Stop Saying "Trauma Is Stored in Your Body" (And What to Say Instead)

Over the last ten days, I've been role-playing as a client while mentoring students through neuroeducation delivery. Watching them translate my lived experience back to me in language that helps me (the client) understand my experience reminded me of something:

Your clients are far more intelligent than most practitioners give them credit for.

They don't need dumbed-down metaphors. They need accurate, nuanced education that honours their intelligence and invites genuine dialogue about their experience.

The Problem with Oversimplified Language

We've all heard them. The catchy phrases that flood social media and wellness spaces:

• "Trauma is stored in your body"
• "You need to release the trauma"
• "Just feel your feelings"
• "Sit with the discomfort"

These phrases might be well-intentioned, but they're not entirely neuroscientifically accurate and, most importantly, they can shut down conversation rather than opening it up.

They're one-way directives that leave clients feeling lectured at rather than collaborated with.

Your Clients Can Handle the Real Science

Here's what I wish I'd understood earlier in my career: When you deliver neuroeducation in the right way, at the right time, it's not just informative. It's regulating.

I still remember the moment this clicked for me. I was sitting in my practice as a newly graduated clinician when I came across Lorimer Moseley's groundbreaking research (2004) showing that when people learned why they hurt, they hurt less.

The studies included brain imaging showing how pain education actually reduced widespread brain activity during pain tasks: there were measurable changes in brain networks on an MRI (Moseley 2003).

I sat with those papers and reflected:

How could teaching someone about pain actually change what their brain was doing?

Is this the same for trauma?

Education changes how the networks in the brain light up because of predication coding. When you help someone understand what's actually happening in their body in a way that helps them makes sense, you're updating their brain's prediction model. You're giving their nervous system new, more accurate information to work with and that changes how they experience bodily and emotional states. 

The Evidence Points to Neuroeducation

The research on how neuroeducation changes your clients' physiology through top-down regulation is compelling:

• Psychoneuroimmunology shows how psychological states (including the understanding and safety that comes from education) can influence immune function (Ader 2007).
• The placebo effect demonstrates that believing a sugar pill helps reduce pain, decreases anxiety, changes immune responses (Schedlowski et al. 2011, Benedetti 2018), and even reduce levels of inflammatory proteins (Peciña et al. 2021). 
• Neuroeducation can reduce amygdala reactivity while strengthening the down-regulating connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala (Milad & Quirk 2012).
• When we help clients understand what they're already doing to support their nervous system, it activates dopamine (the neurotransmitter involved in motivation, reward, and learning) (Schultz 2015).
• When co-regulation takes place, oxytocin release facilitates learning (Zhang et al. 2024), particularly when that learning involves understanding our own experiences.

What Makes Education Regulating

It's not just about delivering information or sharing research. It's about creating a two-way conversation that lands at the right time where:

• You explain the neurobiology behind their specific experience
• They feel truly seen and understood (attunement happens)
• You honour their intelligence and capacity to grasp complex concepts
• The education is delivered at the right time, in the right sequence - their brain is ready to learn

When you help a client understand the neurobiology of why their heart races when they are in a certain environment, or why their body tenses before they're consciously aware of feeling unsafe, you're not just teaching: you're helping them see themselves in a new way. 

This is incredibly therapeutic when so many have been dismissed with "it's all in your head."

Neuroeducation Isn't Mindset Work

One thing I'd like to clarify: Neuroeducation is not the same as mindset work.

We're not asking clients to "think positive" or bypass what they're experiencing. We're not layering affirmations over unresolved nervous system activation. We're not giving our tips and hacks to people who are experiencing anxiety or freeze. 

Mindset strategies often fall short because they operate purely from the top down. They ask people to override what their body is telling them. When someone's heart is racing and their palms are sweating, telling them to "reframe" their thinking or "choose a different perspective" can actually disconnect them further from their interoceptive awareness (their ability to sense what's happening inside their body).

This is where so many well-meaning approaches go wrong: they inadvertently teach people to ignore their body's signals rather than understand them with accuracy. When we ignore bodily signals dysregulation can amplify. 

Quality neuroeducation does something completely different. It creates top-down regulation (understanding and context from the cortex) that synchronises with bottom-up regulation (what you're actually sensing in your body through interoception).

When you help a client understand why their heart races when they hear a particular tone of voice, you're not asking them to override that sensation. You're helping them make sense of it. You're connecting the dots between their bodily experience and the neurobiology driving it. That understanding itself becomes regulating because it reduces prediction error. Their brain no longer needs to sound the same level of alarm.

This is the difference between toxic positivity ("just think happy thoughts!") and genuine nervous system education that honours what someone is actually experiencing in their body.

The Real Pain Points Practitioners Face

So often, coaches and clinicians tell me:

"I second-guess myself mid-session. Is this the right time to educate, or should I be doing something else?"

