Episode 148: Why You Can't Sit Still: The Hidden Biology of Busyness
- THA Operations
- Nov 28, 2025
- 10 min read
Updated: Dec 2, 2025
Does Chronic Busyness Signal Stored Trauma in Your Nervous System?
Discover how trauma lives in the body—and how the vagus nerve, nervous system shutdown, and somatic healing explain why stillness can feel unsafe. Through the Biology of Trauma® lens, Dr. Aimie shares the trauma response sequence and the Essential Sequence needed to heal stored trauma without overwhelm.
If we’ve ever felt like we can’t stop moving—like sitting still feels unsafe—this episode helps us understand why. I share Jess’s story, a 45-year-old marketing director whose chronic busyness protected her from an 8-year-old’s stored terror. When her 17-year-old daughter said, “Mom, we never really got to be together,” Jess knew something had to change.
We’ll explore how nervous system dysregulation shows up as high-functioning exhaustion, emotional disconnection, and perfectionism. We’ll see how trauma becomes biology—and why our body holds on until it feels safe enough to let go.
In this episode you'll learn:
[00:00] Why a “good childhood” doesn’t guarantee a nervous system free of trauma
[02:15] How Jess’s busyness, weight gain, and exhaustion were signs of stored trauma
[06:40] Why stillness feels unsafe when the body equates pausing with overwhelm
[09:10] Thinking vs feeling: how living in your head blocks somatic trauma healing
[12:45] The real definition of trauma: overwhelm inside the body, not just events
[16:05] Startle → stress → freeze → shutdown: the trauma response sequence in the nervous system
[18:40] How the vagus nerve turns overwhelm into a whole-body shutdown response
[21:20] Overwhelm as biology: fatigue, gut issues, emotional eating, and chronic anxiety
[24:05] Why somatic work can retraumatize you if you don’t feel safe first
[26:30] The essential safety sequence: safety → support → growth into calm aliveness
[28:15] How Jess used the Foundational Journey to break the cycle with her daughter
Main Takeaways:
Trauma Happens Inside the Body: Trauma isn’t defined by events—it’s what happens inside of us when overwhelm outpaces our capacity to cope.
Overwhelm Is Trauma Biology: When the size of the problems we face feels bigger than our resources, our nervous system shifts from stress into trauma—leading to freeze, shutdown, and hopelessness.
Chronic Busyness and Perfectionism Can Be Functional Freeze: What looks like overachieving may actually be a protective response. Our body may be using busyness to avoid stored pain.
The Vagus Nerve Makes Trauma Physical: It carries the signal of shutdown throughout our system—leading to fatigue, gut issues, disconnection, and a loss of aliveness.
We Must Follow the Same Path Out That We Took In: Skipping straight to calm never works. True healing follows this path: Safety → Support → Expansion.
Healing Breaks Generational Patterns: Jess’s journey shows what becomes possible when we regulate our nervous system and choose presence over protection.
Notable Quotes:
“Trauma isn't what happened to us—it's what happened inside of us”.
“Busyness kept me safe. It kept me from drowning in emotions I couldn't process”.
"We have to follow the same path that our body took."
"Our body holds its truth. Our mind tells us what it wants us to hear."
"Safety first, then Support, then Expansion. You cannot skip the sequence."
"Our body needs safety to come out of shutdown. Until we create that, it will stay closed."
Episode Takeaway:
Trauma isn’t about what happened—it’s about what overwhelmed our nervous system and pushed it into survival mode. Chronic busyness, perfectionism, and emotional disconnection are often signs our body is still trying to protect us. But when we follow the Essential Sequence—Safety, then Support, then Expansion—we can safely access and resolve what our body has been holding. Healing becomes possible when our body finally knows it’s safe to feel, to rest, and to be present.
Resources/Guides:
Take the Attachment Pain Quiz: Discover your attachment patterns and how they show up in your nervous system
Attachment Trauma Healing Roadmap: Get your personalized roadmap for healing attachment wounds
Foundational Journey - If you are ready to create your inner safety and shift your nervous system, join me and my team for this 6 week journey of practical somatic and mind-body inner child practices. Lay your foundation to do the deeper work safely and is the pre-requisite for becoming a Biology of Trauma® professional.
Related Episodes:
Your host: Dr. Aimie Apigian, double board-certified physician (Preventive/Addiction Medicine) with master's degrees in biochemistry and public health, and author of the national bestselling book "The Biology of Trauma" (foreword by Gabor Maté) that transforms our understanding of how the body experiences and holds trauma. After foster-adopting a child during medical school sparked her journey, she desperately sought for answers that would only continue as she developed chronic health issues. Through her practitioner training, podcast, YouTube channel, and international speaking, she bridges functional medicine, attachment and trauma therapy, facilitating accelerated repair of trauma's impact on the mind, body and biology.
