MM_Oct2026 - E2 What Our Bodies Still Remember The rules from our past don't just live in our minds they live in how we brace_TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:00] Dr. Julia Bowlin: What it actually was is my body doing exactly what it's been trained to do a long time ago before that day. It remembered to brace, to protect, to disappear a little, because somewhere back in my history, that's what kept me safe
[00:00:24] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Hi there. I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin, and you are listening to Mindset Medicine. This is your weekly dose of personal awareness. So I invite you, take one breath and let whatever you've been holding onto just loosen just a little bit for this episode. Last episode, I spoke about reactions that show up before we've even decided anything.
[00:00:46] Dr. Julia Bowlin: The fast ones, the ones that were built long before we had a say in them. This episode, we're going somewhere where those reactions actually live before they ever reach the surface, deep in our [00:01:00] bodies. Because a reflex doesn't just show up in a word or a look, it can show up in our jaw, the set of our shoulders, or a breath that's been held a beat too long, for longer than anyone meant it to really actually be.
[00:01:15] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Here's something worth noticing. Some of us carry our whole history in our shoulders or in our jaw, or that tight space in the upper stomach right around the solar plexus area, the one that shows up before we've even registered that we've been bracing for something. Or maybe in the tightening of our throat, the one that shows up when a word is sitting right there, it's ready, and something in us decides to hold it back inside.
[00:01:46] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And that's not a traumatic thing. That's not a diagnosis that I'm giving. That's just what happens when a body learns a long time ago that staying ready or staying quiet was [00:02:00] safer than relaxing or speaking. And once our bodies learn that, it doesn't always get the memo when the reason that we're doing it is gone.
[00:02:11] Dr. Julia Bowlin: So I'm gonna apologize. I didn't have a voice whatsoever last week, and it may come and go as I do this episode, so please forgive me. This episode is about that. Not the thoughts, not the reactions we can name out loud. It's the part that's still running in our bodies quietly long after the moment that built that reaction has passed, long, long time ago.
[00:02:36] Dr. Julia Bowlin: So years ago, when I was still at Family Health doing family medicine, one of our HR person asked to come talk me. They said they needed me to come down to HR. Well, before we'd even sat down together, before I knew a single fact about what this was about, I had already decided in my brain and in my body that I'd done something wrong, like instantaneous.
[00:02:58] Dr. Julia Bowlin: I had an authority [00:03:00] problem. So my mind went to work immediately. It was building stories, running through every possible mistake I might have made, every possible failure. I was judging myself before I even knew what was going on. And by the time The HR person came to find me to have me come down. I'd already decided that I was guilty a dozen different ways.
[00:03:24] Dr. Julia Bowlin: I was at my desk. He wasn't a small man, and he was standing over me, which on its own might not have meant anything, but something in my whole body said all at once to run, run, run, protect, protect, protect. This is dangerous. And when he got a little frustrated, which in fairness, he had every right to feel, the same as I had a right to feel what I was feeling, that frustration just didn't add to the moment.
[00:03:55] Dr. Julia Bowlin: It lit the whole thing up for me. Here's what I know now that I didn't [00:04:00] fully understand then. Some of the reaction in my body wasn't about him at all. It was about old fears that I had around authority, about being small, an old feeling of not being good enough, one that I'd been carrying long, long, long before that day.
[00:04:19] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And yes, a man standing above me in a position of power in a conversation that got heated, all of it stacked together in an instant, and my body made a decision that my mind never got a vote in. I went speechless. I couldn't say a word. I was genuinely in shock. I couldn't even formulate a full sentence, let alone stay present for a conversation that, underneath it all, was actually resolvable, and it was We had very different version of the same story, he and I, and in the end, we worked it out.
[00:04:57] Dr. Julia Bowlin: We went from problem to solution like reasonable [00:05:00] people do. But later, I told him, I expressed what actually happened in my body during that conversation, and he said something that stuck with me. He said he saw it full on in my face, in my whole body, something he had never seen from me in over five years of working together.
[00:05:20] Dr. Julia Bowlin: He saw my body shut down. Here's what's important about that moment. Looking back, none of what my body did was actually about him or about what was happening in that room. It was about something from years before showing up dressed as the present moment. My body wasn't reacting to an HR conversation. It was reacting to an old authority, an old inferiority, old versions of danger that had nothing to do with the present HR man standing in front of me.
