Trauma Doesn’t Speak Disney
“Just let it go.”
Oh? Yeah, I’ll get right on that…right after I yank 20 years of unresolved shit out of my nervous system with salad tongs, cancel my lifelong subscription to hypervigilance, and turn my amygdala off and on again like it’s a goddamn broken router.
Let’s get something straight: your nervous system isn’t a suggestion box. It doesn’t respond to glittery advice or recycled affirmations…it responds to safety. Trauma doesn’t live in your thoughts; it lives in your reactions—in your gut, in your fists, in the way your whole body tenses when someone uses that tone. It’s not intellectual. It’s primal.
I ask people this all the time:
“What would it mean if you did let it go?”
Cue the awkward silence. Because no one ever actually explains what that even means. Are you supposed to forgive? Forget? Pretend it didn’t happen? Laugh it off and call it growth? When most people say “let it go,” what they really mean is “stop making me uncomfortable with your pain.”
But trauma doesn’t respond to social cues. It responds to threat detection.
According to van der Kolk (2014), trauma rewires the brain's alarm systems—specifically the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex—so that your body reacts as if the danger is still happening, even when you know it isn’t. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz (2006) break it down even further: a traumatized nervous system isn’t logical, it’s survival-based. That’s why you can know you’re safe and still feel like you’re about to die.
And here’s the part people skip:
Holding on is protective.
You’re not weak or broken…you’re smart. Your nervous system is holding onto that pain, that anger, that story, because some part of you believes it’s the only thing keeping you safe. If you let it go, how do you make sure it doesn’t happen again?
That’s why healing isn’t just about release…it’s about creating enough safety to let go without abandoning yourself.
Sometimes I’ll ask:
“You clearly don’t want to feel this way. But how is holding onto this helping you survive?”
Because if we’re being real, pain isn’t random. It’s strategic. Maybe it keeps you vigilant. Maybe it helps you spot danger before anyone else sees it. Maybe it stops you from trusting the wrong person…again.
So no, your nervous system doesn’t give a shit about Disney songs. It gives a shit about completion. About finishing what got frozen in time when your body had to either shut down, fight, flee, or fawn to survive.
That’s why I don’t ask you to let it go.
I ask:
What does that even mean to you?
What are you afraid would happen if you actually did?
Who would you be without that pain?
And (maybe most importantly) is it even yours to carry?
Because a lot of us are walking around holding grief, shame, guilt, or rage that isn’t actually ours. It’s inherited. Projected. Dumped onto us when we were too young to say, “Hey, that’s not mine.” And part of healing is learning to give it back…not out of malice, but with clarity. With boundaries. With the quiet courage to say, “This was never mine to hold.”
“Letting go” isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a slow unlearning. It’s choosing not to flinch, not to rage-scroll, not to shut down every time something cues the past. And that takes reps. Neural rewiring. Somatic safety. EMDR. Breathwork. Sometimes, screaming into a pillow until your diaphragm gives out.
Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (2011) explains this beautifully: we can’t regulate our trauma alone. We need safe connection. Co-regulation. A reason for our bodies to finally believe, “We're not there anymore.” That’s the actual release—not a single cathartic moment, but a thousand micro-decisions to stay in your body instead of checking out.
So no, I’m not going to hand you a balloon and tell you to “let it go.”
But I will help you let it move—out of your muscles, out of your breath, out of that loop it’s been stuck in for years.
And if it was never yours to begin with?
I’ll help you hand it back.
Because that’s where healing actually lives:
Not in pretending it didn’t happen.
In proving to your body, over and over, that it’s finally over.
-Matt
References
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Basic Books.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.