Why Small Moments Trigger Big Reactions In Midlife

A sharp tone. A short email. Someone raising their voice nearby. If your chest tightens or your stomach drops before your brain can explain why, you are not “too sensitive” and you are not broken. We’re Amy (Whole Body Harmony) and Heather (Embodied Rejuvenation), and we’re naming what’s really happening: your nervous system is protecting you with a pattern it learned a long time ago.

We unpack trauma in a way that actually fits real life for midlife women dealing with stubborn weight, low energy, mood swings, and poor sleep. Trauma is not only the big headline events. It can be little T stressors repeated for years, like chronic criticism, perfectionism, walking on eggshells, financial strain, feeling unseen, or a toxic workplace. We also talk about how the same event can land differently depending on your baseline nervous system state and support in the moment.

Then we get practical: what it means for a survival response to “complete,” why humans often stay composed instead of discharging activation, and how that unfinished stress can get stored as a readiness state. We explain “the body keeps the score” in nervous system terms, introduce bottom up healing, and share why the vagus nerve matters when you’re trying to feel safe again. We close with the shift we want you to take with you: meeting your body with compassion is not indulgent, it is how regulation starts.

If this connects, subscribe, share it with a friend who keeps blaming herself, and leave a review so more women can find this kind of nervous system and midlife health support.

Interested in our new program, Whole Body, Real Life? 

Click here to save your seat in our free webinar on August 8th! 

Connect with Amy Wilford on social media at @amywilfordhealth, or on her website at wholebodyharmonycoach.com

Connect with Heather Fontenot on social media at @embodiedrejuvenation, or on her website at embodiedrejuvenation.com

If you'd like to talk to us about our new joint program, Whole Body Real Life, email us at:

Amy@AmyWilfordHealth.com or Heather@EmbodiedRejuvenation.com 

Transcript

Welcome And The Core Promise

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Body Drama Shift, where we move from confusion to clarity without guessing. Because your body isn't broken, it's communicating. If you're a woman in midlife dealing with stubborn weight, low energy, mood swings, or poor sleep, you're not imagining it and you're not alone. I'm Amy, creator of Whole Body Harmony.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

And I'm Heather, creator of Embodied Rejuvenation. Together we help you decode your symptoms by addressing both biology and the nervous system. Because real change happens when both are in alignment. Let's shift.

Why Tiny Triggers Hit Hard

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Hi, and welcome back to the body drama shift. Today we're talking about a big and a little bit of a heavy topic. And it's one that you might need to listen to more than once because there's going to be a lot of information. And I know that this one is going to resonate with a lot of you. So today we're talking about trauma. And I want you to think about that feeling where something really small happens. Like someone's tone shifts, you get a short email, someone raises their voice near you, and your whole body reacts before your brain even catches up. I think most of us can recognize that feeling. The things that happened in our body, like our chest tightening, our jaw clenching, our stomach drops. And then you think, why did that hit me so hard? That wasn't a big deal. So if that's you, I want you to stay right here in that moment because today we're going to explain exactly why that happens. And we want you to know that's not because you're too sensitive. It's because your body's doing exactly what it was trained to do. So our bodies and our brains were meant to protect us, and that's why we have that physical reaction. So I want to talk about what trauma actually is a little bit. And before we go further, let's clear something up because this word keeps a lot of women from recognizing themselves in this conversation. Would you agree with that, Heather?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah. This this word is like so big, so scary. Um, I think it's hard to recognize. I know for me, I was like, I had this late childhood, I didn't experience anything that was traumatic. And then whenever I started doing healing work for myself and it's um working with therapists and doing this nervous system work, I was like, oh, maybe there was some trauma.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah. So I feel like when we say trauma, people think of those big events, trauma like a car accident or a death in the family or an assault or something big enough to have a name. And when, like Heather just said, when our life doesn't look like that, maybe we've never experienced any of those things. Then they think we think trauma's not about us. But trauma's not just an event, it's what your nervous system did with the event and then never got to finish. So it's not always dramatic. It's not always visible, but it's still there. And I think too, sometimes we don't think of like childbirth is trauma on your body. Like that's a big event that your body goes through. I just had some melanoma skin cancer removed from the back of my arm. That's a trauma. So it can be those things that we don't realize are traumatic because they're not those big, huge events that we associate trauma to. And so also just it's not always a memory that you can tell a story about either. Sometimes it's those little moments that your body just holds on to and your brain isn't really putting a narrative with it. And that's not a character flaw. It's not being too sensitive. It's just, like I said, our body trying to process it and our brain thinking, oh, that was that was a big deal. And we don't know, it's not always conscious, though, either. Sometimes it's like that subconscious reaction. And it's not just about what happened to you. Sometimes it's also about what didn't happen. Something came up and you weren't seen or heard and you weren't comforted. And so it's not only those big events that qualify as trauma.

