What Your Body Might Be Trying to Tell You

Your shoulders cramp during stressful conversations. Your stomach ties itself in knots before important meetings. Your chest tightens when you try to speak your truth. Your jaw aches from clenching at night. Your body is talking to you – but are you listening?

At Televero Health, we often meet people who’ve become disconnected from their bodies’ messages. They push through physical signals of distress, dismiss recurring symptoms as “just stress,” or treat their bodies as unreliable machines rather than wise messengers.

“I was so focused on pushing through and getting things done that I completely missed what my body was trying to tell me,” they often say. “By the time I finally paid attention, the whisper had become a scream.”

Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. The headaches that only come on Sunday evenings. The digestive issues that flare during certain relationships. The tension that builds in your shoulders until you can barely turn your head. The fatigue that no amount of coffee can overcome.

These physical experiences aren’t random. They’re not simply mechanical failures of a body machine. They’re messages – sometimes subtle, sometimes loud – about what you need, what isn’t working, what requires attention in your life.

Learning to listen to these messages can transform not just your physical wellbeing, but your entire relationship with yourself and your life.

The Body-Mind Connection

For generations, Western culture has reinforced a split between body and mind – treating them as separate systems with minimal influence on each other. But modern science has confirmed what many traditional healing practices have long understood: body and mind are deeply interconnected, constantly communicating and influencing each other.

Your physical body responds to your thoughts, emotions, and life circumstances. Your mental state is influenced by physical sensations, movements, and biochemical processes. They’re not separate systems but aspects of a unified whole.

This interconnection means your body often registers and responds to experiences before your conscious mind has fully processed them. It picks up on subtle cues, holds memories, and reacts to stressors in ways that can provide valuable information – if you’re willing to pay attention.

One client described their realization: “I’d been having these mysterious stomach pains for months. Test after test showed nothing physically wrong. It wasn’t until my therapist asked me to notice when the pain appeared that I realized it always happened during conversations with my mother. My body was literally reacting to interactions that I was telling myself were ‘fine’ but clearly weren’t fine at all.”

The Body Keeps the Score

Our bodies not only react to current experiences but also carry the imprint of past ones – especially those that were overwhelming or remained unprocessed. This phenomenon, which psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk describes in his book “The Body Keeps the Score,” helps explain why physical symptoms often have roots in emotional or psychological experiences.

When you experience something stressful or traumatic, your body activates survival responses – releasing stress hormones, altering breathing patterns, tensing muscles, and changing blood flow to prepare you to fight, flee, or freeze. If these responses aren’t fully resolved or if similar situations keep triggering them, the patterns can become chronic.

One person shared: “I spent years with chronic neck and shoulder tension. Massage would help temporarily, but it always came back. In therapy, I realized the tension started after a car accident when I was a teenager. It wasn’t just the physical impact – it was that I didn’t feel safe driving afterward, but I had to keep doing it every day. My shoulders were literally bracing for impact, staying tensed to protect me from a crash that wasn’t happening anymore.”

This physical holding of past experiences doesn’t mean you’re “doing something wrong” or that you’ve failed to “get over” something. It’s a natural process – and understanding it can be the first step toward resolving physical symptoms that haven’t responded to purely physical approaches.

Common Body Messages

While everyone’s body speaks in unique ways, certain patterns tend to emerge across many people’s experiences:

• Tension and pain in the neck and shoulders often relate to carrying excessive responsibility or feeling unsupported. It’s the physical manifestation of “the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
• Jaw clenching and teeth grinding frequently connect to unexpressed words – things you want to say but hold back. They can also reflect determination to endure difficult circumstances.
• Digestive issues – including stomach pain, IBS symptoms, and appetite changes – commonly relate to how you’re “digesting” life experiences. They often flare during times of anxiety or when facing situations that feel “hard to stomach.”
• Chest tightness and breathing changes frequently signal anxiety or emotional overwhelm. They reflect the body’s preparation for threat and can emerge in response to both obvious and subtle stressors.
• Persistent fatigue that doesn’t improve with rest often indicates that your energy is being depleted by circumstances your conscious mind might be minimizing – such as an unfulfilling job, a draining relationship, or internal conflict.
• Headaches can reflect mental strain, emotional pressure, or conflict between what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling or expressing.

One client described their discovery: “I get migraines, and I always thought they were just a physical problem I inherited from my mom. Then I started tracking them and realized they almost always hit when I was trying to please everyone and ignoring my own needs. My head was literally pounding from the pressure I was putting on myself.”

Another shared: “My lower back would go out a couple times a year, leaving me barely able to move. It was always during times when I felt financially insecure – like my body was saying ‘I don’t feel supported’ in a very literal way.”

These patterns aren’t universal – your body’s language is unique to you. But starting to notice when and where physical symptoms appear can reveal their connections to your emotional and psychological experience.

