The Body Remembers Safety Too

Apparently Practical Magic was too scary for me

I hate scary films, especially paranormal ones. So before watching Practical Magic, I was genuinely assessing whether I would cope with it. I was reassured that it was more witchy romantic comedy than horror. Fine, I thought. Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, some spells and a handsome investigator. I can manage that.

And I could, until the exorcism scene.

There is a moment when Nicole Kidman’s face and whole presence suddenly change as her character becomes possessed. I knew I was sitting safely at home watching an actor, but I noticed that a young part of me had become genuinely frightened.

Over the past few years, body-based therapeutic work has helped me pay more attention to reactions like this rather than immediately explaining them away. I became curious and stayed with the part that was holding the fear, wondering what was underneath it.

As I turned inward, I began to recognise something about unpredictability and helplessness. Something could suddenly change, I might not be able to control what was happening, and I might not know what to do to keep myself safe.

I grew up with experiences of unpredictability, so the association made sense. As I understood what that younger part was afraid of, I felt tears come. I felt sad for the younger me who had once needed to be so alert to whether things were safe.

When the body finds safety

Then something happened that surprised me. Without deliberately trying to calm myself or choosing a grounding exercise, an image appeared of sitting in a familiar therapy room with a former therapist opposite me.

Nothing dramatic was happening. They were simply there: familiar, steady and present.

Almost immediately, I felt my body settle. My stomach relaxed, my shoulders loosened and the bracing eased. The fear that had felt so vivid only moments earlier became much quieter.

I remember thinking, Oh. My body remembers this.

Not just the person or the room as a memory, but the felt experience of being safe with another person.

What we internalise in therapy

This is one way I understand internalisation in therapy. Sometimes what we experience repeatedly with another person gradually becomes something we can access within ourselves. We might remember a voice, an expression, a room or simply the feeling of someone’s presence. The steadiness that once existed between two people can become an internal resource.

For me, safety in therapy has rarely meant becoming overwhelmed and having somebody calm me down. I tend to be quite controlled. It has been subtler: Can I bring more of myself? Will I be too much? Will I come across badly? Can I disagree, be awkward or imperfect and still be welcome?

Safety can be built through many ordinary moments in which something we half expect to go wrong simply does not. Repeated often enough, those experiences can become familiar too.

The body remembers more than danger

We often imagine our nervous systems as extraordinarily good at encoding one terrible experience. And they are. But they are also capable of accumulating experiences of safety until those become durable too.

Thank goodness for that. The body does not only hold fear, threat and trauma. It can also hold familiarity, steadiness, connection and the memory of having felt safe.

That does not mean safety erases everything difficult that came before. It means fear is not the only thing we can carry forward.

Sometimes we carry the room, the voice, the face or the feeling of another person sitting steadily opposite us. Sometimes the body remembers safety as something very physical: the stomach softening, the shoulders dropping, the sense of bracing giving way.

And sometimes, when we need it, our system seems to know where to find that experience without being told.

The body remembers safety too.

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