[00:05:56] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And the result wasn't a little overreaction. I had a [00:06:00] total result. Like, I mean, I went... total overreacted. I lost my ability to function in the moment, not metaphorically, literally. And once I understood what had happened that day, I started seeing my reaction like that everywhere else, not just in me. I'd watch it happen to other people.
[00:06:18] Dr. Julia Bowlin: A conversation that should take five minutes stretches into something that somebody can barely get through. And it's not just because the topic is complicated, it's because their body, I watched it, quietly decided that this moment was dangerous based upon something that had nothing to do with what's actually being discussed.
[00:06:38] Dr. Julia Bowlin: I will say I did go back to that gentleman. I did express to him that in those situations, in a period of a heated discussion, you don't loom over a sitting female, period. I just told him, I said he needs to be aware of that, and he learned something from that too. And that's the pattern underneath a [00:07:00] pattern, right?
[00:07:01] Dr. Julia Bowlin: The body doesn't check its receipts. It doesn't pause and ask, "Is this actually the situation, or does it just feel like it?" Our body just matches close enough Is close enough. And once it's matched or found a familiarity, our bodies commit. In other words, flooding of adrenaline, flooding of cortisol, right?
[00:07:27] Dr. Julia Bowlin: I mean that literally. My heart rate climbed. I started sweating, sometimes for no reason, right? But my body had a memory, it's called body memory, of a past. So the adrenaline flooding is like there's actually an emergency in the room, full on fight or flight, and it's running underneath a completely ordinary conversation.
[00:07:52] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Have you ever had that? You're having a normal conversation and your body's reacting like crazy out of [00:08:00] proportion to what's actually going on Right? Sometimes it might look like a blank stare or a mind that just goes empty mid-sentence. Sometimes it looks like performing, just holding it all together, faking to make it, right?
[00:08:15] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Just nodding along even though your brain doesn't hear a thing, while the fear underneath is doing something else entirely. See, none of that is dramatic on purpose. It's just what a fully committed nervous system does from memory, whether or not the moment in front of us actually calls for it. So what makes this so disorienting from the inside is that the overreaction doesn't feel like an overreaction while it's happening.
[00:08:46] Dr. Julia Bowlin: It might. Mine certainly did. I just knew I was in a bad situation, and I needed to do something about it, so I shut down. It feels like the only appropriate response to something genuinely dangerous, and it's only [00:09:00] afterwards, sometimes minutes later, sometimes years later, that the gap becomes visible that this was not about now, but my body was answering as if it was.
[00:09:13] Dr. Julia Bowlin: In other words, this was about now, we're here, and our body is answering something from a long time ago. So I just invite you, just pay attention to your physical reactions: a tightness in your chest, a difficult, upset stomach, a headache that starts instantaneously when you think about something. Here's where the meaning actually shifts.
[00:09:34] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Going speechless in front of that HR director was never a failure of professionalism, and it wasn't weakness on my part, and it wasn't proof that I couldn't handle a hard conversation. What it actually was is my body doing exactly what it's been trained to do a long time ago before that day. It remembered to brace, to protect, to disappear a little because [00:10:00] somewhere back in my history, that's what kept me safe.
[00:10:04] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And here's the distinction that matters most. My body wasn't wrong to protect me. It was wrong about when. The danger it was answering to was real once, real enough to build a whole defensive system around it. But my nervous system just never got the update that that danger had passed. It's over. It kept running my old alarm on a threat that, in this particular room at the moment, on this particular day, that alarm and threat didn't exist anymore.
[00:10:37] Dr. Julia Bowlin: That's different from being broken, right? A smoke detector that goes off from steam in the shower isn't malfunctioning. It's doing its job with old information. Mine had information too. Uh, authority being looked down at literally by someone bigger standing over me. An old feeling of not [00:11:00] being good enough as well, one that had nothing to do with how capable I actually was, and none of that was invented by me.
[00:11:08] Dr. Julia Bowlin: It was just outdated. So the work was never to make my body stop protecting me. It was to help me realize and recognize more and more which situations are actually asking for the alarm and which ones just resembled something from a long time ago close enough to set it off anyway. That recognition doesn't happen instantly, but it starts the moment I stop asking what's wrong with me and start asking, "What's in my body here that's trying to protect me?