"I'm not sure if I'm saying too much or not enough."

"I feel confused about when to use which approach. Am I actually helping or just winging it?"

"I try to educate my clients, but it doesn't land the way I want it to. I can see their eyes glaze over."

"My client doesn't seem on board. They nod along, but I don't feel like they're really with me."

"I know the neuroscience, but I stumble over how to explain it in a way that makes sense."

It's not because you don't know enough. It's because no one taught you how to facilitate your conversations on neurobiology that change how your clients see themselves. You haven't learnt to sequence what you know in a way that actually regulates your clients.

Sometimes the most regulating thing we can do is help someone understand what's happening in their body. Other times, they need a bottom-up resource first before they can access the cognitive capacity for neuroeducation.

This is where trauma-sensitive sequencing needs to guide your sessions. You can watch my brand new video on this here

What Proper Neuroeducation Actually Gives You: The 3 Cs

When you learn to deliver education that truly lands (education that's nuanced, client-specific, and properly sequenced), you make an impact. You'll experience:

1. Clarity

No more second-guessing mid-session or lying awake wondering if you said the right thing. You'll have frameworks and a neurobiological hierarchy that guides your decisions in real-time. You'll know exactly when to educate, when to regulate, and when to move between the two.

2. Confidence

You'll stop stumbling over explanations or worrying that you're overwhelming your clients. Instead, you'll translate complex neuroscience fluidly, watching your clients lean in with recognition. That confidence is what builds client engagement.

3. Credibility

When your education is accurate, specific, and makes clients say "That's exactly what I experience," they see you as the expert who truly understands them. This isn't about impressing them with jargon. It's about building trust through specificty. Your clients are on board and they trust the process because they understand it.

Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Education

Your clients don't need you to repeat viral Instagram soundbites. What they actually need:

• Translate complex neuroscience into accessible language that empowers rather than overwhelms.
• Help them to understand their experience.
• Know which concepts to teach and when (because timing is everything).
• Facilitate genuine dialogue about their experience rather than lecturing at them.

When you provide accurate, empowering education tailored to their nervous system state and specific experience, you give them tools that last far beyond your sessions together.

Learn to Deliver Neuroeducation That Actually Regulates

This experience with my certification students inspired me to create something new:

Neuroeducation As Regulation: A live workshop for coaches and clinicians ready to stop guessing and start strategically sequencing education.

You'll learn:

• Frameworks that make clients say "That's exactly what I experience"
• How to translate complex neuroscience into accessible language that empowers rather than overwhelms
• Exactly which concepts to teach and when (because timing is everything)
• Templates for explaining procedural memory, neuroception, and brain-body communication
• The neurobiological hierarchy that guides when to use education vs. hands-on work vs. resources

Workshop Details:

📅 14 November (Aus) / 13 Nov (USA)
⏰ 12pm (AEDT) / 5pm (PST, USA)
📍 Live online with Q&A (replay access included)

Join me for this live workshop

Your clients are intelligent. They're capable of understanding the sophisticated neurobiology behind their experiences when you deliver it in the right way.

Let's move beyond oversimplified soundbites and into the kind of nuanced, collaborative education that truly serves the people we're here to help.

References:

Ader, R. (2007). Psychoneuroimmunology (4th ed.). Academic Press.

Benedetti, F. (2018). Placebo effects: From the neurobiological paradigm to translational implications. Neuron, 84(3), 623-637.

Milad, M. R., & Quirk, G. J. (2012). Fear extinction as a model for translational neuroscience: Ten years of progress. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 129-151.

Moseley, G. L. (2003). Unraveling the barriers to reconceptualization of the problem in chronic pain: The actual and perceived ability of patients and health professionals to understand the neurophysiology. The Journal of Pain, 4(4), 184-189.

Moseley, G. L. (2004). Evidence for a direct relationship between cognitive and physical change during an education intervention in people with chronic low back pain. European Journal of Pain, 8(1), 39-45.

Peciña, M., Bohnert, A. S., Sikora, M., Avery, E. T., Langenecker, S. A., Mickey, B. J., & Zubieta, J. K. (2021). Association between placebo-activated neural systems and antidepressant responses. JAMA Psychiatry, 72(11), 1087-1094.

Schedlowski, M., Enck, P., Rief, W., & Bingel, U. (2015). Neuro-bio-behavioral mechanisms of placebo and nocebo responses: Implications for clinical trials and clinical practice. Pharmacological Reviews, 67(3), 697-730.

Schultz, W. (2015). Neuronal reward and decision signals: From theories to data. Physiological Reviews, 95(3), 853-951.

Zhang, B., Wang, Y., Liu, Y., et al. (2024). Oxytocin facilitates social learning under uncertainty. Nature Communications, 15, 1234.