What I Didn’t Expect About Physical Healing After Betrayal
I’m Ann - a trauma-informed Physical Therapist and survivor of profound betrayal.
Two years ago, I suddenly and unexpectedly lost nearly everything I thought was secure. Within eighteen months, I endured a cascade of losses. I lost both of my parents. I underwent three major back surgeries. I made significant shifts in my clinical focus to accommodate the changes in my physical abilities. And in the midst of all that grief and recovery - when I needed help and support the most - I was blindsided by a betrayal so convoluted, destabilizing and painful that it felt like a physical injury.
People I trusted most - deeply, intimately, and for decades – chose to break that trust in the most painful, prolonged, and deliberate of ways by making a series of organized choices that shattered not only those relationships but my very sense of stability, safety and reality. In the thick of it, I hid in a friend’s basement for two months out of fear of further escalation or harm from people I thought would never harm me. I am safe now and returning to my new normal, but it has been a difficult and ongoing journey that I am still navigating.
My previous self would have thought the hardest part would be the losses. The end of a marriage and a life I thought I knew resulting from harmful choices others made, but that I paid the consequences of. The people I loved and trusted turning into strangers determined to destroy me for a thrill. The friendships I’d built over decades, gone in a blur of silence and cruelty. The loss of my financial stability. I thought all that was the worst of it.
But what I didn’t expect… was how the trauma from the betrayal would physically live in my body long after it felt out of danger. It left me emotionally and physically unrecognizable to myself.
As I tried to move through the wreckage of betrayal, my body began speaking a language I knew professionally - but now felt in a way I never had. As a Physical Therapist, I had long understood the connection between stress and the body. But this was different. This was personal.
At night, just as I’d settle into bed, my heart would pound loudly enough to keep me awake for hours - long after the danger had passed. Sleep became fragile, solid sleep completely unattainable. Even the sound of a text alert—any text alert - sent a jolt through my nervous system. I woke more exhausted each day, needing rest more and more and unable to truly get it.
Pain returned in areas of my body that I thought had previously healed. My gut was in constant unrest. Muscles stayed braced even in stillness. More days than not, my mind would freeze - I couldn’t focus, couldn’t absorb, couldn’t respond - even in safe and familiar environments. I knew the symptoms were real, even if tests couldn’t name them. And I knew what they meant: they weren’t random, they were my body’s cry for safety after months of unrelenting stress, fear, and violation. My nervous system was stuck in survival and the body remembers everything - but I also knew from my work that it can also unlearn.
At one point, I had to go on cardiac medication just to calm the storm inside. It was then I truly understood - on a cellular level - what I had long told my patients: the body keeps score and stores memories. Mine wasn’t betraying me. It was begging to be heard.
I wasn’t just grieving a life I’d lost. I was trying to find safety inside a body that no longer felt like mine while simultaneously trying to move forward.
I had spent my life helping others reconnect with their bodies after injury or illness, and had a good understanding of what physical recovery typically looked like in myself. But this was different. I wasn’t recovering from a fall or a surgery. I was recovering from betrayal—one that fractured my nervous system, my trust, my sense of safety. And yet, the healing had to happen in my body just as much as in my heart and mind. This understanding became my first lifeline. Your body's tension isn't weakness—it's protection. And with gentleness, it can let go.
Here are four things I’ve learned - and am still learning:
1. The body remembers everything, but it can also unlearn.
Your body’s tension isn’t weakness - it’s protection. And with gentleness, it can let go.
2. Healing isn’t linear.
Some days I feel grounded. Other days I feel shattered again. But the goal isn’t perfection—it’s presence and consistency.
3. Finding your community of healing support helps you heal faster than going it alone.
In my search for physical healing from emotional trauma, I have found many practitioners, approaches, and tools that have particularly resonated with my body. I will share them with you.
4. Somatic practices work - especially when we go slow.
Breath. Touch. Stillness. They don’t erase the pain, but they help me stay in my body long enough to feel something other than fear.
A Simple Practice That Helped Me:
Hand-over-Heart Breathing
Place one hand on your heart, one on your belly.
Inhale gently through the nose.
Exhale slowly—longer than you inhaled.
Repeat for 2–3 minutes (this is important), and let your body know: I’m safe enough to be here.