The holidays are often described as a season of joy, closeness, and belonging. For me, they arrived differently. They arrived first in my body,as a tightening, a heaviness, a familiar sense of bracing, long before I consciously think it’s that time of year again.
From a Somatic Experiencing (SE) perspective, this makes sense. The nervous system doesn’t track dates or traditions. It tracks patterns. And my body knows this season as a time when absence became unmistakable, when silence was loud, and when reaching for connection often led to more pain.
The body remembers what the mind sometimes tries to override. The lights, the music, the shorter days all act as signals. Before any conscious thought, my nervous system began preparing for what it learned the holidays meant, increased vulnerability, unmet expectations, and the exposure of relational wounds that were never repaired.
This isn’t a lack of gratitude or resilience. It’s protection.
In SE, we understand that overwhelm isn’t a personal failure. It’s a biological response shaped by past experience. For some bodies, the holidays signal safety and warmth. And for parts of me that was true. My experiences weren’t fully negative, so my body did have parts that were at ease as the holidays approached. But lurking underneath was a hypervigilance tied to family dynamics where care was inconsistent, acknowledgment was missing, and silence followed suffering.
During the years I was sick, scared, and asking for help, I was met not with care, but with distance, withdrawal and even mockery. I learned, at a nervous-system level, that vulnerability was dangerous and that even basic contact, eye contact, a hello, a check-in was not guaranteed.
So when the holidays arrive, my body remembers:
- Reaching out and being ignored
- Being left alone during a time that emphasizes togetherness
- Watching others move forward while I remained frozen
- Carrying grief that had no witness
The nervous system doesn’t forget this simply because time has passed. It learned that family can equal danger, not comfort.
Somatic Experiencing teaches that trauma isn’t just what happened, it’s what didn’t get to complete. I didn’t get repair or acknowledgement. I didn’t get to safely protest or be met in my fear. Those unfinished responses were still stored in my body as sensation, impulse, and reflex.
That’s why the holidays can bring, freeze states where scrolling or shutting down feels inevitable, shame that whispers I’ve somehow failed at life, grief that rises without a clear story and a painful longing for connection alongside a need to hide.
These are not choices. They are states my body enters to protect me.
What makes this especially hard is that the pattern didn’t end when I got better. Even now, I am often met with avoidance rather than acknowledgment. Heads turned down and no naming of what happened.
From an SE lens, this is not just the past being remembered, it’s the nervous system being shown, again and again, that its vigilance was justified. When harm isn’t repaired, the body stays on guard.
I still long for connection, while my body knows that connection with them has not been safe. That conflict alone is enough to dysregulate any nervous system.
Somatic Experiencing doesn’t ask us to force cheer or push through. In fact, it emphasizes choice, pacing, and permission, especially during activating times like the holidays.
For me, that looks like; orienting to safety in small, concrete ways, feet on the floor, warmth in my hands, my back supported, tracking sensation rather than story, staying with what’s manageable, allowing myself to move gently between activation and rest, instead of demanding resolution and redefining connection in ways that don’t require self-erasure
Connection doesn’t have to mean crowded tables or family rituals. Sometimes it’s a quiet evening, a walk, a text exchange, or simply being kind to my own nervous system. It can also mean compassion for those who stay stuck in their own survival responses and acceptance for their limitations.
One of the most powerful aspects of Somatic Experiencing is the restoration of agency. If past holidays were shaped by obligation, silence, or harm, my body learned to brace. Each small act of choice now such as leaving early, staying home, simplifying, or opting out entirely, offers new information to my nervous system. This is renegotiation. Each time I choose less exposure to harm, my body learns something new: I am allowed to protect myself now.
If the holidays feel heavy, it doesn’t mean I’m regressing or failed at healing. It may mean I’m listening more closely. SE reminds us that healing isn’t linear, and that survival strategies deserve respect before they’re asked to soften. Trying to force joy, and meaning making during the holidays can often create more dyregulation. Sometimes the most regulated thing I can do during the holidays is to let my body have the season it’s actually having, while at the same time offering pendulation to moments of joy and compassion.
My body adapted to emotional abandonment. The holidays revealed what was never repaired. If my system tightens this season, it’s not because I’m stuck. It’s because I’m actually listening.
And that listening, however painful, is also the beginning of something different.
