Your nervous system isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do.

But when the danger has passed and the responses stay — the numbness, the sleeplessness, the reactions that feel way too big for the moment — that's when it becomes important to understand what's actually happening inside you.

In this Healing Lab episode, Jessica Colarco, LCSW, takes you deep into the world of Big T and Little t trauma — what they are, how they live in your body, and most importantly, two simple experiments you can start today to begin reconnecting with yourself.

This isn't about diagnosing yourself or labeling your past. It's about getting curious, getting honest, and understanding that healing starts with noticing.

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In This Episode

1. The difference between Big T and Little t trauma — and why "little" doesn't mean less significant
2. The three impacts of Big T trauma: somatic disconnection, hypervigilance, and narrative fragmentation
3. The three impacts of Little t trauma: chronic sleep disruption, emotional flooding, and persistent on-edge feelings
4. Why the nervous system doesn't rank experiences — it just responds to them
5. Why healing has to include the body, not just the mind
6. Healing Lab Experiment #1: The body scan check-in — a gentle somatic practice to notice where you're connected and where you're not
7. Healing Lab Experiment #2: The trigger log — a 24–48 hour practice to map the gap between stimulus and story
8. A guided body scan you can do right now, in real time

Takeaway

Your nervous system learned its responses to keep you safe. It did its job. But you don't have to stay in survival mode forever. Healing is possible — and it starts with exactly what you practiced today: noticing.

Try the Healing Lab Experiments

Experiment #1 — The Body Scan Check-In Find a comfortable seat, close your eyes or soften your gaze, and slowly move your awareness from the top of your head to the soles of your feet — about five minutes. You're not fixing anything. You're noticing. Document what you find, especially any areas that feel numb, distant, or hard to locate.

Experiment #2 — The Trigger Log For 24–48 hours, keep a small notebook or your phone's notes app handy. Every time you feel a spike of irritability, anxiety, or emotional flooding, log three things: (1) What happened right before? (2) What did your body do first? (3) What story did your brain immediately tell you about what it meant?

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Would you like to learn more about Jessica's clinical practice? Click here.

Big T trauma, little t trauma, somatic disconnection, hypervigilance, narrative fragmentation, body scan meditation, trauma triggers, nervous system healing, emotional flooding, trauma-informed therapy, PTSD, somatic therapy, polyvagal theory, trauma responses, healing lab

Welcome to Healing Is My Hobby and to our Healing Lab segment, where each month I test real life practices to see what actually supports emotional healing.

Today we are going into something that I think is going to land for a lot of you because it's something I see every single week in my practice and it's something many people experience without ever having a name for it. We're talking about trauma, not just the kind that you immediately think of. We're talking about big T and little t trauma, what they are, how they show up in everyday life, and most importantly, what we can actually do about them. And then we're going to head into the healing lab.

where I'll walk you through two real experiments you can try at home starting today. Let's start with Big T Trauma. When most people hear the word trauma, this is what they picture. A major life event. A serious car accident, abuse, assault, combat, the sudden loss of someone you love. These are experiences that overwhelm the nervous system completely. And the impact doesn't end when the event ends. Your brain and body hold on to it.

sometimes for years, sometimes for a lifetime, if left unaddressed. There are three impacts I want to focus on today because they are the most commonly experienced and most commonly misunderstood.

Impact number one, somatic disconnection. When your body and brain split. This one is the one I really want you to sit with. When someone goes through a big T trauma, the nervous system does something remarkable to protect you in that moment. It walls off the body. It essentially says feeling right now is not safe. So it stops transmitting. And for many people,

that disconnection doesn't just go away after the danger is gone, it becomes a pattern. This shows up as feeling numb, not recognizing when you're hungry or in physical pain, feeling like you're watching your own life from a distance, like you're behind glass. Some people describe it as going through the motions, but not really being present in their body. In clinical terms, we call this somatic dissociation.

And it makes complete sense as a survival response. But it's also one of the biggest barriers to healing, because healing requires a reconnection. You can't heal what you can't feel. This is why approaches like somatic therapy and polyvagal-informed care are so important. Talk therapy alone is often not enough.

because the disconnect isn't just in the mind, it's in the body.

Impact number two, hypervigilance. Your threat detector gets recalibrated. After big T trauma, the amygdala, your brain's alarm system, gets recalibrated. It starts scanning for danger constantly, even in completely safe environments. A certain smell, a tone of voice, a sound, and suddenly your system is in full emergency mode before your thinking brain even has a chance to evaluate what's happening.

