel van der Kolk’s insight that traumatic memories are stored not only in the brain but also as bodily…

12 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Jake Burhans explains Bessel van der Kolk’s insight that traumatic memories are stored not only in the brain but also as bodily sensations. He describes how intense trauma triggers a surge of cortisol and adrenaline, which prevents the emotion from being fully registered at the moment. After the event, the suppressed feeling resurfaces, and people often resist experiencing it, which blocks the completion of trauma processing. Burhans emphasizes that trauma does not have to stem from extreme events like war or assault; everyday incidents such as a failed presentation can also be traumatic. He argues that allowing the stored feeling to surface is essential for completing the healing process.

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That's when Bessel van der Kolk began to realize that memories and trauma isn't stored in the brain, it's also stored in the body as a feeling. What happens is we go through these traumatic experiences, right? And we, it's so intense that we now resist it. So after that event happens, the emotion tries to come up to complete, 'cause in the middle of the trauma, like your cortisol and adrenaline is running, like you don't register it. But after the fact, the emotion comes up, you resist it. You're like, oh my God, I do not wanna go back there. Whatever that traumatic event was, it didn't have to be this like fricking terrible thing of like war or incest or rape or whatever. Like it doesn't have to be these horrible things. Things. It could just be like an event that traumatized you, or it doesn't have to be like some massive accident. It could be like a, a presentation that went wrong and like traumatized you. Letting the feeling of that come up is what completes the process. What happens is that was a traumatic event,