Can Trauma Affect You If You Don't Remember It? What Bessel van der Kolk's Work Can Teach Us
You might know that something has affected you without being able to explain exactly why.
Perhaps you overreact to situations that seem relatively small. You find yourself constantly anticipating what might go wrong. You feel on edge, shut down or overwhelmed, even when life is objectively okay.
Or perhaps you've been through difficult experiences but don't have a clear memory of everything that happened.
So you might wonder:
How does something affect you when you don't consciously remember it?
This is one of the questions that has made the work of psychiatrist and trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk so influential and interesting.
His bestselling book The Body Keeps the Score brought the relationship between trauma, memory, the brain and the body into mainstream conversation. Van der Kolk's work explores how traumatic experiences can affect the way we remember, interpret and respond to what is happening around us, sometimes long after the original experience has passed.
But there is an important distinction to make.
Not remembering something consciously does not automatically mean that a hidden traumatic memory is sitting inside your body waiting to be uncovered.
The relationship between trauma and memory is much more interesting than that.
Memory isn't just one thing
When we think about memory, we usually imagine remembering something that happened:
“I remember my first day at school.”
“I remember what happened during that argument.”
“I remember being frightened when I was younger.”
This is the kind of conscious, narrative memory we can put into words.
But our brains also learn from experience in ways that don't necessarily become a neat story.
We learn patterns.
We learn what feels safe.
We learn what feels threatening.
We learn how to respond when something reminds us of a previous experience.
And these learned responses can influence what happens in the present.
This is one reason trauma can sometimes feel confusing.
You might consciously know:
“I'm safe.”
But another part of your system may still be responding as though something isn't quite right.
That doesn't mean you're imagining it.
And it doesn't necessarily mean you have a forgotten memory that needs to be recovered.
It may mean that your brain and nervous system have learned a protective pattern.
What does “the body keeps the score” actually mean?
The phrase The Body Keeps the Score has become almost synonymous with modern trauma conversations.
Van der Kolk's work describes trauma as affecting much more than our thoughts. His book explores changes in attention, emotional regulation, memory, relationships and our experience of being inside our own bodies.
This helps explain something many people find difficult to understand:
Why do I still react when I already know better?
You can understand your childhood.
You can know that your relationship wasn't healthy.
You can recognise that your reaction is bigger than the situation.
You can even understand exactly where a particular pattern came from.
And yet your body can still react.
Your heart races.
Your stomach drops.
Your muscles tense.
You want to escape.
You become angry.
You shut down.
You start overthinking.
You become hyper-alert to other people's moods.
The reaction can happen before you've consciously decided anything.
That's important.
Because understanding a pattern and changing a pattern are not necessarily the same thing.
Your nervous system is constantly learning
One useful way of thinking about trauma recovery is to understand that your brain isn't simply storing information about the past.
It's continually predicting what might happen next.
Your previous experiences influence those predictions.
If your nervous system has repeatedly encountered unpredictability, conflict, rejection, danger or overwhelm, it can become very efficient at looking for signs that something similar might happen again.
That might look like:
always expecting the worst
finding it difficult to relax
scanning other people's moods
struggling to trust
overthinking conversations
becoming easily startled
feeling responsible for keeping everyone happy
shutting down when things become too much
reacting intensely to situations other people don't seem bothered by
These responses aren't necessarily random.
At some point, they may have been useful adaptations.
The problem is that the brain doesn't always automatically update an old protective prediction simply because circumstances have changed.
You can therefore find yourself living in the present while responding to something your nervous system learned in the past. That’s why somatic work and yoga can be so useful in bringing our systems into the present moment, as we invite ourselves to experience more and more moments of safety.
So can trauma affect you if you don't remember it?
Yes. A person doesn't need to have a detailed, conscious narrative of every difficult experience for those experiences to have influenced their development, beliefs, relationships, emotional responses or patterns of behaviour.