Big T And Little T Trauma

SPEAKER_01 4:17

And so I wanted to ask Heather, because this is something that she talks about and brings into her practice, but what's the difference between big T and little T?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

So we usually split it into two categories. Big T trauma is what most people picture, like you mentioned, car accidents, the death of someone you love, an assault, a natural disaster, a sudden diagnosis. But those are those are big T drama. And then we have little T trauma, so it's quieter. Um, chronic criticism, growing up walking on eggshells, always being the responsible one as a kid, constant financial stress, feeling unseen or unheard over and over, um, a toxic job, being praised for perfectionism until it became lock. Here's what I want you to sit with little tea repeated enough times does the same thing to your nervous system. That one big T event does. It's not about the size of the event, it's about whether your nervous system got to complete what it's told.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

And I think big T and little T is also a perspective thing. So what might seem like a little T to one person might be a big T to someone else. So I also don't want us to like pigeonhole it like a car accident is always a big T. It might not be that big a deal to someone else if, say, it was something minor. Say it was a fender bender, a minor little fender bender, and no one was hurt. To one person, that might be humongous. That might be a really big T. To someone else, it might be like, oh, no one was hurt. It was a fender bender, it's all good. So I think it also depends on the person, how you categorize it.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

I think it depends on the state of the nervous system at the time. Yeah, that too. Yeah. And then and we're gonna have two parts to this episode because I want to go into um to that exactly. Like it depends on your baseline of your nervous system at the time and of the unit, how you register it. Like you said, it could, it could register as big or it could ri register as small or little T. Yeah. Yeah. And it and that's why it's that's why we do individual analysis approach, because you know, not everybody is the same. How we experience something is not the same.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah, and you mentioned at the end when you were talking about um your nervous system being able to complete what it started. What exactly do you mean by complete? What does that actually mean?

What It Means To Complete

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Um, so if you think about a gazelle being chased by a lone, they're in full fly or fight. So their heart's racing, muscles are loaded. If it gets away, it doesn't just trot off and start grazing. It shakes full body tremors for a minute or two. That's the nervous system discharging the activation that it just built up. And then it goes back right back to grazing because there's nothing left. The charge got used. We are built the same way. We just don't let ourselves do the shaking. We hold still, we stay composed, we handle it. So the charge doesn't get discharged. It has to go somewhere. Now I'm sure there's a moment like that you've experienced something where you like, you just almost froze and you didn't say anything, or you you just can't let it go. But really, you just stuffed it down and you're holding on to it.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, and I wanna just real quick, that reminded me the whole shaking thing just reminded me of I had a very intense meeting at school. And I'm gonna share a real human example after this, but I'm like relating to the gazelle right now. So I just kind of felt like I needed to share. So I had a really intense meeting at school, attorneys, all kinds of things involved. And I was super calm during my portion when I was sharing um my the results of the assessments that I did. Like I was fine. As soon as my part was over, I was literally shaking while everyone else was talking about their parts. And I was like, what's wrong with me? I'm done. Like, why am I shaking? And it's like it's coming full circle. Like that is the gazelle. Like you do that. Like my body had to release all of that pent-up energy that I had about talking through my portion of the report. Yeah. But eventually that dissipated and I calmed down and it was fine. But I just, and during that moment, my brain, I was like, why can't I? How come I'm not I'm shaking now when the hard part's over for me?