[00:11:42] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And is that actually the thing that's actually happening right now?" So I wanna pause here for just a second, because what happened in my body that day in front of the desk isn't a random thing, and it isn't something that only I do. Right? Many people do this, [00:12:00] maybe even you. Here's the plain version of what's going on.
[00:12:04] Dr. Julia Bowlin: The nervous system isn't just one thing. It runs on different settings, depending on what it's thinking is happening. There's a calm setting where connection and clear thinking are easy, where hard conversations just feel like a conversation, and there's a protective setting, sometimes called fight or flight, where our whole system redirects everything towards survival and success.
[00:12:33] Dr. Julia Bowlin: The heart rate goes up. The blood moves towards the muscles instead of digestion or careful thought. The thinking part of the brain, the part that would normally help us find the right words, gets quieted. It gets quieted down on purpose because in a true emergency, thinking slowly can get you hurt. And here's the part that explains what happened to me.
[00:12:57] Dr. Julia Bowlin: My nervous system didn't wait for a full [00:13:00] report before it switched settings. It scanned for patterns, the size of the person, the posture of the person, the tone of the person, the position of power in the room, and if those patterns are close enough to something my nervous system had to once use to survive, it flipped the switch.
[00:13:20] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Not because it was overreacting on purpose, but because as far as my nervous system was concerned, it was doing its job early before the danger could fully arrive. I know I kind of explained that before, but I want us all to understand that we have this, this autopilot thing that serves a purpose to protect us.
[00:13:41] Dr. Julia Bowlin: We may not like it, but sometimes it does it on reflex about what happened before. And that's exactly what happened with me with a man standing over me at my desk. Nothing about the conversation was dangerous, but somewhere in my history, in my size, authority and being looked [00:14:00] down upon was dangerous enough once to get written into the-- my system as a threat pattern.
[00:14:07] Dr. Julia Bowlin: So when another shape showed up again, even though this was a different man, a different room, completely different stakes, my nervous system didn't check in on the details. Again, it just matched the shape and pulled the alarm. My nervous system fully committed into my racing heart, blank mind, and a body that left the room even though I was sitting right there And this isn't only an HR thing or a me thing.
[00:14:34] Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's the same system behind going quiet and small in a doctor's office maybe when a diagnosis feels uncertain. The same system people have behind a mind going completely blank in a performance review or even someone who's well-prepared but going blank. It's the same system behind a body bracing the instant a certain tone of voice [00:15:00] shows up on the phone before a single voice or word of the conversation has really happened, right?
[00:15:07] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Here's the shift in meaning. None of this is weakness and it isn't character flaws. It's a nervous system that learned to protect fast rather than being actually accurate, and it's a skill that might have been exactly right once for whatever it was built for. But here's what I mean by mismatch. The alarm that goes off is answering to something old, right?
[00:15:34] Dr. Julia Bowlin: I said that, but the moment asking for it right now is brand new. The size of the reaction was earned once in the past by something real, but it's just aimed at a situation that doesn't match the one that built it in the past. So that's the mismatch. It's the gap between the old danger and the new moment, and that gap isn't a problem in our system.
[00:15:58] Dr. Julia Bowlin: The system is doing [00:16:00] exactly what it was built to do. The problem is just timing. And I feel like I'm rehashing this only because I want people to kind of get it. So forgive me if you're going this. I get it. I get it. I hear you. Well, maybe I don't hear you, but I understand that because my invitation here is let's not force our bodies to stay calm through everything.
[00:16:21] Dr. Julia Bowlin: That's not realistic, and honestly, it's not my goal. We can't discipline a nervous system when we are mid-alarm. So my invitation I'm offering here is smaller than that. I invite you to just notice after the fact, maybe even sometimes in the moment if you can, that there might be a response happening that's a little bit bigger than what the actual room needs at that moment.
[00:16:48] Dr. Julia Bowlin: That's it. That's the whole invitation I have for you on this episode. Nothing to be fixed in the moment. I just want you to notice, is your body reacting faster or more [00:17:00] or differently than it really justified in the moment? And recognize too, remember this, it's not your body failing. It's just your nervous system running a pattern it built long ago doing exactly what it was designed to do.
