Validating the Unfelt: A Journey Through Trauma and Expansion

Author: Bianca Moeschinger

August 2025

What Is Trauma, Really?

Trauma is often misunderstood—not just in its origin, but in its shape, its duration, and its impact. It's not limited to extreme events or catastrophic incidents. Trauma can be loud and obvious, like an accident or abuse, but it can also be quiet and invisible: a childhood of emotional neglect, a pattern of invalidation, or the subtle feeling of never quite being safe in one’s own body or relationships.

At its core, trauma is any experience that overwhelms our capacity to cope, leaves us feeling powerless, and changes how we see ourselves, others, or the world. It’s stored not only in memory, but in the tissue, posture, breath, and nervous system. Trauma isn’t what happens to us—it’s what happens inside us as a result. It’s the unresolved residue of fear, pain, and helplessness that continues to shape our behaviour, beliefs, and bodies long after the event has passed.

How Trauma Shapes Who We Become

We begin to see that what we thought was simply our personality—our quick reactions, our emotional shutdowns, our defensiveness or our need to escape—were really survival strategies. We’ve been stuck in fight, flight, or freeze, repeating patterns that numbed our senses to the point where we couldn’t even tell the difference between someone trying to help us and someone hurting us again.

We each carry different thresholds, shaped by our histories and internal resources. What one person moves through with ease, another may carry for a lifetime. What devastates one might barely register for another. The scale is not the point. The point is that trauma, regardless of its size or origin, leaves a somatic imprint—a bodily echo that becomes part of our inner landscape.

Emotions as the Bridge to Healing

Often, it teaches us contrast. We learn what feels good or bad, right or wrong—but only once we’ve felt the difference. The middle ground—the emotional realm—is where that contrast is digested and integrated. It’s where the nervous system speaks to us through subtle cues. A tight chest, a hollow belly, a lump in the throat—these are all messengers. Emotions reveal both our distress and our potential to heal.

Healing doesn’t arrive overnight. It’s a process that requires time and safety. It demands a space that is slow enough for the nervous system to settle, soft enough for the body to trust, and compassionate enough for the inner child to speak. True healing is not just about "moving on"—it’s about expanding again. And that expansion only happens when the body is no longer in protection or survival mode.

The Invitation to Witness and Integrate

Up until now, we’ve explored the impact of trauma and the role emotions play in processing it. But here’s the pivot: this blog isn’t really about trauma itself. It’s about what happens when we let ourselves feel the lingering response of it—when we stop analyzing and start listening to what the body has been holding all along. It’s about honouring the part of us—often young, often voiceless—that still aches to be seen. And it’s about inviting the wiser, older self to witness that pain without judgment, criticism, or shame. It’s the meeting of the two—vulnerable and mature—that begins the real transformation.

When the Story No Longer Fits

One of the hardest places to be is inside a trauma story that no longer makes us sad, but still makes us angry. We know it happened. We’ve talked about it. We’ve even done some work around it. But it still lives in the knots of our body, in the unspoken tension, in the parts of us that can’t seem to move forward. And often, the anger is not just about what happened—it’s about the ways we haven’t yet been met, understood, or truly witnessed in it.

And often, the people closest to us unknowingly press on those unhealed places. Not out of cruelty, but because they are unaware of the trauma story we’ve been living inside. A friend might continue to speak to us as if we're still fragile. A partner might walk on eggshells, not realising we've already moved through the sadness. These well-meaning gestures can unintentionally reinforce an old identity we've outgrown, making it more difficult to fully inhabit the person we've become. This dynamic can keep us looped in the very version of ourselves we’re trying to evolve beyond.

The Micro Mirrors the Macro

In this way, our personal healing mirrors something larger. What happens in our own bodies—the micro—is often reflected in the relationships, families, and communities around us—the macro. Sometimes we can move forward on our own, simply by facing the truth. And sometimes, we need the tension and pushback of others—solid, safe others—to show us what’s still playing out in the background. The very friction we try to avoid becomes the catalyst for release.

Conflict can be confronting. But when held with awareness, it can also be clarifying—it becomes a mirror for our progress, highlighting what still hurts and what has already healed. It’s in these moments of friction that we often access the deepest opportunities for integration and emotional resolution. It can show us the ways we’ve outgrown our pain. It can reveal the ways we’ve already healed—but haven’t yet claimed. And it can give us the emotional friction we need to finally say, “I’m not that story anymore.”

Trauma as Catalyst for Balance

Sometimes, trauma isn’t just a wound—it’s a saviour. When we have expanded too far outward, chasing sensation, soaking in others, food, alcohol, entertainment, nature—anything that lets us feel good or feel something—we can lose touch with the quiet truth of ourselves. We forget how much we are taking in. We ignore the subtle pushbacks—fatigue, irritability, frayed relationships, even our own boredom. And without noticing, we override or move on, constantly seeking the next source of stimulation or sweetness.

But when expansion is not balanced by retraction, when we don’t return to reflect and metabolise what we’ve experienced, the body eventually calls us back. And sometimes, that call comes through trauma. A shock. A rupture. Something that forces us to stop, contract, feel again, and realign. In that way, trauma can be a turning point—bringing us back to centre.

I have witnessed this cycle time and time again in others, and within myself. When we are frozen—disconnected, overwhelmed, emotionally shut down—we must pass through our primal responses to return to life. Fight, flight, and then, eventually, connection. And at the other extreme, when we live only in the mind—analysing, rationalising, bypassing our sensations—we remain frozen in another way: cut off from life’s pulse, locked in abstraction. We disconnect from life itself.

Creation Through Response

Life unfolds in pulses—expansion and retraction. We grow outward to explore and inward to integrate. On the return, we’re not collapsing—we’re metabolising experience, refining clarity, anchoring new understanding.

True creation isn’t just about expression—it’s the ability to draw from the full spectrum of who we are: our stories, our scars, and the wisdom stored in our bodies. The more we gather, the more possibilities we hold.

Pain and adversity don’t just hurt—they illuminate. They help us discern what supports life and what constricts it. But if we remain in survival—stuck in protective reaction—we misread others, and they misread us.

This is how conflict is born—not from ill intent, but from misunderstanding. Two people, both protecting, both interpreting through the past.

To break the cycle, we must bring awareness to our patterned responses. We learn to pause. To choose a response that draws on emotional, physical, and mental intelligence.

In that choice, we reclaim our power. We become creators, not reactors.
We live, rather than defend.
We expand—again, and again.

What if trauma, too, was trying to bring us home?

Go to my podcast Under the Silence to listen to the full podcast - Link Here