This is exhausting and it's largely involuntary. People aren't choosing to react this way. Their nervous system has been rewired to prioritize survival above everything else. And finally, impact number three, narrative fragmentation. Why the story doesn't make sense. Big T trauma also disrupts memory in a unique way. People often can't tell the story of what happened in a

clean, linear sequence. Pieces feel missing. Other parts are unbearably vivid. The emotional tone can be completely flat in one moment and overwhelming the next. This isn't a character flaw. It's neuroscience. Trauma memories are stored differently. Less in the hippocampus, which organizes narrative and time, and more in the amygdala, which stores survival-level emotional imprints.

It's one of the reasons that processing trauma is so much more complex than just talking about it. Let's move on to little t-trauma. And I wanna be really clear about something first. I know that we talked about it in our first episode this month, but the word little is not about severity. It's about the nature of the experience. Little t-traumas are things like emotional neglect growing up, a painful breakup or divorce, years of chronic stress.

a difficult work environment, ongoing criticism, feeling unseen or unheard over time. These experiences often don't get named as trauma. People tend to minimize them. Oh, it wasn't that bad. Other people have it worse. But here's the thing. The nervous system doesn't rank experiences. It just responds to them. And little t traumas, especially when they accumulate, have very real.

impacts. So let's look at the impacts. Number one, chronic sleep disruption. Little t-trauma keeps the nervous system in a low grade state of alert.

supposed to downshift, consolidate, and process. But a system that doesn't fully feel safe

has a hard time getting

looks like racing thoughts

head hits the pillow, waking up at 3 a.m. and not being able to fall back asleep, feeling like no matter how many hours you get, you never feel fully rested. Does this sound familiar? It's not just stress. That's often your nervous system telling you there's unprocessed material underneath.

Impact number two, emotional flooding and easy triggering. When little t traumas accumulate quietly over years, the nervous system's threshold for stress gets lower and lower. Things that shouldn't bother you start producing outsize reactions, snapping at your partner over something small, crying unexpectedly, a wave of anger that feels completely disproportionate to the moment. And here's what I want you to hear.

The reaction is almost never really about right now. It's about the weight of everything that came before, finally finding an outlet.

And impact number three, persistent on edge feeling. This one might be the sneakiest of all. It's generalized low level anxiety that becomes your baseline. Not a panic attack, not a crisis, just a constant hum of unease. Trouble relaxing, difficulty being fully present. A vague sense that something bad is just around the corner. Over time,

People normalize this so completely that they stop recognizing it as a symptom and they think, this is just who I am. I'm just a worrier and I don't sleep well. But it doesn't have to be who you are. It's a response. And responses can change. Here's what I want you to take away from everything I just shared. Whether we're talking about big T or little t, trauma lives in the nervous system, not just in the mind. The brain-body disconnect is the common denominator.

And that means healing has to include the body too. And this brings us to the healing lab.

These are two experiments I have personally tested, and both of them are simple, free, and accessible to anyone. And you can start them today. And that was really important for me this month because I was looking at doing an aromatherapy and yoga, or going and trying new things. But this month, I really wanted the Healing Lab experiments to be accessible to everyone. So experiment number one, the body scan check-in. This experiment is specifically

for the disconnection piece, for anyone who wonders whether they're even in their body at all. Here's what you do. Find a comfortable seat, chair, couch, floor, whatever feels right. Close your eyes if that feels safe, or soften your gaze downward. And for about five minutes, you are going to slowly move your awareness from the top of your head down to the soles of your feet.

You're not trying to fix anything. You're not trying to relax anything. You are simply noticing.

What does the top of your head feel like? Can you feel your scalp, your jaw? Is it holding tension? The shoulders? Where are you right now? Your chest? Is there any tightness there? Any space there? The experiment question is, can you actually feel each part of your body? Or do some areas feel blank, distant, or just absent?

When I did this, I was surprised by how many areas felt almost like static, not painful, just not fully there. That's information. That's your nervous system showing you exactly where the disconnection lives. And this is a gentle somatic reconnection. And I want you to document what you notice after you do the scan, especially any areas that felt numb, tight, or hard to locate.

Let's move to experiment two, the trigger log. This experiment is for the little T side, for anyone who feels on edge, easily triggered, or like their reactions don't match the situation. For 24 to 48 hours, carry a small notebook or use your phone's notes app, and every single time you feel a spike of irritability, anxiety, or emotional flooding, you pause and log three things. One.

What happened right before? What was the stimulus? Two, what did your body do first? Did your jaw tighten? Did your chest clench? Did your shoulder shoot up toward your ears? And three, what story did your brain immediately tell you About what that moment meant. What this experiment reveals is the gap between stimulus and story.

And that gap, that tiny space between what happened and what your nervous system decided it meant, that is where healing happens.