[00:17:14] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And once we recognize that pattern and we see it It becomes information instead of using evidence against ourself, and it starts to loosen the grip. Because sometimes we might go, "What's wrong with me? Why do I do that?" And then we think we're weak or there's something wrong with us, and that's not the case.
[00:17:36] Dr. Julia Bowlin: That's what I want us to do, is give our body forgiveness when we overreact so that we can acknowledge it. Then, right? What we can do with it is knowing that our bodies sometimes answer an alarm that has nothing to do with the situation that we're standing in. So I don't think the goal here is catching every one of these moments.
[00:17:59] Dr. Julia Bowlin: [00:18:00] That man standing over my desk, I wasn't gonna talk myself calm right then. There was just no way. I was a borderline panic attack inside, and once the alarm's going, forget it. It's going, right? You're not gonna stop it. But what actually helps is something smaller, and it happens later. I go back to a moment like that and ask myself, "What did this remind my body of?"
[00:18:23] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Right? Not what actually happened in the moment, but what did my body think it was protecting me from? And for me, the answer was the old stuff, right? Feeling small around authority, feeling looked down, right? Once I could name it out loud, something changed, right? Not right away, but the next time something like that happened that was similar, maybe someone standing over me or a certain tone or a certain posture, I had a little more room.
[00:18:52] Dr. Julia Bowlin: My... I didn't shut down. A little more space between the alarm going off and me completely losing myself in it. I was able to stand [00:19:00] up. I was able to take a deep breath. I was able to say, "Thank you, nervous system. I'm okay. I got this." Right? So here's something simple that actually matters, too. If our bodies are more rested, more fed, and more hydrated...
[00:19:16] Dr. Julia Bowlin: You've never heard a doctor say that, have you? We might have more room to notice things before we go into full alarm. Sleep helps. Water helps. Moving our body helps. So all that extra energy has somewhere else to go instead of sitting there waiting, right, to trigger. None of that fixes an old pattern by itself, but when our bodies feel good, we notice more before the alarm takes over.
[00:19:45] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And when we're worn out, we don't get that, right? We just... Everything feels more dangerous, and we have nothing left in the tank, and we just react. You've probably seen people do that, right? React before they even think. They're like, "Oh, sorry. [00:20:00] I'm just exhausted. I haven't slept in a while." But the real work isn't just about the body.
[00:20:05] Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's about noticing, and every time I catch myself in the middle of a big reaction and think, "Whoo, this feels bigger than what's actually going on here," that matters, right? Especially before something like giving a speech or a lecture when my alarm loves to show up right on cue. So what happens now is I can take a big breath.
[00:20:27] Dr. Julia Bowlin: I can honor it and say, "This is excitement, not danger." And I can acknowledge it and use that energy to fuel me in a positive way without shutting me down. And I tell myself, "I'm gonna evaluate this later," while I calm my nervous system down in real time now. That's the start of the gap between the old and the new, and it doesn't close it all at once, but it's the only way that I know that closes it at all.
[00:20:57] Dr. Julia Bowlin: So here's something to sit with if it's useful. [00:21:00] Somewhere in your life, there might be a place in your body that goes onto high alert even when nothing is actually wrong. A tight jaw, a breath that's being held, a stomach that clenches before you even know why. And just for a second, without fixing, no judging, just become curious.
[00:21:22] Dr. Julia Bowlin: What might this reaction be protecting you from? And is that thing from back then, or is it actually here right now in this room? So before we move on to this next part, let me tell you what it is, the Unicity moment. It's a short guided experience. It's just a chance to slow down, turn inward just for a few minutes.
[00:21:46] Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's not therapy, and it's not a replacement for it. If you're working with a therapist or a doctor, please keep doing that. This is meant to sit alongside that support, not instead of it. You are always in control the [00:22:00] entire time. You could open your eyes whenever you want, shift your position, or just listen without participating.
[00:22:08] Dr. Julia Bowlin: There's nothing you have to do here. Just take what's useful and leave the rest, and if you are driving or operating any kind of machinery right now, don't close your eyes. Stay present with the road or with your machinery. You're welcome to just listen or come back to this when you're somewhere still, and if it feels right, find a position where your body can settle.
