Healing Dissociation and Trauma: How EFT Tapping Reconnects You to Your Body and Emotions

anger beliefs eft emotional balance getting unstuck internal family systems (ifs) letting go matrix reimprinting the freeze response the stress response trapped trauma

Are you stuck in patterns you can’t seem to break?

Do you ever feel numb or disconnected from your own body?

Live mostly in your head, analyzing instead of feeling?

When emotions rise, do you shut down, freeze, or go blank?

If so, you may be experiencing dissociation — a common nervous system response to trauma.

Dissociation is not a weakness. It is not a flaw in your personality. It is your body’s intelligent way of protecting you when something feels overwhelming, unsafe, or too much to process at the time.

Many high-functioning, capable adults live this way without realizing it. They achieve. They cope. And yet, underneath, there is disconnection — from their emotions, their bodies, and from parts of themselves. There can be a lack of awareness of the mind-emotion-body connection.

As a trauma-informed EFT practitioner, I see this often. When we calm the nervous system and release blocked and trapped emotions, we unlock the self-imposed cage we were in.

The result is calmness, more clarity, self-awareness, and self-acceptance.

Why Do We Disconnect in the First Place?

From infancy, we are taught what is acceptable and what is not.

We may have heard:

“Don’t be so sensitive.”
“That’s not nice.”
“Stop crying.”
“You should know better.”

We learned to adapt.

Perhaps you tried to be the good girl or the strong one. Perhaps vulnerability, anger, or neediness felt unsafe. Maybe there was a sick sibling who required all the attention. Maybe conflict in the home meant staying quiet was safer.

Over time, suppressing emotions becomes automatic.

We shut down to survive and fit in.

Dissociation: The Nervous System’s Survival Strategy

An estimated 70% of people experience at least one potentially traumatic event in their lifetime.

Dissociation is not weakness. It is protection.

When an experience is overwhelming — especially for a child — the nervous system separates you from the intensity of what is happening. This may look like emotional numbness, feeling detached from your body, spacing out, or living mostly in your head.

Trauma does not only include extreme events. It can include:

Ongoing criticism
Parents fighting or divorcing
Bullying
Poverty
Emotional neglect
Sexual abuse
Loss or instability

For a child, these experiences can feel life-threatening. The body moves into a freeze response.

If the trauma is not processed, the freeze remains stored in the nervous system.

You may grow up and “know” you are safe — yet your body still reacts as if danger is present.

When Old Parts Get Triggered

When you find yourself reacting with disproportionate anger, fear, or anxiety, it is often a younger part of you needing attention.

The beliefs formed at the time of the trauma get stuck within us and are still running our lives in the background.

beliefs such as:

I’m not safe.
I’m not enough.
I don’t matter.
I have to be perfect.
I must not feel.

Consciously, you know better.

But the young part of you trapped in a trauma capsule does not know that.

Through EFT Tapping, we tap on the stuck energy to release the freeze response. As the emotional intensity reduces, the old limiting belief no longer feels true.

From there, you learn a new empowering truth.

You move from dissociation to connection.

From survival to living.

If You Feel Numb, Stuck, Angry, or Anxious

You do not have to stay disconnected from yourself.

When you heal, you begin to feel present in your body again. You experience clarity instead of confusion.

You feel more emotional freedom, more relaxed and present, more of the real you.

If you’re ready to release trapped emotions and reconnect with yourself—

I invite you to book a complimentary 20-minute discovery call.

This work is not about reliving trauma.
It is about freeing your nervous system from carrying it.

To learn about what happens in the body during trauma, I've attached an insightful video from Robert Scaer, MD, a board-certified neurologist with forty years of clinical experience in trauma and memory.