An example for me, and I believe I gave this example

I was feeling annoyed by my partner. I have three children, they're all in sports right now, and it was coordinating who was taking what child where, and I felt like I was missing all the live games, and I was just kind of the default parent running everyone around and not being able to go watch the games, but take.

the other two to practice or whatever it was. And so that made me feel angry. And when I feel angry, I feel it in my chest and my face feels really hot.

If I weren't in tune with myself, which during this time I was not in tune with myself, I would have been curious and I would have thought, what's really going on? Why is this triggering? And it really wasn't about my partner who is very good about planning and listening and dividing and conquering with our kids. It was really about that feeling of being triggered, of...

of being kind of ignored, like my needs being ignored. And that's what it was really about.

if I would have been more in sync, I would have taken a moment to ask myself what it is I needed in that moment. But instead, I was flooded and chose to engage a little bit with my partner and I thought I was engaging in a calm way. I mean, we don't really yell or argue or anything like that. But I was very angry and so I wished I would have noticed the anger, noticed that I was flooded.

taking deep breaths, calmed my nervous system, journaled a little bit, sat and explored what it was really about, and then possibly engaged. But I did it backwards a little bit, but good thing that my partner knows that I get triggered and flooded easily. And he does a great job of navigating it, and it doesn't cause him to be triggered and lash out at me. So we are a good match in that way because he is my calm anchor. Anyway, so.

That was from my own log entries from this experiment. But before we close today, I want to give you a gift, a short guided body scan so you can experience experiment number one right now together. So if you were driving in your car, you can pause and wait to do this later together. But find a comfortable position. You can sit or lie down, let your eyes

close gently or soften your gaze toward the floor.

Take one slow breath in through your nose.

and let it out through your mouth.

Let your body begin to settle. Bring awareness at the very top of your head.

Just notice, is there warmth there?

or does that area feel far away?

Now move your awareness down to your forehead, your eyes and your jaw. So many of us hold the day in our jaw.

Notice. Without changing anything, just notice.

Slide your awareness down to your neck and shoulders.

This is also where many of us carry what we're not allowed to say out loud. What's here for you right now?

Move into your chest, your heart space. Notice if there is tightness, expansion, heaviness, or ease. There's no right answer. just honest noticing.

down into your belly, into the place where we often feel the very first signal that something is off. What does your belly have to say today?

Move down through your hips.

noticing any sensations or feels.

down to your thighs.

moving attention to your knees.

Notice if there is any tightness.

moving awareness down through your calves and shins.

continuing to notice what feelings,

down to your ankles.

what's going on there.

Finally the soles of your feet

and your connection to the ground beneath you.

Take a breath and let it all be exactly as it is. You don't have to fix anything today. You just have to be willing to feel it.

When you're ready, gently bring your awareness back to the room. Wiggle your fingers, wiggle your toes, move any body parts that you feel like need to be moved, and take one more breath.

That was your body's skin. And whatever you noticed, numbness, tension, ease, or places that felt blank, all of it is valid data. All of it is a starting point. And this is very different. I believe in past episodes, I facilitated a progressive muscle relaxation. And progressive muscle relaxation is not just noticing where there's tension, but it's releasing the tension.

and meant to really relieve any areas of the body that are holding onto stress. But when we're talking about somatic disconnection, right, we are talking about not being connected. Many times I talk to my clients and I'll say, where did you feel that in their body? And they'll say they do not. And as we've been talking so much this month, that when our nervous system is triggered, the first place it goes is into the body.

And so this is just a simple, accessible exercise to begin bringing your awareness and hopefully connection back to your body.

Thank you so much for being here in the healing lab with me today. This work is not always comfortable, but you showed up for it, and that matters. I wanna leave you with this. Your nervous system learned these responses to keep you safe. It did its job, but you don't have to stay in survival mode forever. Healing is possible, and it starts with exactly what you just did, noticing.

Next week we're stepping into a segment I think a lot of you are going to relate to immediately.

the segment that we call this might be a trauma response. Specifically, we're talking about high-functioning trauma responses because one of the most misunderstood truths in mental health is this. You can look completely fine on the outside,

productive, capable, together, and still be carrying significant unprocessed trauma underneath. We're gonna break down what high-functioning trauma actually looks like, why it's hard to identify, and why the people who seem like they have it most together are sometimes the ones who need support the most. You won't wanna miss it. Until then, keep healing, keep showing up for yourself, and remember, healing is not a destination, it's a practice.

us.

If you'd like to read my blog or stay up to date, you can sign up for my newsletter at healingismyhobby.com. You can follow me on Instagram at healingismyhobby or on YouTube at healingismyhobby. And if you wanna know more about my clinical practice, you can go to jessicacolarcolcsw.com or follow me on Instagram I'll see you next week.