10/16/2025
When a child’s body becomes the container for a parent’s unprocessed emotions, the nervous system learns to equate stillness with safety.
This is emotional parentification in somatic form — a survival adaptation where the child’s body monitors the room to maintain belonging.
In adulthood, this pattern can manifest as hyper-attunement, over-functioning, and difficulty locating self beneath others’ needs.
Somatic work invites the body to remember safety from within, rather than through control or vigilance.
In therapy and yoga-based healing, we relearn presence: breath by breath, sensation by sensation, until the body no longer confuses tension with love.
The body does not forget — but it can relearn safety.
