Somatic Therapy as Time Travel | How Triggers Heal Trauma

When the present moment feels impossible, your body is remembering the past

If It's Hysterical, It's Historical

You know that moment when your reaction to something feels completely out of proportion to what's actually happening? When a certain smell, the tone of someone's voice, or being interrupted in a meeting sends you into a spiral of rage, panic, or shutdown that feels way bigger than the situation calls for?

That's not you being "too sensitive" or "overreacting." That's your body remembering something your mind may have forgotten. That's a trigger—and it's actually trying to help you.

The Problem Isn't the Trigger

We live in a culture obsessed with eliminating triggers. We want safe spaces, content warnings, and environments scrubbed clean of anything that might upset us. And while

compassion and consideration matter, there's something we're missing in this approach.

The triggers aren't the problem. The ammunition we carry inside is the problem.

A trigger is just a doorway. It's a flashing sign from your nervous system saying: "Something unfinished lives here. Something that needs your attention. Something that's been waiting for you to be ready."

When we focus only on eliminating triggers from the world, we miss the opportunity they're offering us—the chance to heal what's been carried, unmetabolized, in our bodies for years or decades.

Time Travel To Heal Trauma

Here's how somatic therapy works as time travel:

Something happens today—a smell, a tone of voice, a feeling of being unseen or dismissed. Your body responds with a cascade of sensations: tightness in your chest, heat in your face, a knot in your stomach, the urge to flee or freeze.

That response isn't about now. It's about then.

Your body is a time machine. Every trigger in the present is a thread that leads

backward through time to an original wound—a moment when you experienced something overwhelming that couldn't be fully felt or processed at the time.

In somatic therapy, we follow that thread. Not through talking about the story, but through staying with the body's sensations. We locate where the wound lives in your actual, physical body. And then—and this is the profound part—we create the conditions for you to finally metabolize what wasn't felt or processed back then.

We give you the chance to be the presence you needed at that time.

Sally and Smells

Sally came to me with severe chronic anxiety, upper back, neck, and shoulder pain, and an extreme sensitivity to environmental triggers. Especially her sense of smell.

Over a few weeks, Sally became increasingly aware of how intensely her body would recoil, how sharply her breath would catch - when she encountered certain environmental cues. She begain to identify a whole kaleidoscope of body sensations that felt overwhelming and inexplicable.

There was tightness in her throat, heat in her face, a hollowness in her chest, tension in

her shoulders, and a particular tightening in her middle belly. An iceberg of sensations, all happening at once.I asked her to pick just one—just one sensation out of that overwhelming flood. She chose the tightening in her middle belly.

We worked through exploratory movement and breathing techniques to "have conversations" with the sensations instead of recoiling from them.

When she focused only on ONE sensation in this way, something shifted. She was able to stay present with it instead of being swept away by the whole tsunami. And as she stayed with that specific tightening, a memory surfaced—not a narrative memory at first, but a felt sense.

She was young. She played in a corner of the room while adults were drinking around her, their laughter too loud, too bright—the kind that doesn't reach the eyes, that fills a room but somehow makes the silence underneath feel heavier. And she was trying to make herself smaller, tighter, disappearing into her middle belly because there was no one present enough to hold her emotional needs.

That tightening had been there since childhood. Every time she smelled alcohol, her body remembered: "You're alone. No one is coming. Make yourself small. Don't get noticed."

But now, as an adult, Sally could do something her child self couldn't. She could be present with that young part of herself. She could offer the containment, the witnessing, the safety that wasn't available back then.

In Internal Family Systems language, she was able to be in Self energy while working with that young part. She became the caring adult her inner child had desperately needed.

And bit by bit, session by session, as we worked with these small bites of somatic response, something profound happened. The chronic bracing in her belly began to soften. The revulsion she'd felt toward alcohol —and toward the vulnerable, needy parts of herself—began to transform into compassion.

She was literally rewiring her nervous system, one sensation at a time.

The Shadow Work Jung Was Talking About

Carl Jung said that if we don't do our shadow work—if we don't turn toward what we've rejected, repressed, and hidden—we'll project it onto a world, doomed to reflect our inner demons and battles.

This is that work. This is what Jung was talking about.

Somatic therapy is shadow work through the body. It's the willingness to turn toward what we've pushed away, to feel what we've been avoiding, to meet the parts of ourselves we've exiled.

