Punching

Photo by Javardh on Unsplash

If you are a human in 2025 you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “the body keeps the score.” The phrase originates from a book by the same name: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It is the first book I read regarding how the brain and body react to and deal with trauma, and it was quite helpful in the beginning. It helped me understand that I was not crazy, but that I was reacting to trauma exactly the way I was designed to. It gave me a lot of validation and comfort.

In the years since I read that book, I’ve learned a lot more about trauma (both big T and little t) and how its effects show up in our bodies and minds, but there is still so much I don’t know or understand. So please don’t take what I say as gospel; I’m telling you what I “know” based on my reading and my experience with it all, and I share because I want you to know you are not alone or crazy or wrong. You are human.

One of the things I’ve learned recently is that when an event unfolds, the sensory data comes in through the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin, and that information goes first to the amygdala, our brain’s threat detection center. In less than one second, our brain makes a determination: threat or no threat? All of this happens BEFORE the sensory information reaches our prefrontal cortex, where rational thought and decisions occur.

So if your child hides behind a door and jumps out to scare you, your amygdala decides it is a threat and you jump and scream BEFORE your prefrontal cortex realizes it is your child and you laugh at the situation. All of this happens beneath your conscious awareness. You do not control the initial reaction of fear. Good old amygdala does it for you. It is doing its job of keeping you alive.

Think about touching a hot burner. Your finger is in contact with the burner long enough to make a blister before you are consciously aware that there is a problem. Your amygdala makes the decision to pull your hand away before your thinking brain is able to make sense of the sensations. Good job, amygdala.

Then next time you approach a burner, you will automatically be more careful, maybe holding your hand above it to see if it’s giving off any heat. Your brain has learned that stove burner = threat and your hippocampus (memory and learning) and prefrontal cortex (decision making) have learned that it’s wise to be careful.

Maybe the next time you walk down the hall in your house, you are on edge, waiting for someone to jump out and scare you. Your amygdala is making a prediction of future danger based on a past experience, and your prefrontal cortex cannot override it, no matter how ridiculous it seems. Your body remembers the feeling of fright and your amygdala wants to avoid that, so it sends you down the hall on high alert. Remember that Dr. van der Kolk said,

Trauma shows up as a reaction, not as a memory.

Even though your child jumping out and scaring you may not be trauma, the mechanisms work the same. Amygdala predicts danger, body reacts by being on edge, hypervigilant, then some time after that, prefrontal cortex catches up with all the information. Every human is wired the same way. Our brains all do this. There is nothing wrong with you.

Then I started thinking about how this applies to all the things we experience every day. If we set the coffee pot to come on a 6 o’clock every morning, we will always wake up happy, taking a deep inhale of the lovely aroma coming from the kitchen. Our body remembers the pleasant sensation of that first sip, the relaxation, the comfort, and it anticipates it each day. We may even find ourselves wanting to go to bed just so we can experience that ahhhhh feeling in the morning.

And this is the crux of the issue. Our body learns—through the work of the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex—to anticipate an outcome, whether good or bad. It’s not just our brain anticipating it. It is our body.

If a child has an abusive father, maybe his body anticipates a negative outcome when he hears Daddy’s car pull in the driveway at night. Conversely, if Daddy is loving and happy, the child anticipates a positive outcome when he hears Daddy coming in the door. Our bodies learn, courtesy of our brains. And the more experiences we have—positive or negative—the more ingrained the lessons become in our bodies, which do not forget.

Suppose we are friends and one day, out of the blue, I punch you. You don’t see it coming, you don’t know what set me off or made me do it. I just punch you. Social norms dictate that you are not allowed to retaliate or yell “Ow!” or act like anything out of the ordinary has happened. You are not allowed to rebuke me for it. You just have to take it. You are baffled and wonder to yourself, “Where did that come from?”

Then a week or so later, I punch you again. Same scenario. You don’t know why I did it or what precipitated it. You are not allowed to react. You have to keep your head down and your mouth closed and just take it. You can only wonder, “What on earth?”

Next time, same thing, only now you are wondering, “Am I doing something that is making her punch me?” You rack your brain to figure out what comes right before the punch so you can maybe head it off before it happens next time. You begin wondering, “Is it me? Am I doing something wrong?”

This goes on for many years because you are a good friend who wants the relationship to last. Over the years I gradually punch you less. Maybe I go months between punches, but it still happens occasionally and you never see it coming. You never know when it is coming but you always know it is going to happen again at some point. Over the decades you become hyper-aware of my moods, my vibe, always trying to figure out what makes me punch you. You are always trying to predict when it will happen but you are never able to. It is completely unpredictable. You are always walking on eggshells, wondering when it is coming, waiting for it to happen.

Your anxiety and cortisol levels stay high in this hypervigilant state. Just about the time you think you can relax, I punch you again and the anticipation starts all over.

You are never allowed to confront me about it, never allowed to rebuke me, never allowed to punch back. You can’t ever tell anyone about it because that would make me look bad. You just have to resign yourself to being punched periodically, never knowing when it is coming or how hard of a punch it is going to be.

Eventually you develop symptoms: chronic pain, emotional dysregulation, easily startled, poor sleep, hypervigilance, never able to relax. Your nervous system is now, after decades of being punched at random intervals, unable to function the way it was designed to. It sees danger all the time, everywhere, whether it is there or not. You live with a high level of cortisol that, over time, damages your adrenals, shrinks your hippocampus (the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory), and enlarges your amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for emotions, including fear, and the seat of your fight/flight/freeze/fawn response). You may develop an autoimmune disease or cancer or worse.¹

By now you have begun living in one of the four F responses, let’s say fawn. That means you live every day constantly scanning the environment, looking for ways to prevent the next punch. You are a human Zamboni, smoothing the way for me and everyone around you so you can alleviate whatever it is that makes me punch you. Sometimes you feel like you are successful, but then *bam* the punch comes again when you least expect it, and you feel like a failure, like you will never be good enough to stop me from punching. You think it must be your fault. You must be doing something wrong to deserve all these punches.

That is your brain’s way of trying to make sense of a situation it cannot make sense of. It is assigning meaning (your fault) where there is none.

In between the random punches there is love and laughter, and that’s what keeps you sticking around. You reason that the punches aren’t really that bad, and the love and laughter outweigh them. So you stay.

This is how trauma works. It changes not only the function of your brain, but also the actual physical size and shape of various parts of it. Your brain is not malfunctioning. It is doing its primary job of keeping you alive and creating ways to survive what you are experiencing.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, I highly recommend seeking someone to help you, preferably someone who has good understanding of trauma and its effects and how to help the person who is suffering. A qualified counselor (LPC, LMFT) who shares your faith can be invaluable.

1. See When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté.