Your Body Tells the Truth of Your Trauma

What if the real story of your trauma isn’t the one you keep telling yourself in your head — but the one your body has been holding all along?

In this solo episode, G shares how trauma patterns show up in our daily lives (especially as mothers, makers, and women holding it all), and why breaking cycles requires more than mindset work. Drawing on focalizing training and the wisdom of teacher Nick Werber, she will reveal how our most obvious trauma response is often how we treat our own bodies — ignoring signals, pushing past limits, or abandoning ourselves when life feels full.

This conversation weaves together personal stories (including her own rocky “back-to-school transition”), trauma-informed practices, and reminders that your body is not a machine — it’s more like a garden that needs tending. 🌱

When we stop abandoning ourselves and start listening to the body’s wisdom, we begin to re-pattern, restore, and rise.

Listen to this episode to discover:

• Why the most obvious trauma response is how you treat your body

• The difference between the story in your head and the story your body is telling

• How generational cycles and trauma show up in motherhood

• What I learned from crashing hard during my “back-to-school” transition (and how I found rhythm again)

• The ballerina-on-pointe metaphor: why balance is hundreds of tiny adjustments, not one rigid plan

• Why your nervous system needs seasons of rest, rhythm, and renewal — just like nature

• Practical ways to “resource as you go” so you don’t abandon yourself

Join us:

• Join G in Charleston to tune into your womanly wisdom, inner knowing, and soulful sisterhood: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/chs-retreat 

• Mamas- it’s time to reset, resource and rise together: Mothers Rising 6 week circle begins October 15th: https://www.gervasekolmos.com/mothers-rising

Mentioned in this episode:

• Connect with Nick Werber - nicknwerber.com
  Nick Werber | Integrative Coach | Instagram: @nickwerber_

• Previous episode with Nick Werber (here)

Work with Gervase:

• Book a Soul Shift Intensive: gervasekolmos.com/the-soul-shift-intensive

• Join Mothers Rising: a circle for women reclaiming their wholeness

• Free gift: Trust Yo’self hypnosis track

Quotes to Share:

• “The most obvious trauma response is how we treat our bodies.” – Nick Werber

• “Your body is not a machine. It’s more like a tree that needs seasons of rest, rhythm, and renewal.” – Gervase

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• 📲 Let’s hang out on IG: http://www.instagram.com/gervasekolmos

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Your Body Tells the Truth of Your Trauma

Episode Full Transcript

Hello my loves. Welcome back to another solo episode of the Modern Phoenix podcast. We're going to talk about trauma. The body holding trauma, the story beneath the story that we tell ourselves, I was so inspired recently.

I saw an Instagram post by my teacher, my focalizing teacher, Nick Werber, and I'm going to read it to you. And I'm going to relate it to my own life and I want to give this to you as food for thought. As something I'm going to think about, I know a lot of the women in my world we care about and are intentional about breaking cycles. Breaking, generational cycles, generational trauma, and yet a lot of the time I know for myself this started as a head-y idea.

I was trying to do with my thinking and not resolve through my body. And if you're new here, surprise, I'm here to tell you that my work is influenced and informed and I have been trained by a modality called focalizing, which it lands itself to somatic experiencing, it was created by Dr. Picucci, and along with the work of like Peter Levine and these pioneers in the field of trauma in the body, it taught me that the body truly does have its own story to tell. There is the story that we tell ourselves, the story that we attach to an activation response in our bodies, but then there's the body story.

There's just the trauma itself that lives in the body and I'm so infinitely curious about this. I'm so infinitely curious about how to break cycles and patterns of massive dysregulation or freeze or fight or overdoing or putting pressure on myself in a way that is sustainable trauma informed and Makes sense to me and so I'm just kind of guessing I'm just going on on a limb here and thinking maybe you're kind of into that maybe you’re into that too And I think especially in the mother space. There's so much in mother culture that tells us like you know We're gonna break generational trauma. We're gonna change the cycles passed down from our mothers. But what I notice is that there's a lot of pressure to just do things differently.

There's a lot of judgment against the women who came before us and whenever there is that pressure and that pushing that strong reaction that our body has to the way that we were raised or the way that another mother is doing things or the way that we treat ourselves in motherhood. That means that there's actually a lot of trauma that the body is holding usually right it means that you can mindset your way through you can know all the things but until we are working bottom up through the body we can actually do the things we set out to do and that's just putting ourselves setting ourselves up to fail and I don't think we're here for that. I want to share a post from my teacher, Nick Werber (linked in the show notes). It says remember the most obvious trauma response is how we treat our bodies.