And when we do this work—when we stop demanding that the world stop triggering us

and instead use our triggers as invitations to heal—something remarkable happens.

We don't just change ourselves. We change the field around us. We stop unconsciously recreating our wounds in our relationships. We stop passing our unmetabolized pain to our children, our partners, our communities.

Jung believed this was how we save the world—not through grand political gestures, but through each person doing the painstaking work of integrating their own shadow.

Getting Excited About Your Next Trigger

I know this sounds counterintuitive, maybe even absurd. But I've watched it happen again and again with clients: once they understand that triggers are doorways rather than enemies, their whole relationship to discomfort changes.

Instead of thinking, "Oh no, I'm triggered again, something's wrong with me," they start thinking, "Oh, interesting—my body is showing me where there's still work to do."

They get curious instead of ashamed. They get excited instead of defeated.

Because every trigger is an opportunity to travel back in time and offer your younger self what they needed. Every trigger is a chance to soften where you've been chronically braced. Every trigger is an invitation to transform self-rejection into self-love.

And I'm not talking about the superficial self-love of bubble baths and positive affirmations (though those are nice). I'm talking about the deep, earned self-love that comes from being willing to be present with the parts of yourself you've spent a lifetime avoiding.

The Ammunition Inside

When we focus only on eliminating triggers from the external world, we remain fragile. We need the world to tiptoe around us. We're constantly on guard, constantly vulnerable to being "set off."

But when we do the work of disarming the ammunition inside—when we metabolize the old pain, when we offer presence to the wounded parts, when we complete what was left unfinished—we become resilient in a completely different way.

The triggers don't disappear. Beer still smells like beer. People still interrupt. Certain tones of voice still register. But they no longer have the same charge. They no longer hijack your nervous system and send you spinning back through time against your will.

You can choose whether to follow the thread or not. And when you do follow it, you're not collapsing into the past—you're consciously traveling back as your adult self to offer healing.

The Work That Changes Everything

This work is not quick. It's not easy. It requires patience, courage, and compassion for yourself. But it's also the most meaningful work you can do—for yourself, for your relationships, and for the world.

Because when you heal your own triggers, when you metabolize your own pain, when you integrate your own shadow, you stop unconsciously demanding that everyone around you manage your nervous system for you.

You stop trying to control the world to feel safe. You become genuinely safe—from the inside out.

And that changes everything.

Your Body Knows the Way

Your triggers aren't problems to be solved. They're not signs that something is wrong

with you. They're not proof that you're broken or that the world is too much.

They're breadcrumbs. They're a map. They're your body's wisdom trying to guide you home to the parts of yourself that are still waiting to be held, witnessed, and loved.

All you have to do is be willing to follow.

If this work calls to you—if you're ready to stop fighting your triggers and start following them—I'd be honored to guide you. This is the work I've been doing for 30 years, and it never stops amazing me what becomes possible when someone is willing to turn toward what they've been running from.

Your next trigger might be the doorway you've been waiting for.

Samantha Leonard is a somatic therapist specializing in complex PTSD, chronic pain, and depth-oriented healing. She integrates Internal Family Systems, Polyvagal Theory, Jungian psychology, and 30+ years of experience helping people transform their relationship to their own nervous systems.

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Samantha is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, a Noom Certified Health Coach, and the founder of Davidson Yoga Therapy and Health Coaching.

She has held complimentary healthcare positions at The Blanchard Institute, Atrium

Hospital, Levine Cancer Institute, Sanger Heart Clinic, and Davidson College. She has presented for Fortune 500 companies and major Universities, both public and professional audiences, on this thing called yoga therapy and what it can do when it is unpeeled, revealed, and adapted to meet the needs and the abilities of the person doing it. 

She leverages her three decades of yoga therapy, and health coaching experience with the following therapeutic models:

• Breathing Technology

• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

• Jungian Psychology

• Jungian Dream Interpretation

• Somatic Cognition

• Internal Family Systems

• Interfaith Perspectives

• Spiritual Technologies

• Trauma Healing

• Polyvagal Somatics

• Ayurvedic Lifestyle Coaching

• Compassionate Inquiry

• Pain Reprocessing Therapy

• The Neurosequential Model

All this is to say, there are many doorways to use on the path to healing and self-discovery, and Samantha’s breadth of experience allows for vast creativity on which approach is right for you!