Becoming Fluent in Your Body’s Language

Learning to understand what your body is communicating begins with simple awareness – noticing sensations without immediately trying to fix or dismiss them:

Regular body scans – taking a few moments to mentally scan from head to toe, noticing what you feel without judgment – build your capacity to recognize physical signals before they become severe.

Tracking patterns over time can reveal connections between physical symptoms and specific situations, relationships, or emotional states. Keeping a simple log of when symptoms appear and what else is happening in your life can uncover revealing patterns.

Asking your body directly might sound strange, but can yield surprising insights. When you notice a physical sensation, try asking it: “What are you trying to tell me?” or “What do you need right now?” Then listen for the response – which might come as words, images, or simply a deeper knowing.

Moving mindfully – whether through gentle yoga, tai chi, walking meditation, or simple stretching – can help you develop greater sensitivity to your body’s signals and needs.

One person described their approach: “I started setting an alarm three times a day to pause and notice what I was feeling in my body. At first, I didn’t feel much – it was like I’d turned down the volume on those signals for so long. But gradually, I started to notice subtler sensations and make connections. Now my body’s signals are some of my most trusted sources of information about what’s working in my life and what isn’t.”

From Awareness to Response

Noticing what your body is communicating is the crucial first step. The next is learning to respond to these messages in supportive ways:

Honoring physical needs for rest, movement, nourishment, or care is a fundamental form of self-respect. When your body signals these basic needs, responding to them creates a foundation of trust with yourself.

Addressing emotional content that physical symptoms might be highlighting often leads to resolution of the symptoms themselves. This might involve expressing feelings that have been suppressed, setting boundaries in draining relationships, or finding support for processing difficult experiences.

Making life adjustments based on what your body is telling you can prevent chronic issues from developing. This might look like changing work habits that create physical strain, modifying environments that trigger symptoms, or reconsidering commitments that consistently deplete you.

Working with qualified professionals – including both physical and mental health providers – can help address complex patterns where physical symptoms and emotional experiences are deeply intertwined.

One client shared their experience: “I had chronic headaches for years. I’d just take painkillers and push through. In therapy, I realized the headaches always came when I was overriding my own needs to accommodate others. Learning to set boundaries and say no when I needed to didn’t just improve my relationships – my headaches decreased by about 80%.”

Another reflected: “My insomnia wasn’t just a sleep disorder. It was my body refusing to shut down because I wasn’t processing the emotional stuff that happened during the day. Once I started giving myself time to reflect on and feel my emotions instead of just pushing forward to the next task, I started sleeping better than I had in decades.”

When the Messages Are About Trauma

Sometimes the body’s messages relate to past traumatic experiences that haven’t been fully processed. In these cases, the connection between physical symptoms and their origins may not be immediately obvious, and the process of working with them often benefits from professional support.

Trauma responses in the body can include:

• Chronic tension or pain that doesn’t resolve with physical treatment
• Extreme startle responses or physical reactivity to specific triggers
• Feeling disconnected from your body or certain parts of it
• Inexplicable physical symptoms that emerge in specific contexts
• Difficulty sensing basic needs like hunger, thirst, or fatigue

If you recognize these patterns, approaches specifically designed for trauma – such as Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, or trauma-informed therapy – can help your body release what it’s been holding and restore a sense of safety and connection.

One person described their journey: “After my assault, I developed all these mysterious physical problems – dizziness, numbness in my hands, stomach issues. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong. It wasn’t until I started trauma therapy that I understood my body was still stuck in the freeze response from the attack. Learning to work with these responses rather than being afraid of them was the beginning of healing, both physically and emotionally.”

Your Body as Ally, Not Enemy

Many of us have been taught to view our bodies as potential problems – as machines that break down and need fixing, as sources of pain or limitation, as objects to be controlled or improved. This adversarial relationship makes it difficult to receive the wisdom our bodies are constantly offering.

What if your body isn’t your enemy but your ally? What if those physical symptoms aren’t failures but important communications? What if the sensations you’ve been trying to ignore or override are actually trying to guide you toward greater wellbeing?

As one client reflected after months of therapy: “I used to see my body as this unreliable thing that was always causing problems. Now I understand it’s been trying to protect me and guide me all along. My anxiety symptoms aren’t my body failing – they’re my body trying to tell me something important about my life. Learning to listen has changed everything.”

Your body holds wisdom that your conscious mind might not yet have access to. It knows what you need, what’s sustainable for you, what’s causing harm even when you’re telling yourself it’s fine. It remembers what you’ve experienced and reacts to protect you from similar pain.

Learning to listen to and honor these messages isn’t self-indulgence – it’s self-respect. It’s creating a collaborative relationship with your own embodied wisdom. And it can lead not just to resolution of physical symptoms, but to a more authentic and sustainable way of living in every aspect of your life.

Your body has wisdom to share. Begin listening today.