Why Slowing Down Feels Unsafe: How Stored Trauma Impacts Our Relationships
"Mom, when I leave for college, I'm going to miss that we never really got to be together." – Jasmine, age 17
Jess was a 45-year-old marketing director who had always been reliable, hardworking, and constantly moving. She exercised regularly, ate well, and managed responsibilities at work and home with impressive consistency. She also believed she had no trauma because she grew up in a loving family without experiences she would have labeled as traumatic.
But whenever Jess tried to slow down—even for a moment—something unfamiliar rose in her body. Stillness brought a discomfort she couldn’t name, a sense that pausing wasn’t just difficult… it was unsafe.
Everything came into focus the day her seventeen-year-old daughter, Jasmine, shared a sadness Jess never saw coming. Instead of brushing it off, Jess tried to sit with her the next day. Within minutes, her foot bounced, her hands fidgeted, and her chest tightened with a panic she couldn’t explain. She stood up and started cleaning because it felt easier than staying present.
The look on Jasmine’s face stayed with her. That moment led Jess to a question that would become her turning point:
“Why can’t I just sit still with someone I love?”
Jess didn’t know that her discomfort with stillness wasn’t a personality trait—it was a survival pattern. Busyness had become her nervous system’s way of staying safe. In this blog, we explore why slowing down can feel overwhelming, how a “good childhood” can still shape a trauma biology, and the safety-first sequence our nervous system needs to release stored overwhelm without collapsing or becoming flooded.
When Healing Feels Like Drowning: Understanding the Problem
Many approaches to wellness encourage slowing down, meditating, or “just being present.” These practices can be deeply healing—but they can also be deeply activating for a nervous system that equates stillness with danger.
For many of us who have lived in high-performing, high-functioning freeze patterns, the absence of movement brings up sensations we’ve never learned to tolerate. Instead of calm, we feel restlessness, panic, or the urge to escape.
Stillness exposes what constant motion has been protecting us from. When we rely on productivity to avoid uncomfortable sensations, slowing down removes the coping mechanism our nervous system has depended on. This is not because we are doing something wrong.
It’s because our nervous system has never experienced stillness as safe.
Our intention to rest and connect may be strong—but our capacity has been shaped by the survival responses of our past.
The Biology Behind Why Stillness Triggers Overwhelm
Our nervous system constantly scans for cues of safety or danger through neuroception—a subconscious process that evaluates our environment long before our mind can make sense of it.
When we have lived through periods of overwhelm, even without dramatic events, our neuroception becomes biased toward protection. Slowing down can activate this protective filter.
Stillness brings awareness inward, where sensations from moments of past overwhelm still live in our biology. For someone in a functional freeze pattern, this might feel like a drop in energy, internal pressure, or a familiar sense of collapse.
Our body isn’t signaling that we are unsafe today. It’s signaling that stillness once meant being overwhelmed with no way out.
These responses aren’t weakness. They are our biology doing exactly what it learned to do to keep us safe.
What “Safe Enough” Actually Means
Safety in trauma healing isn’t about perfect calm. It’s about creating enough internal regulation for our nervous system to stay present without collapsing or shutting down.
Being “safe enough” means:
we can experience small activation without immediately shutting down
we can pause briefly without feeling like we’ll fall apart
our biology has enough support to stay engaged, even if the experience is unfamiliar
This is the threshold that makes deeper healing possible. Total safety isn’t required. Capacity is built gradually, through small moments of regulation that communicate to our system, “We can stay here, and we’re okay.”
The Childhood Moment That Shaped Jess’s Biology
Jess grew up in a loving home, but her body remembered moments she never understood consciously.
When her father lost his job, the household atmosphere shifted. Her parents whispered in tense conversations. Her mother cried when she thought no one could hear. Jess sensed the emotional change but was too young to respond in a way that matched her intentions.
She wanted to make things better—but couldn’t. That helplessness overwhelmed her, and her body froze in response.
So she became the perfect child—the easy one, the helpful one.Stillness meant feeling emotions too big for her to manage.Busyness meant safety.
Her mind outgrew the situation.Her body did not.Her nervous system continued to respond to stillness as if it would return her to that early sense of helplessness.
The Safety Sequence: Where True Repair Begins
The trauma response follows a predictable biological sequence:
Startle → Stress → Freeze → Shutdown
Healing requires following this sequence.
1. Safety: A system in chronic freeze and shutdown will not release protective patterns until it senses true safety to do so.
