How INFJs and Empaths Magically Transmute Trauma
Most empaths have spent a lifetime masking.
We’ve learned to hold in our emotions, to override our nervous systems, to survive in a world that often tells us to get a grip. But trauma isn’t logical. You can’t reason your way out of a dysregulated nervous system.
You don’t think your way out of survival mode. You feel your way through.
Trauma is Stored in the Body — So That’s Where We Begin
When your body is in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, you’re not “overreacting.” You’re responding with the only tools your system has left. And telling someone to calm down when their body’s on fire? That just throws gasoline on it. The answer isn’t logic. The answer is regulation.
That means:
Movement
Cold exposure
Emotional awareness
Environmental design (aka: rewilding)
Tuning into your body’s natural cues
Movement is Medicine
Bilateral movement—using both sides of the body—can reconnect the logical and emotional parts of the brain. Trauma is often stored in the right hemisphere, the emotional/intuitive side, while the left side handles logic and language. Movement that engages both—like walking, dancing, playing music, running, biking—helps bridge that split.
This is also why EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) works: it forces the brain to process trauma using both hemispheres.
Bonus tip: forward momentum (literally moving forward) activates the body’s natural orientation system and signals safety.
Cold Resets the System
Cold exposure forces your body into the present moment. It triggers the mammalian dive reflex, which slows your heart rate and calms your nervous system. Some options:
Cold showers
River swims
Holding ice
A wet washcloth on your face
You don’t need to suffer. Just allow your body to feel. When your nervous system expands its tolerance for physical discomfort, it becomes more resilient to emotional discomfort too.
Emotional Alchemy: Feeling to Heal
You can’t heal what you refuse to feel.
Start naming your emotions. Visualize them. Where do you feel them in your body? What color are they? What shape? Let them exist without trying to fix or silence them.
Crying is a sacred act. Tears literally release cortisol. They are how your body unfreezes.
This is somatic intelligence. This is self-rescue.
Rewild Yourself
We aren’t meant to live in constant artificial light, glued to screens, disconnected from rhythm. Rewilding is giving yourself permission to be human again.
Think:
Firelight
Sleeping in cooler temps
Whole foods
Barefoot walks
Singing, dancing, drumming
Laughing without restraint
Ask yourself: If I were a wild animal in captivity, how would I enrich my environment to allow natural behavior?
Then do that.
Honor Your Chemicals
Understanding your neurochemistry gives you leverage over your healing.
Dopamine (motivation + reward)
→ complete tasks, eat nourishing food, celebrate wins, create something
Oxytocin (love + connection)
→ play with pets, give compliments, hug, listen to music
Serotonin (mood stabilizer)
→ sunshine, meditation, cold exposure, mindfulness
Endorphins (natural painkiller)
→ laugh, dance, exercise, cry, eat dark chocolate
When these are low, you might feel foggy, unmotivated, anxious, disconnected. The body knows how to reset — you just have to give it what it needs.
Regulate > React
When your nervous system is regulated, you can feel rage, grief, jealousy—without becoming them. You widen your window of tolerance. That doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from gentleness.
Diaphragmatic breathing is a great place to start: place one hand on your belly and one on your chest. Breathe so only your bottom hand moves. This tells your body it’s safe.
Also: stupid walks are sacred. (Yes, really. Walking is as effective as antidepressants.)
Your Homework
If you’ve got unexpressed fight energy in your system, complete a fight sequence. Alone. In private. Pick someone you’re angry at, and move in slow motion as if you’re fighting them—not to hurt them, but to release the energy stuck in your body.
This will feel weird. Do it anyway.
You are not broken.
You are processing what the world refused to help you carry.
And your body remembers the way home.