Here’s part of the caption: If you're feeling tired of your story, tired of sorting through it looking for answers, tired of the rumination while not making any progress, I want to recommend focusing on something that gets right to the impact of what happened to you. How do you relate to your body? If your body was a person, how would you treat it? How do you feed it?

Do you connect with its emotions? Does it trust you? Do you have a relationship at all? I know for me that when I'm activated there's such a pull to barely eat enough.

Barely listen to it. Leave it behind. Guilty. In these moments my body is abandoned without someone to care for it.

It survives with very little and deals with the stress of that. And that pain. And that pattern, that thing I just wrote says more about my story than anything I could tell you. It is the pattern.

It is the impact. It's the story beneath the story. And so when I show up to my body and myself in a different way a cycle is broken. A pattern is undone.

Mic drop. We've had Nick Werber on the podcast. You’ll find his episode linked in the show notes. He taught me who's one of my focalizing teachers.

And I just think he has such a beautiful of articulating these big ideas and concepts that are really hard to grasp. So I just want to take this and make it tactical for a minute. I'm recording this on August 21st. So my kids went back to school last week, but it'll probably air, you know, several weeks passed August 21st.

But stay with me for a minute now. I transitioned from summer Gervase in the past few weeks. I'm going to be a little bit more active in the future. I'm going to be a little bit more active in the future.

I'm going to be a little bit more active in the to school-year, working-from-home Gervase. And the switch, the transition from, you know, leaned back, relaxed, go with the flow has no schedule to Gervase. In to has so much responsibility has a schedule has five schedules has, you know, financial responsibilities, client responsibilities, mom responsibilities, house responsibilities, Gervase, that version of me. The transition can be a little bit rocky for me. because this is always like this is my work, right?

Like the blending of these two parts of me. And I don't want to make either one of them better wrong, because I think both play a part. And I'm not here to be like, oh, Flowy leaned back to Gervase, is who I need when it's back to school season. Because the truth is it's not that she's not going to help me sign up for 52 new apps and get 26 new passwords in my super secure app that I keep them in. and respond to 5x the number of emails and get everything on the calendar for the extra curriculars.

Like I need a different part of me to show up for that. And what I notice is when I have added responsibility. I put a lot of extra pressure on myself. And the way that I do this is I just begin this process of pushing and grinning my teeth and not stopping for air, not slowing down for a drink of water. not taking care of myself, not resourcing no matter what until I crash out.

And this pattern is something that I have been sustainably and mindfully untangling for years now, especially since my focalizing training. And it has changed dramatically. And still I notice like there's still the bodies inclination to. . . hmm. They're still my inclination to tense up and put pressure on myself and control when I have added responsibilities and ignore my body.

A band in my body. Not eat well, not go for walks, not take care of myself, to not even really give a shit and to feel justified in that and to feel like, it's almost like I'm under estimating. I'm constantly under estimating how I'm under estimating. much value or how much I could get from pouring into myself. I'm constantly underestimating the value of what I fucking teach, and re-sourcing as I go.

And the switch from Summer to Vaze to Back to School of Gervase is one of my rockiest ones consistently every year of my life where I have the biggest like rubber band effect where I have like a slap in the face where I need to really catch myself and find the rhythm. Because I'm not here for like this moment of where I'm perfectly balanced all of my responsibilities and obligation and organized them on my calendar because I know that doesn't fucking work because guess what? The kids are still gonna put their shit everywhere. The backpacks are everywhere.

The kitchen is a mess. The deadlines pile up. There's always stuff I'm creating. So I'm not here to find that perfect organization or balance.

I'm here to relax into the new rhythm and to do that in a way that is sustainable. I know that I'm not here to find that perfect organization or need to notice how I am treating my body. And it is a while to me the crash that I felt several days ago I had just like a big crash like a nervous system control ultimately like force first quit a first quit it my body my nervous system because my body was like what in the actual fuck like hello. We need some water.

We need some space. We need some care. We need like a good cry. We need to release the energy.

And we need to be able to get the energy to be able to get the energy to be able to get the energy to a pressure valve which I talked about in the last episode, right? And then as soon as I noticed, oh, I'm in that pattern. And I'm a massage it a little bit. I work with it a little bit.

I'm like, okay, okay, give myself full permission and forgiveness for whatever just happened because I'm just a human alongside you, Phoenix and spiraling and learning and growing and evolving and I am not the same as three years ago. Not even close. And also, I'm a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little I know what to do next. I know how to resource in a way that's not like, how do I now put self care on the calendar?

I know how to check in with not just my inner world, but my body's signals and messages and go like, I'm here. What do you need? Oh, you need like a full day of space and rest and your mind is going to come in. You're going to show mine and tell you all the reasons why that's impractical and unrealistic and you don't get to have that.

That's your trauma story. That's your. We are very familiar with that story. We know where it comes from.

It doesn't matter. It just matters that when it's running the show, I am abandoning myself. I am ignoring my cues. I am denying myself the basic things I need.

Whether it's get up and go pee or give yourself space in a break. Because I feel like I can't trust the space. I feel like I can't trust myself to like resource just a little right because if I do that, then I'll it'll be a runaway train and I won't be able to get into this new world. them that I need for back to school to Gervase. And of course this is just a story.

This is not true. This is the trauma story. And anyway, the last few days I've really just been committed to working in the way that I know works best. One plus one equals three results.

I'm working on the potency of everything that I do. So if I'm going to move my body, I'm going to really move my body with a friend. I'm going to feel good about it. I'm not going to be in my own way.

I'm going to be in my own way. I had, I'm not gonna second guess myself. I'm not gonna doubt myself. I know that every intentional choice, I make, whether it's just sick here and record this podcast to you, or it's to lay on the couch and just Netflix, for like two hours is an intentional response to tell my body, "Hey, I hear you.

" Yeah, I notice what's going on for you. And I'm not afraid that I can't handle it. I'm not gonna clench and control and resist what I know that I need, which is consistent, sustainable pockets of space and care. And nourishment for me.

And I know that those will look different every day. And I know that I'd be a little bit clunky at the beginning as I'm finding my rhythm and that's normal. This isn't my first time around the spiral. The Phoenix spiral.

I have experience and practice, and I'm getting better and better and better. And so what used to take me three months is now taking me three days and then I'm finding the rhythm and I'm aligning with the rhythm and I'm allowing it to be a rhythm and not a strict regimented discipline and plan because I know that doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for my human design. It doesn't work for my personality and it doesn't work for my trauma history and it doesn't help me break cycles.

It doesn't help me rise out of those generational trauma patterns. And when I do this, I think that's what I do. I think that's what I do. I think that's when I resource and when I acknowledge the body and when I kind of massage it and work with both flow like summer flowy gervases, rhythm and new back to school entrepreneur working from home gervases responsibilities when I blend those together in a really fluid flexible way where I'm like honoring my nervous system as I go without you know being authoritarian yeah.

Not being super strict or rigid about it, but also not totally letting myself off the hook because I trust myself to hold the middle. Even though it's always changing. I give this example a lot. I don't know if I've said it before to you guys.

But a ballerina who is on pointe. This is an example from the book, the one thing I'm always quoting that book. He gives the example of a ballerina on pointe who's doing flex, which is like spinning on pointe on one foot is making hundreds of tiny micro adjustments on the foot that is balancing. to keep balance. It's not like to spin around in a circle.

You just pick a spot on your toe and hold it because that's not what it requires tiny micro adjustments. And my trauma pattern and my trauma story is that like no no one rigid pattern go go control control pressure pressure. Don't stop until you actually totally collapse burnout on the floor because of course it doesn't work of course it's not sustainable and of course it's coming from a really wounded. not regenerative place. It's my childhood drama, like showing itself and me trying to, you know, respond to it in a way that is immature almost.

And I don't say that in a judging way. It's just I have so much more wisdom that I've amassed from age, from experience, from maturity, from worlds around the Phoenix spiral. So now I get to do it differently. Now I get to create that rhythm and that balance, making hundreds of micro pivot as I go day to day.

I've tried to do it. I've tried to do it. I've tried to do it. I had so many things, I've integrated things at work and I know, oh, I'm in my trauma.

Oh, I'm I noticed the way that I'm relating to my body right now is an old pattern. It's a generational pattern and I understand that and I could be justified in saying like I don't have time when am I supposed to make time for myself and I could do what everybody else does and like put myself in this box and follow all these rules and be really hard on myself and. They have a lot of fear and control and Perfectionism around everything that I do, but like that's not here. That's not what I'm here to do.

That's not the life I'm here to build that's not what I am here to embody and role model for you because if I can feel into this Phoenix womaning way this Phoenix way of womaning then so can you and I want you to have it. I want you to feel it. I wanted to feel the transmission from me to you as a you know busy mom of three who just had a clunky back to school star during the home renovation, who has also, I'm like found my rhythm, right? I'm doing my fouettés y'all.

