Some people find mindfulness and stillness peaceful, while others find it unbearable. As a therapist, I often see both sides of the spectrum.
Clients who can sit in long stretches of silence, connecting in with themselves. Others who feel agitated and panicked the moment they close their eyes. It’s easy to assume the difference is about discipline or mindset.
But often, it’s about the nervous system; specifically, about safety.
This is where mindfulness and trauma meet. Because stillness isn’t neutral. It invites what’s inside to rise. And when that includes unprocessed trauma, even silence can feel unsafe. For some, that’s too much.
When there isn’t safety in the nervous system, the moment we get still, parts hiding in the shadows come forward.
Flooding. Spinning. Taking over.
If we don’t know what’s happening, it feels like chaos. We assume something’s wrong and we’re failing. But what’s really happening is that the body is giving us a map. At the core of recovery is developing a capacity for self-awareness.
Because awareness is the doorway. It’s what allows us to begin relating to our experience instead of being ruled by it.
I’ve seen people come out of deep meditation practices like Vipassana more traumatised than before. Not because mindfulness harmed them; but because it finally gave space for what had been buried to rise.
Why Mindfulness and Trauma Must Be Held Together
Mindfulness helps us track the ebb and flow of our emotions. When we focus on physical sensations, we increase our capacity for regulation. This steady attention calms the sympathetic nervous system, making us less likely to be thrown into fight or flight.
It opens space for presence, true presence, not just the appearance of calm.
Research shows that mindfulness reduces symptoms of depression, chronic pain and anxiety. It boosts immune function, balances cortisol levels, and decreases reactivity in the amygdala – the brain’s alarm center. Brain imaging studies also show strengthened connectivity in areas linked to body awareness and emotional regulation, including the insula and prefrontal cortex.
In other words, mindfulness doesn’t just change how we feel; it changes how we function.
The Science Behind Mindfulness and Trauma Integration
These physiological shifts don’t happen by chance. They occur because mindfulness helps us access a deeper kind of self-awareness; the kind rooted in the body. Neuroscience suggests that we carry two systems of self-awareness.
The first system tracks our autobiographical story: the timeline of who we are, where we’ve been, what we believe. The other is moment to moment awareness; the raw, felt sense of what’s happening inside right now.
That second system lives in a different part of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex, and it holds the key to real change. When we focus on our internal sensations without judgement, we begin to rewire our emotional brain.
It’s not the story alone that transforms us.
It’s reconnecting the story with the body that allows integration to occur.
When trauma happens, these two systems become disconnected. The body carries one truth; the mind narrates another. Mindfulness restores the bridge. It helps us notice what’s happening internally and name it accurately. Over time, this reduces reactivity, deepens coherence, and supports the nervous system in returning to regulation.
With a mindfulness practice, we grow capacity to enter into this dual awareness. This means we can both see that we are safe in the present moment, and that the traumatic memories, feelings and sensations live in the past. Without a safe attachment to the present, we become triggered and swept back into the trauma of the past.
Parts and Alexithymia
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we recognise that the mind isn’t one voice. It’s a system of parts – each with its own agenda, emotional history, nervous system responses, and worldview. Some are protectors. Others carry deep pain. And most of them are stuck in time.
This is why mindfulness can feel anything but peaceful. When you sit down to breathe, you’re not always meeting calm. You’re meeting history, often painful. You’re meeting the parts that have been trying to protect you, control you, or numb you for years.
Traumatised people are often afraid of feeling. It is not so much the perpetrators but their own physical sensations that now are the enemy. Even though the trauma is a thing of the past, the emotional brain keeps generating sensations that make the sufferer feel scared and helpless.
In more severe cases, trauma can create alexithymia, or emotional blindness. This is where a person has significant difficulty recognising, feeling, sourcing, describing, and expressing their emotions.
For example, if I ask how a client is feeling, they might say “fine”. If I ask how they know they are fine, there’s often a blankness in the body; no felt sense to anchor the answer.
These clients often loop through a familiar pattern: emotional deadness, then sudden intensity when something does break through, followed by immediate shutdown. The body doesn’t yet trust that feeling is safe. As soon as connection begins, the overwhelm is too much. So the system shuts it off again.
Polarisation & Mindfulness
Many clients describe intense inner conflict. Part of them wants to grow. Another part slams the brakes. Part of them wants intimacy. Another wants escape. It’s not ambivalence; it’s polarisation. Two or more parts locked in opposition, both fighting to keep you safe in their own way.
Richard Schwartz uses a powerful image for this: two people on either side of a boat, both afraid to move toward the middle in case the other doesn’t. If one shifts and the other doesn’t, the whole boat tips.
That’s what much of the internal struggle is – a frozen standoff. One part trying to control and dominate another part, both scared to fully release control to the other out of fear the system will collapse. The more we are mindfully able to watch these parts without being consumed by the dynamics, the more chance we have to mediate.
Through the mindful practice of observing these parts, we gain greater access to the Self – or in other language, you could call it the soul, the spirit or your intuition. This is the most anchored, wise and present part of us that can tolerate and can help heal all other parts.
Why Labelling Helps
When a part takes over, we often become it.
We don’t say, “A part of me is angry.” We say, “I’m angry.”
Labelling a part is the first step to unblending from a traumatised part. It creates space so that we are not clouded by our reactions.
It’s easier to work with our anger when we can say “a part of me wants to destroy our relationship” as opposed to “I want to destroy our relationship”. One creates distance, curiosity and something tangible to work with. The other consumes us and triggers deeper shame.
The second step is to allow the Self to step in; the most present, wise part of us. Unfortunately, the greater the trauma, the more the Self gets buried under extreme parts. It may take many layers of work before we are able to access the Self and let it lead to build harmony in our nervous system.
From Sensation to Feeling to Story
For people with deeper trauma, even naming a part can sometimes feel too much. The body doesn’t feel like a safe place to start. So we mindfully begin with exploring sensation on the surface. A numbness in the hands, a tingling in the leg. A burning in the chest, an itch on the nose. These are not just symptoms – they’re messages. And when we stay with them, something opens.
Sensation leads to emotion.
Emotion leads to memory.
Memory opens the door to story.
Story gives meaning to the whole situation.
But none of this happens without regulation. The body only opens when it feels safe. And safety can gradually be built through mindful observation and curiosity of the body.
Final Reflection
You’re not failing because you can’t sit still.
You’re not broken because silence brings up noise.
These are signs that something inside you wants to be known. Each part of us has a function and story, and some are desperate to be heard, to be felt, after being silenced for years.
This is not about transcending your parts. It’s about mindfully welcoming them. Letting them speak without letting them take over.
So next time you sit, try this: “I notice a part of me that…”
Then just listen with curiosity.
Follow the thought, the sensation, the feeling.
It’s not avoidance. That’s mindful presence.
And it’s the beginning of integration.