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah. But in the moment, you couldn't, you had to stay composed to deliver what you needed to deliver. And a lot of times, like if you're if your nerve, if your nervous system doesn't do that on its own, and we don't give it that opportunity because it might not feel safe enough to do it, like it's say in that room, like if you didn't feel safe enough, it will just keep that in, well then it stays there. And that's why we like in our in my work, we'll do like some shaking and stuff to help move those things around.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

And fortunately, my meeting was virtual. So the only person that knew that I was shaking was me and my intern that was in my room. We were the only two who knew. And I because from top up, I didn't look like I was shaking. So fortunately, that was the situation. I didn't have to like leave the room or anything.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

So I'm I think that yeah, I'm because it passes and you felt safe. Great. You would have been in the room with those people, you probably wouldn't have felt safe enough that to let your body raise. Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yep. Yeah. So another kind of a human example that goes through the whole thing is from start to finish is that um, so there's in a meeting still, say you got blindsided in a meeting, your boss criticized you in front of the whole team, your body goes into full activation, heart pounding, jaw clenched, that surge to defend yourself or walk out, like that fight or flight. You know, you're gonna fight and defend yourself or you're gonna want to get out of the situation. But you can't do any one, either one because you have to be there. Like neither one of those are acceptable responses to that reaction, right? So you just have to sit there, nod, stay as composed as you can. And then the move, the moment passes and everyone else moves on, but your body is still didn't get to finish what it started. So there was no release of that. There was no shaking, there was no anything to for your body to get released that. So then it goes into storage. And it's not necessarily as a memory, but in a readiness state. So your shoulders get a little higher, jaw gets a little tighter, test a little more guarded. And then five years from now, when someone raises their voice again, your body reacts the same way. It kind of can come back. And then your mind catches before your mind even catches up. And that's not being dramatic. It's that that unfinished program kicked back in.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

And so the nervous system, what I'm understanding from what you're saying, Heather, is that the nervous system is then kind of storing that trauma.

How Survival Responses Get Stored

SPEAKER_01 11:21

And even though you're not thinking, oh, my boss called me out in a meeting that was trauma, your body's reacting as if it was.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Right. So maybe you heard the phrase the body keeps the score. So it's not quite why the way people say it. It's a great phrase, but it but it's kind of shorthand. It's not that the event gets filed away like a memory in the cabinet. So, like you said, Amy, like you might not consciously think, oh, this is getting filed away in store. What actually happens is your nervous system encodes the survival response. So the pattern of activation, not the story. If that response gets to complete, it doesn't linger. If it doesn't, which it which is most of the time, the nervous system keeps that activational file as a readiness state. It's less this event is stored here, and more this reflex never got the signal to stand down. So here's how I would actually say it. Your nervous system doesn't store what happened to you, it stores what it had to do to survive it. And it keeps running that program until you show it that it's safe to spawn.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

I feel like in our culture, that's what we're trained to do is like something happens, you just move on. Something happens, you just move on. And we just plow through our days because we have we have things to do. We don't take the time to process and to allow that completion to happen because we gotta move on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

And you know, um I'll talk about this more in part two, but like I like to think of the and I I may have talked about this before, but I like to think of it for me, the easiest analogy is like a backpack. And if you keep putting those experiences, like the one with the office, right? And it never got to fully discharge, you put it in the backpack, you put another one just like it's some similar to it, in the backpack. You keep carrying around like that load is so heavy, and that is going to create wear and tear on the body. Yeah, for sure.

Bottom Up Healing And The Vagus Nerve

SPEAKER_01 13:23

I've heard you talk about bottom up and not top down. What exactly does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

So instead of not top down, maybe it's like bottom up and top down, because I have said that before, not top down, but I wanna I wanna say and because there's both things happening, right? So most of what we hear about the nervous system comes from the top-down lens. Change your thoughts, reframe the story, and your body will follow. That's real and it matters, but it's only half the loop, and it's not where we're starting today. Today we're going bot we're talking about bottom-up. So, because here's what most people don't realize your body is doing most of the talking, not your brain. So the main communication line is your vagus nerve, and it is communicating 80% of the signals up from your body to your brain, and only about 20% is going from your brain to your body.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

And where is your vagus nerve located in your body?