I actually was never really that good at fouettés as a dancer. That wasn't my genre of choice. It was more of hip hop gal than a Fuetai gal, but it doesn't matter. I digress.

It's possible. We have to notice all the conditioning, all the trauma, all the rules that were playing by that society gives us and go. Actually, I know where that gets me. I know that gets me crumpled on the floor.

I know that gets me joyless a shell of a person in a story about how who's got the time and it's not going to make that big of a difference if I go on a walk just to keep using that silly example. It's not going to make that much of a difference and let me tell you it will make all the difference. I heard this thing on Instagram recently like a you know a real about how these researchers did this experiment with. I'm gonna butcher it like I don't remember what kind of tree but it's like a Sequoia tree like a tree that usually grows to be a hundred years old and When it was you know, not a hundred yet like a few years old they injected it with a adrenaline or maybe it was cortisol Both things that you and I have coursing through our veins my friend and the tree died within a year and these are trees that normally last?

They lived to be a hundred years old and the hypothesis is without the season of wintering without that season to slow down and hibernate and shed and regrow the leaves to sustainably keep doing it again and again and again and again. They all died and I I heard that and I was like this is what is happening to all of us. We're just running on adrenaline and cortisol and the doing and the perfectionism and the pressure and the rules and the trauma, ignoring and abandoning the self and the body. And so we crash out.

You know, and so many women are just like me, so many women come to me that are like super successful, super high functioning that are like, I'm just kind of curious about this pattern of like go go and like, I know I'm going to crash or I have just crashed or I feel the crash is coming and like, oh my gosh, I cannot afford to crash. I literally can't afford to crash. And, you know, we can rework all of those patterns. And this is how we break cycles when we, you know, give ourselves permission and grace and space to rework this rhythm so that we have the seasons of hibernation.

So we have the summers of pleasures and the clunky back to schools and the learning and the seeing what works and seeing what doesn't, but knowing that we're here for the woman way regenerative, restorative, re-sourcing, and so on. And we have the same way. And we have the same way. And we have the as we go so we can live to be a hundred.

And also look fabulous while we do it, and feel good, and have juicy, exciting, authentic lives, right? Because we are not abandoning ourselves, or operating from a trauma story, from our eight-year-old selves, we're actually working with that part of ourselves with grace and compassion, and trauma-informed techniques, and facilitation to rise out of this. And this is what it's looked like for me very, very recently. And I just really wanted to share with you, you know, went and out, you know, as you're kind of listening to this podcast, just remember, Nick Werber's message.

The most obvious trauma response is how we treat our bodies. I'm always exploring this in myself like what, you know, am I waiting so long to pee? how long am I waiting before I go for the damn walk or take care of myself or do the things that I know feel good give myself permission and grace and space. Isn't that interesting? I wonder what it would be like if I began to rework that pattern.

In a, you know, in a no shame, no blame way, just with curiosity and excitement that I think it gets to be better than the rules that I've written. I think this matrix that I'm operating in. is actually not, I think we're losing the plot. And I don't want what I see that a lot of women have. I don't want that version of success.

I want the Phoenix way, I want the woman way, I want the way that allows room and space for my winters, and my summers, and my healing, and also for my wounds, for me to be with the wounds that are there, without bypassing or judging or shaving myself. So just a little note on trauma. I hope that that really Like micro end macro. If you ever want to go deeper on this, just reach out to me, hi, at gervasekolmos. com.

That is my email address, yes it is. And make sure if you want to begin to untangle, who you are with who you've been taught to be. Your trauma stir is from your actual authentic self. Come join a circle.

We've got mothers rising coming up here. Really, really soon. There's all these different ways to work with me this year. I'm like so lit up and excited about the year ahead and all the different ways that women can come into my world and reclaim their wholeness, their feminine, their aliveness and work through the things that have maybe been holding them back or actually pushing them forward past their comfort levels past their bodies, begging signals for rest and restoration.

So, reach out. I love you so much. I hope this resonated. Always DM me on Instagram with any questions @gervasekolmos.

Comments and please share this with another woman who needs to remember she is more than a machine. Her body is like a garden that needs tending. I know that sounds fucking cheesy, but I'm serious. You guys.

You are more in line with the tree in the forest than you are with the machine. Who's patterns you're holding yourself to. And I hope that you remember that as you go through your busy week. Do it all the things. running tiny universes and doing fouettés, on pointe.

All right, see you in two weeks. Bye.