I was sober for more than 16 years. Talk therapy over 20 years. I thought I was all good.
But then – I relapsed.
And just like that, everything I thought I “knew” about trauma recovery felt trite. Everyone said “What happened?” I had no idea. I was ashamed and felt…weak. Disgusted.
But, as it turned out, I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t undisciplined. I was just unfinished. That relapse became the wake-up call I didn’t know that I needed. And in the middle of picking up the pieces, I found gold – a therapist who did something radical: She didn’t just talk. She included breathwork Raging. And finally, feeling. (Author’s note: UGH).
But that’s when everything changed.
Talk Therapy Helped – But Not Enough
For over two decades, I was a good therapy client. I followed the path that trauma survivors are told to take: Tell your story. Get insight. Break the cycle. And I did all of that.
I understood my past so well that I could teach a class on it. But that intellectual understanding wasn’t enough, although I didn’t know it at the time. Because I was completely disassociated – a state of being zoned out that happens to many people who have been traumatized.
It wasn’t until I relapsed that I realized: Talk therapy had brought me to the edge of healing. But it couldn’t carry me across.
And that’s where body-based therapy came in.
A New Kind of Work—The Kind That Shakes You (Literally)
The therapist I met after my relapse introduced me to body-based practices I had never encountered in all the years of traditional therapy. And I wasn’t wild about them, to be honest.
It started with hypnotherapy—to bypass my overthinking brain. And then breathwork—to access stored trauma without needing words. Then came anger work—and for the first time in my life, I felt the rage that had been had buried under decades of “niceness.”
And slowly (I mean s l o w l y), I stopped zoning out.
After that, the path expanded to include:
- EMDR to break the trauma loops
- Somatic movement and shaking to complete fight-or-flight cycles
- Meditation to retrain my mind-body connection
- Grounding and massage to get in touch again (literally)
- Biofeedback and neurofeedback to teach my brain new patterns
- Heart Rate Variability (HRV) training to balance out my nervous system
The result: A whole new relationship – with myself. And now over 17 years of continuous sobriety since relapsing. And for me, it turned out that it wasn’t just therapy. It was recalibration.
If You’ve Ever Wondered “Why Isn’t This Working?”—It’s Not You
This is the part I want every survivor—and every professional—to hear: If talk therapy alone hasn’t helped you feel whole, it isn’t that you are broken beyond repair.
Because trauma doesn’t just live in memory. It literally lives in the body. And if the body isn’t part of your healing, a key piece of the puzzle may be missing. (Keep in mind that everyone is different, so different modalities work for different people.)
Mammals Shake Off Trauma – Literally
Since then, the research of Dr. Peter A. Levine, PhD (Waking the Tiger) and Bessel van der Kolk, MD (The Body Keeps the Score) has been foundational to my recovery. Dr. van der Kolk teaches that trauma actually reshapes the brain and the body. And Dr. Levine’s research with animals shows that they, too, experience trauma. But literally shake it off. Humans, unfortunately, stuff it and try to pretend it never happened.
I recently attended the Conference on Crimes Against Women #CCAW2025, and attended an amazing session by Ruby Jo Walker, LCSW, SEP, CHT that illustrates this. During her session, Ms. Walker showed an insightful video: In nature, every mammal shakes off trauma—literally. We humans are the ones who override that instinct.
It Doesn’t Have to Take 50 Years
I call myself a 50-year recovery story—but your healing doesn’t need to take that long. In fact, It shouldn’t take that long any more. Because the good news is that we are living in an era of trauma science breakthroughs. We know more now than ever before about the nervous system, the vagus nerve, and somatic intelligence – and how to enlist it in recovering.
If you’re a therapist, a survivor, a leader, or a loved one of someone struggling: Consider bringing the body back into the room. Because the path to trauma recovery doesn’t just go through the mind. It goes through the body, too.