How Trauma Affects the Body: The Physical Symptoms of Stress You Might Be Ignoring.

Series 1: Breaking the Silence — Destigmatising Mental Health · Article 2 of 5

She had been to the doctor four times that year. The headaches would not stop. Her stomach cramped in the night. Her heart sometimes raced for no reason she could explain. Every test came back normal. “There is nothing wrong with you,” they said.

But she knew there was.

She just did not know that her body was doing the only thing it knew how to do, carrying what her mind had never been given the space to process.

This article is for every woman who has been told her symptoms are unexplained, exaggerated, or all in her head. Because they are not in your head. They are in your body. And your body has been trying to tell you something important.

Your Body Keeps the Score

There is a reason the phrase “my heart is broken” exists in almost every language on earth. Long before science could explain it, human beings understood that emotional pain lives in the body.

When we experience trauma whether that is a single devastating event or the slow, grinding weight of chronic stress, displacement, grief or discrimination our bodies respond physically. This is not weakness. This is biology.

The connection between our minds and our bodies is not a metaphor. It is a network of nerves, hormones and chemical signals that run in both directions. When the mind is overwhelmed, the body activates its emergency systems. And when those systems stay switched on for too long because the threat never really went away, the physical toll becomes impossible to ignore.

Trauma does not only live in our memories. It lives in our muscles. In our gut. In our immune system. In the way we sleep, breathe and move through the world.

“Your body is not betraying you. It is carrying what your mind has never had space to put down.”

The Nervous System in Plain Language

To understand why stress shows up in the body, we need to briefly understand the nervous system and do not worry, we will keep this simple.

When we face a threat a dangerous situation, a frightening memory, a stressful environment our brain triggers what is known as the stress response. You may have heard it called “fight, flight or freeze.” Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood the body to prepare us to respond.

 FIGHT

"I will face this"

▪ Jaw clenching

▪ Muscle tension

▪ Rapid heartbeat

▪ Hot flushes

▪ Anger or irritability

FLIGHT

"I must escape this"

▪ Restlessness

▪ Anxiety

▪ Racing thoughts

▪ Shallow breathing

▪ Digestive urgency

FREEZE

"I cannot move"

▪ Numbness

▪ Dissociation

▪ Fatigue

▪ Difficulty speaking

▪ Feeling disconnected

This response is meant to be temporary. But for many of us particularly those who have experienced ongoing trauma, displacement, poverty, racism or domestic difficulty the stress response never fully switches off. The body remains in a state of low-level emergency, day after day, year after year.

That is when physical symptoms begin to appear.

The Symptoms We Dismiss

Below are some of the most common ways that unresolved stress and trauma show up in the body. As you read, notice if any of these feel familiar.

Symptom

What the body is trying to say

🤕

Persistent headaches and migraines

Tension in the neck, shoulders and jaw from chronic stress. The body’s muscles are braced for threat even when the threat has passed.

😴

Fatigue that sleep does not fix

Cortisol dysregulation from prolonged stress exhausts the adrenal system. You sleep, but you do not rest. Your body has been running on high alert for too long.

🦴

Stomach pain, bloating, IBS and nausea

The gut has its own nervous system sometimes called the ‘second brain.’ Stress directly disrupts gut function, causing digestive upset, cramps, diarrhea and nausea.

💓

Heart palpitations and chest tightness

Adrenaline speeds the heart and tightens the chest muscles. In chronic stress, this can feel like a constant low-level anxiety in the chest or sudden, frightening episodes.

💪

Back pain, neck pain and muscle aches

Muscles contract in preparation for threat. When stress is sustained, those muscles never fully release producing chronic pain with no physical injury to explain it.

🦠

Getting ill more frequently

Cortisol suppresses the immune system. Women under chronic stress catch infections more easily, take longer to recover and are more vulnerable to inflammation-related illness.

🌚

Skin flare-ups: eczema, psoriasis, acne

The skin is deeply connected to the nervous system. Stress triggers inflammatory responses that worsen skin conditions or cause new ones to emerge.

🌙

Sleep disturbance, insomnia and nightmares

A dysregulated nervous system cannot enter deep, restorative sleep. The brain stays partially alert, producing disturbing dreams, frequent waking or the inability to fall asleep at all.

🍓

Changes in appetite and weight

Stress hormones disrupt hunger signals. Some women lose their appetite entirely; others eat compulsively. Both are the body’s attempts to manage overwhelming emotion.