[00:22:30] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Maybe it's sitting down or lying down or wherever you are. There's no wrong way to do this, and if it feels comfortable, let your eyes close. Just let your eyelids relax completely. There's no effort in your eyelids at all. Nothing to hold, and let your jaw unclench too, just a little if it's willing. Maybe let your teeth come slightly apart [00:23:00] and your tongue just soften where it sits.
[00:23:04] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Nothing forced. This is just an invitation, and now if it feels light and it feels right, imagine a light beginning at the very top of your head, warm and soft, and a color that feels good for you, whatever that happens to be, and with each breath, let it move down across your forehead, smoothing whatever it finds there.
[00:23:43] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And down through your eyes, your unclenched jaw
[00:23:52] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Down your neck and your shoulders, washing away whatever tension has been sitting there [00:24:00] Maybe that tension's been sitting there for longer than you realized And let it continue down through your chest and your stomach, feeling delicious. That space around your solar plexus. Just feel that light, that gentleness and warmth and comfort and peace
[00:24:29] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Now feel it down through your arms, all the way down through your hands. Now let that light flow through your hips and your legs, your thighs, your calves, all the way down to your feet. Feel your feet tingling. And everywhere this light moves, let it wash the tension and the [00:25:00] stress away And in its place, it leaves behind relaxation and light and clarity, like it's clearing space as it goes, one part of you at a time And as the light moves through you, you might notice a place that's holding more than it's resting.
[00:25:29] Dr. Julia Bowlin: Maybe your jaw's a little tight and it wants to clench again, or a tightness in your throat, maybe from words that got held back once and never quite let go Maybe you can feel a held breath or a clenched place in your stomach
[00:25:53] Dr. Julia Bowlin: If so, there's nothing wrong with that. That place learned to hold on [00:26:00] a long time ago for reasons that made sense in the past And you don't have to know the whole story of it right now. Just let it simply let the light rest there a little longer than everywhere else. The way you'd sit with someone who's been guarding something for a long time, not to make them stop, just to let them know it's safe to let go when they're ready.
[00:26:35] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And if nothing in particular comes up, that's completely fine too. This place of ease is worth noticing just as much as tension is
[00:26:50] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And let whatever you noticed simply rest without needing to explain it or resolve it today. [00:27:00] The body doesn't need a full report. It just needs to be noticed. This tension is just a signal to be addressed
[00:27:17] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And when you're ready, let that light begin to settle and start to notice the surface beneath you again
[00:27:30] Dr. Julia Bowlin: The sounds in the room around you And your breath slowly coming in and out with peace And knowing when you come back to this room fully, you will feel relaxed and present and clear and filled with a beautiful energy of peace and calm, but clarity too [00:28:00] And in your own time let your eyes open gently bringing this awareness back with you Because sometimes today, or sometimes this week, you might notice a place in your body that tightens before you know why.
[00:28:22] Dr. Julia Bowlin: And you might remember this, that a tight place isn't a problem to fix on the spot. It's just an old guard still standing post. And you can simply notice it, and breathe, and feel light in that space, and let it know, "I see you. We can look at this later." That's the whole practice for today. So if there's one thing worth carrying out of this episode, it's this: a body that braces or tightens or goes [00:29:00] quiet isn't malfunctioning.
[00:29:03] Dr. Julia Bowlin: There's nothing wrong. It's just answering something old, something that was real once, even if isn't not real in this particular place on this particular day. The mismatch was never in the system, it's in the timing, and once we become aware of that and that's visible, there's a little more room to breathe.
[00:29:25] Dr. Julia Bowlin: This month, I looked at the reactions that show up before we choose them, and now, where those reactions actually live in the body. Next episode, I'm gonna go somewhere even more familiar, the pull back to what we already know, even when it isn't serving us anymore. If something in this episode stirred something f- loose for you, I'd love to hear about it.
[00:29:49] Dr. Julia Bowlin: You can always find me and reach out through the links below in the show notes. Thank you for spending time with me. Until next time, may you be happy, be healthy, and be [00:30:00] fulfilled.
[00:30:07] Dr. Julia Bowlin - Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about Mindset Medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional life.
