It's feeling that anchors trauma

One key to understanding the somatic relationship to trauma is feeling.

Not in the sense that you feel the clothing on your skin, or a tool in your hand.

Rather, feeling at the interface of embodied emotion, a feeling that motivates a change in posture under stress reflects the same mechanism involved in somatization. It’s protective in nature, the success of it's implementation is measured by survival, in other words, if the person survives, the strategy is good enough and will likely be repeated as a pattern. These are not rational thought out responses, these reactions have more in common with instinct than a preconceived strategy.

After the fact the sense making mind comes in and helps generate a story about the how’s and why's of something occurred. These framed memories occupy a distinct aspect of our history. The story the historian recorded, which may or may not include the embodied experience of what happened. This is one of the reasons our reactions to traumas can hang out a long time. Retelling the story keeps the story alive without engaging the self protective reaction that was originally tapped and is likely still being utilized.