The constant tension you feel in your jaw, chest, or stomach isn’t a malfunction; it’s your body’s loyal attempt to protect you. Your body isn’t randomly bracing for impact. It’s obeying an old conditioning that says you need to be shielded from perceived danger, often based on past experiences, even when nothing is wrong in the present moment.

Why does my body brace for impact?

Your body’s intelligence is deeply rooted in survival. When it experienced past hurts, traumas, or consistent stress, it encoded protective patterns into your nervous system, muscles, and fascia. This means the tension you feel today is largely your body stuck in the past, operating on an outdated intelligence that believes danger is still a default. It’s why your stomach might clench before a difficult conversation, or your shoulders tense before an annoying email. Your body literally didn’t receive the update that the past is over and you are safe now. Trying to force yourself to relax only adds more stress, because your body interprets that as another threat.

How do I help my body feel safe now?

For years, I couldn’t move my thumbs due to fibromyalgia, which I later realized was my body communicating a need to release control during my husband’s cancer diagnosis. My body had been giving me a map, speaking to me through symptoms. To truly release chronic tension, we must stop treating symptoms as enemies to fix and start asking what our body is trying to protect us from, to feel, or to release. It’s about communicating safety to your nervous system at the deepest level, letting it know the danger has passed. This loving, reciprocal relationship with your body allows the bracing patterns to naturally dissolve.

I explore this deeper truth in an episode of my podcast, The Simple Source, called “Why Your Body Stays Tense Even When You Try to Self-Regulate,” and in “From Mindset to Somatic: How to Heal Limiting Beliefs Stuck in Your Body.”