The Double Wound: Family Harm and the Somatic Impact of Disbelief
The family unit is intended to be a child's primary source of safety, attunement, and secure attachment. It is the relational nest where a nervous system ideally learns to self regulate and co regulate. When harm originates within this very unit, particularly from a caregiver or family member, it creates a profound rupture in the child's world. This rupture is not merely psychological. It is a seismic event that is registered directly in the body, in the nervous system, and in the very tissues of the child's being. The developmental trauma that ensues is significantly exacerbated when the child's reality is met not with protection and care, but with denial, disbelief, or outright blame from other family members. This secondary layer of betrayal forces the child into an impossible somatic double bind, the consequences of which can reverberate for decades.
The initial harm, be it emotional, physical, or sexual, is a direct assault on the child's bodily autonomy and sense of safety. Somatically, the child will likely experience a primal threat response, a flood of neurobiological signals preparing for fight, flight, or freeze. However, because the threat comes from within the family, the options for a successful defensive response are severely limited. A child cannot typically fight or flee their primary caregivers. Therefore, the freeze and fawn responses become common survival strategies. The body braces, muscles tense, the breath becomes shallow, and the child may dissociate, leaving their body to escape the unbearable reality. This is the body's adaptive attempt to survive an inescapable situation. The problem is not this initial somatic response. The problem is what happens next. When the child, perhaps finding a moment of courage, discloses the event or when evidence of it is discovered, the reaction of other family members becomes a critical determinant of future trauma. If a mother disbelieves her child's account of abuse by a father, or if siblings blame the child for "breaking up the family," the child is thrust into a second, perhaps more damaging, crisis.
This disbelief is not a neutral event. It is an active, relational trauma that communicates a devastating message, your sensory experience of the world is wrong, your body's truth is a lie, and your voice does not matter. To maintain the necessary attachment to their family, the child must now sever the connection to their own bodily felt sense. They must disown their own truth. Somatically, this forces a profound split. The body holds the authentic, traumatic experience, while the conscious mind must adopt the family's narrative to survive relationally. The nervous system is now chronically dysregulated, caught between the hidden biological truth of the threat and the required psychological pretense that all is well. This can manifest in a myriad of ways, a constant state of hypervigilance, digestive issues like IBS, chronic pain or tension, autoimmune disorders, migraines, or a pervasive feeling of being numb and disconnected from one's own physical self. The body continues to keep the score of both the original harm and the subsequent betrayal, even if the mind has tried to forget.
Without intervention, this embodied legacy carries forcefully into adulthood. An adult may find themselves in a constant state of high alert, unable to feel safe in intimate relationships. They may struggle with profound self blame and shame, a somatic echo of the blame once placed upon them. Their body may remain frozen in a defensive posture, leading to postural problems and a limited range of emotional expression. They might experience unexplained medical symptoms, as the body continues to signal a distress that was never acknowledged. In relationships, they may gravitate toward untrustworthy partners, recreating the familiar dynamic of betrayal, or they may avoid connection altogether, their nervous system having learned that others are not safe. The work of healing, from this perspective, is necessarily somatic. It involves gently and safely guiding an individual back into relationship with their body, helping them to listen to its stories, to discharge the thwarted survival energy, and to finally validate the truth that their body has held all along. It is a process of reclaiming the self.
