How is This Sweater Like Trauma?

How is this sweater a metaphor for trauma?  And I don’t just mean the trauma of my husband taking a 100% extrafine merino wool sweater of mine and shrinking it in the washing machine. There is a larger theme here.

Trauma feels in the body like wearing a too small sweater.  The bound-up energy of trauma, whether that of incomplete flight response, unresolved fight response, or a functional freeze response, is stored in the body.  Stored in tight muscles or muscle spasms, clenched jaws, migraine headaches, tummy aches and digestive problems.  Chronic aches and pains.

Somatic Experiencing has techniques to access that bound trauma energy and gently release it.  This gives our system more space, more capacity.  It’s like the too-small sweater stretches out to become comfortable to wear again.  Too bad I can’t do Somatic Experiencing on my merino wool sweater.  There is no fixing that.