2. Support: As energy returns, we need support to guide it without becoming overwhelmed. The anxiety, anger and activation of the stress response and feeling threatened are now felt.
3. Expansion (Calm Aliveness): Only after safety and support are present can we truly access growth, repair, and deeper processing.
Trying to process emotions or memories before we are safe enough often leads to retraumatization.
This is why somatic work can feel overwhelming when we start at the wrong end of the sequence.
Our biology needs safety first—always.
Why Connection Can Feel Unsafe
Many of us expect connection to feel comforting. But for those who grew up managing the emotions of others—or believing closeness required self-abandonment—connection can activate the same freeze or shutdown patterns as stillness.
Even when we want to be close, our biology may interpret the moment as a cue that something difficult is coming.
This mismatch between our intention and our capacity often creates confusion or shame.Recognizing this as a nervous system pattern—not a relational failing—is a turning point in healing.
How Trauma Biology Gets Passed Down
What impacted Jess most wasn’t her own discomfort. It was noticing that her daughter had begun to mirror her patterns.
Jasmine had become quiet during conflict. She stayed busy. She tried to “make things better” in ways that echoed Jess’s own childhood adaptations.
Children learn through our nervous systems, not our words.They internalize:
what feels safe
what must be avoided
how much space there is for their emotions
whether connection means pressure or presence
Generational trauma isn’t passed down through stories—it’s passed down through biology.
When we learn to create safety within our own nervous system, we change what becomes possible for the next generation.
Practical Tools That Create Safety Without Overwhelm
For those in freeze or shutdown patterns, the most effective tools are simple, brief, and gentle.
Practices that help increase safety include:
noticing and softening unnecessary tension
placing a hand gently over the heart
feeling the contact of the feet on the floor
visually orienting to the environment
pausing for one slow exhale
These practices work because they build capacity without demanding that our system confront anything it’s not ready for. Small regulated moments accumulate, gradually shifting our biology.
Jess used these tools throughout the Foundational Journey. She approached them with curiosity instead of pressure. Over time, her system learned something new: stillness was no longer a threat
Why Biology Matters in Trauma Healing
Overwhelm affects us at a cellular level. The vagus nerve communicates states of shutdown through our entire system, influencing:
Digestion
energy production
immune function
hormone balance
inflammation
When we live in chronic stress or functional freeze, our biology becomes depleted. Supporting the body—through sleep, nutrition, blood sugar balance, minerals, and anti-inflammatory choices—creates the capacity we need for somatic work.
Jess noticed that as her biology stabilized, she had more energy, less reactivity, and more tolerance for emotional experiences. Healing didn’t just happen in her mind—it happened in her whole system.
From Surviving to Living: Jess’s Turning Point
Jess’s most meaningful breakthrough wasn’t dramatic. It happened one quiet evening at home.
She sat beside her daughter and felt the familiar urge to stand up and move. Instead, she noticed the sensations, softened her shoulders, and stayed. The discomfort didn’t disappear. But it no longer controlled her.
Her daughter reached for her hand—something she’d rarely done. Jess felt something shift, not only in her body but in the possibility for their relationship.
Healing didn’t require perfection. It required presence.
The Integration Principle: Why All Three Levels Matter
Trauma affects:
our mind
our body
our biology
Addressing only one level leaves the others creating limitations. Real repair requires all three.
The Foundational Journey integrates these levels in a structured, safety-first sequence—giving our nervous system a roadmap rather than a set of reactions.
What Becomes Possible
Healing isn’t just about reducing symptoms. It’s about reclaiming the ability to be present for what matters.
It’s about:
relationships where connection feels possible
rest that doesn’t create panic
a life where we no longer have to outrun our biology
Jess didn’t have to fix every memory or belief. She learned to create safety within herself.From that place, connection became available—not just for her, but for her daughter.
Helpful Resources
Levine, P.A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Peter Levine introduces the concept of incomplete survival responses—the same patterns Jess experienced in her body when stillness felt unsafe. His work explains how the freeze response becomes stored at the somatic level and why gentle sequencing, not force, is essential for releasing it.
Schauer, M., Neuner, F., & Elbert, T. (2011). Narrative Exposure Therapy: A Short-Term Treatment for Traumatic Stress Disorders. Although focused on trauma treatment, this book clearly outlines how the body encodes fear, helplessness, and overwhelm in implicit memory. It reinforces why the nervous system requires a sense of safety before revisiting experiences that were once too much, and why pacing is critical for preventing retraumatization.
Disclaimer
This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The information shared reflects my clinical expertise and research, but every person's biology and healing journey is unique. Always consult with qualified healthcare providers before making changes to your treatment plan or starting new interventions. If you're experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact emergency services or a crisis helpline immediately.
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