🌸

Menstrual cycle disruption and pelvic pain

Cortisol interferes directly with reproductive hormones. Chronic stress can cause irregular periods, worsened PMS, more painful periods, or cycles that disappear altogether.

💨

Breathlessness and shallow breathing

Under stress, the body shifts to shallow chest breathing to take in oxygen quickly. Over time, this pattern becomes habitual reducing oxygen flow and increasing anxiety.

🧠

Brain fog and difficulty concentrating

Prolonged stress floods the brain with cortisol, impairing memory, focus and decision-making. Many women describe feeling ‘stupid’ or ‘slow’ this is not stupidity, it is survival mode.

Why We Treat the Body but Ignore the Root

In many of our communities, there is a well-worn path to the doctor when the body hurts. Headache? Take a tablet. Stomach pain? Rest and drink water. Chest tightness? See the GP, get an ECG.

But there is far less permission to say: “I am not coping.” “I have never fully grieved.” “I am still carrying what happened to me ten years ago.”

This is not because we are dishonest. It is because many of our communities have taught us for generations that emotional pain is private, spiritual or simply something to endure. Physical pain, by contrast, is visible, legitimate and permitted.

So, we learn to speak our distress in the language of the body. And the people who care for us who run the tests and prescribe the tablets often miss what is really going on.

This is not your fault. It is a system-wide gap. But understanding it gives you the power to advocate for yourself.

💡 A note for women who have experienced displacement or migration

The stress of migration, even when chosen, is one of the most physically demanding

experiences a human being can undergo. Separation from family networks, language barriers,

uncertainty about immigration status, grief for a lost home all of these create a sustained

stress load that the body carries long after the journey is over.

If you have noticed your health has changed since you moved to the UK, you are not imagining it.

Your body has been through something significant. It deserves recognition and care.

What Your Body Is Actually Telling You

Here is the reframe we want to offer you today.

Your physical symptoms are not a sign that something is randomly wrong with your body. They are a sign that your body has been doing an extraordinary job of keeping you upright, functional and present under conditions that would test anyone.

Your headache is not just a headache. It may be the tension of a thousand moments you were not allowed to fall apart in.

Your exhaustion is not laziness. It may be a nervous system that has been running on emergency power for years.

Your stomach pain is not ‘just how you are.’ It may be the unsaid things, the unresolved losses and the accumulated weight of trying to hold everything together.

Your body is not broken. It is speaking. And it deserves to be heard.

Where Healing Begins

Healing from trauma’s physical effects does not always begin in a clinic. It begins with acknowledgement the moment you allow yourself to say: “I have been through something hard, and it has affected me.”

From there, there are real, practical steps that can help:

 Steps Toward Healing

Name what you are carrying, giving language to your experience is the first step toward processing it.

Speak to a trauma-informed professional, not all therapists or GPs are trained in trauma; you can ask specifically for someone who understands cultural context and adverse life experiences.

Explore body-based practices yoga, breathwork, walking, prayer, dance and rest are all ways

of helping the nervous system regulate. You do not have to choose between faith and therapy.

Find your community healing happens in connection. Peer support, women’s groups and

shared spaces of belonging are some of the most powerful medicines available.

Be patient with your body it took time for these symptoms to develop; it will take time

for them to ease. Progress is not always linear, and that is okay.

At Afia Clinic, our peer support sessions, wellbeing workshops and health awareness program are designed with exactly this in mind to create the kind of safe, culturally informed space where you can begin to put down what you have been carrying.

You do not have to have a diagnosis to come. You do not have to have the words yet. You just have to be willing to begin.

💜 You Don’t Have to Carry This Alone

Afia Clinic offers free peer support sessions, mental health workshops and health awareness

events designed specifically for women in our communities.

📍 North East of England

🌐 Women Empowerment and Wellness Network (WEWN) North East, England

✉️ info@wewn.org.uk

All sessions are confidential, culturally sensitive and free of charge.

Interpreter and translation support is available upon request.

⚠️ Important: Please speak to your GP

The physical symptoms described in this article can also be caused by medical conditions

unrelated to stress. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, please do not self-diagnose.

Book an appointment with your GP to rule out other causes. This article is for awareness,

not as a substitute for professional medical advice.

Know a woman who keeps being told “there is nothing wrong”? Share this article with her today.