Traumatic experiences can affect memory and the way the brain responds to reminders of threat. Van der Kolk's earlier work specifically explored the relationship between traumatic stress, memory and physiological responses.
But this is different from saying:
“If you have a physical reaction, it proves something traumatic happened to you.”
It doesn't.
A body sensation is not a forensic record of the past.
And trying to uncover a forgotten trauma simply because you experience anxiety, tension or a particular body sensation can be unhelpful.
Sometimes the more useful question is not:
“What happened to me?”
but:
“What is happening for me now?”
Your reaction may be more important than finding the perfect explanation
Imagine someone becomes extremely anxious whenever somebody they're close to seems distant.
They might spend hours analysing messages.
Did I say something wrong?
Are they angry with me?
Are they going to leave?
What have I done?
They might eventually trace this pattern back to earlier experiences.
That understanding can be valuable.
But recovery doesn't necessarily depend on finding one definitive explanation.
It can also involve learning to notice:
Something has changed in me.
My body is telling me I'm under threat.
I can pause before I react.
I can help myself feel safer.
I have more choices now than I did then.
That shift — from endlessly analysing the past to developing more choice in the present, is an important part of trauma recovery.
Why this is where body-based approaches can be useful
This is also why trauma recovery isn't necessarily about talking about your past over and over again.
Talking can be incredibly valuable.
It can help you understand your experiences, put words around what happened and develop a coherent sense of your story.
But sometimes you can understand something intellectually and still find yourself reacting automatically.
This is where embodied approaches can offer another route into the work.
Rather than asking only:
“What do I think about this?”
we can also become curious about:
“What am I noticing in my body?”
“What happens when I slow this down?”
“What helps me feel more present?”
“Can I experience this situation differently?”
Trauma-informed movement, mindfulness, nervous-system education, grounding practices, yoga and approaches such as Havening can all be used, where appropriate, to develop greater awareness, regulation and choice.
The aim isn't to force the body to relax.
It's to develop a different relationship with your internal experience.
That might mean noticing tension without immediately trying to get rid of it.
It might mean recognising the first signs of overwhelm before you reach breaking point.
It might mean discovering that you can pause instead of automatically reacting.
Or learning that a difficult sensation can rise and fall without taking over your entire experience.
You don't have to remember everything to move forward
Perhaps one of the most freeing things about trauma recovery is this:
You don't have to have every answer about your past before you can begin changing your relationship with the present.
You don't need to reconstruct every difficult experience.
You don't need to prove that your reaction is justified.
And you don't need to find one perfect explanation for why you are the way you are.
You can start with what you notice now.
The overreaction.
The anxiety.
The shutdown.
The constant anticipation.
The difficulty trusting.
The feeling that you're always waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
These patterns are worth listening to.
Not because they necessarily reveal a hidden story — but because they tell you something about what your brain and nervous system may have learned to expect.
And learned patterns can change.
From understanding to experiencing something different
This is ultimately what interests me most about trauma recovery.
Understanding matters.
Your story matters.
But healing isn't only about gaining more insight into why you are the way you are.
It's also about giving your brain and body opportunities to experience something different.
More choice.
More safety.
More flexibility.
More connection.
More ability to stay present when something difficult happens.
You don't have to erase the past.
The goal is to stop the past having quite so much control over the present.
If you recognise yourself in this, you can read more about trauma recovery and nervous-system-focused support, including how I work with body awareness, nervous-system regulation, Havening and other tailored approaches.
You can also explore nervous system regulation and learn more about the practical ways we can build greater awareness, safety and choice in everyday life.
And if you're curious about experiencing this work for yourself, I offer a free Nervous System Reset Live online each month.
Because sometimes the most important question isn't:
“What happened to me?”
It's:
“What could become possible if my nervous system no longer had to work so hard to protect me?”
If you’re curious to explore ways in which you can live more in the present moment, click here to book a free call.