SPEAKER_00 14:26

So it goes from your head all the way down to the basic. It carries the signal up 80% and it carries the signal down 20%. So your body isn't the passenger in this relationship, it's the one doing most of the report. We'll also talk about fascia, which we'll talk about that more in the second episode. But um, we're not talking in a metaphor, we're talking about little wiring of your body. That wiring is using to tell your brain what state it's in, safe or not safe, before a single thought evolves.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

And that's something we go back to over and over again is our bodies and brains and everything feeling

Compassion Over Self Criticism

SPEAKER_01 15:04

safe.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

And what I love so much about my work and like doing this work myself is that the more gentle and compassionate you meet yourself in that, like if we just criticize ourselves over and over again, like my body is not doing, or my brain is having this thought over and over and over again. If we can meet ourselves, our bodies in that compassionate way, then that is where the shift starts to happen. It's not like trying to just overly criticize ourselves. Something is wrong with me, something is wrong with me, something is wrong. Like we always say, no, it's a message.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

And I always tell people that again, it's not your fault. There's not something wrong with you. It's your body and your brain's job is to keep you safe. It's just doing its job, and it's completely human and it's completely normal, and its job is to keep you safe. That's it. And there are ways to work around its natural tendency to keep you safe, but that's its job. And you can't control your brain and your body's job. That's their job, that's the go-to. But we can reprogram that and we can make that feeling of being unsafe less and increase the feeling of safety. So that your your head voice telling you, keep trying to keep you safe, that's never gonna go away. But we can make it quieter.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

And I like to think of it like this too, they make because whenever I think about it as like this beautiful thing that's been created, like your nervous system is doing what it's supposed to do. It's it's involuntary. So you blink, your heart beats. All of these things are involuntary. We don't we don't make that happen. Your nervous system is doing that involuntary. So if there's like a cross signal, again, if there's that load on top of it, and then you're I just think about this as an example. Your eyes are switching, your nervous system's overloaded. Yeah, anything wrong. It was just like, okay, I'm I'm overloaded. Uh-huh. So what can we do to help?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

And I was just thinking, it was funny. I was thinking, like, we don't get mad at ourselves for our eyes blinking. We don't get mad at ourselves for our hearts beating. But then you brought up the eye twitching. And I feel like when that happens, people are like, get we get mad. Like, why is this happening? Stop it. And instead of recognizing that it's happening because we need a calming system. Like we need to, you know, bring ourselves back in and like find ways to calm it down instead of getting mad about it. Because when we get mad about it, it just happens more. It doesn't help it.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

Right. It continues that cycle because we're staying in activation. Right. That anger, that frustration, it keeps, it just keeps it firing instead of getting meeting it with compassion. Instead of saying, Oh, you're overloaded. What can we do to help you take some of that look?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

And I think it also goes back to that previous episode where we talked about the difference between being in the wave and being able to see the wave.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

So if you've been carrying around a reaction that feels bigger than the moment deserves, I want you to leave this episode today knowing that it's not a flaw. It's a nervous system that never got to finish.

Fascia And Hormones Next Time

SPEAKER_00 18:29

And that's exactly where we're headed next time. Because that unfinished program isn't just living in your head. It's living in your tissues. And on our next episode, we're on we're going to get physical, what fascia actually is, why it's the site site where all of this shows up in your body, and how it ties straight into hormones and the symptoms you may be experiencing. And that so many of you have been told is a mystery. So we'll unpack that next week.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

And I also wanted to name, too, that we have multiple unfinished programs living in our head. It's not like there's just one. It's a pattern that we we get into and we just push aside all those things. And so there's a lot of unfinished programs going on in our heads.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

And we're going to talk about that. It's like when the fascia sticks together, like we talked about in this, with the example of the person in the meeting. If you wouldn't have completed, like it sticks together. So it's it's stuck in. And so if we don't, if we don't move it through, then like over time, if one experience sticks, the other experience sticks, the other experience sticks, that's all in there. So we'll talk about that next week's episode. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

That's a lot to process us. And we wanted we like to keep our episodes on the shorter range too, so that if this is something that you want to revisit between now and the next episode about trauma, then it would be easy for you to do that.

SPEAKER_00 20:05

So okay, friends, we will see you in the next episode. Thanks for being here.

Webinar Invite And Wait List

SPEAKER_01 20:12

And if you listened to our episode from last week, you know that we are launching our new program. We're super excited for it. And we are having a webinar on August 24th at 7 p.m. Eastern time. If you want to hop over there and listen to hear more about what we're doing, and we're also going to do a little bit of teaching and coaching on that call. So the webinar is not just about the program, it's also going to give you some really great takeaways. And if you are interested in being on the webinar, then there will be a link in the show notes for that and also an opportunity to put your name on the wait list if you are interested. It does not lock you into the program at this point in time, but it gets your name on our wait list so we know who to reach out to when we are ready to launch it officially.