Armoring is the physical and emotional tension developed by trauma survivors as a protective mechanism. Drawing on insights from somatic therapist Wilhelm Reich and figures like ultra-athlete David Goggins and author Pete Walker, the video explains how chronic hypervigilance can lead to persistent tension, chronic pain, and emotional walls. It’s a common problem for people with PTSD, CPTSD, and childhood trauma.
Real Examples of Trauma in the Body
David Goggins was horrifically abused as a child by his father. He later became a Navy Seal, and an ultra-athlete who could run hundreds of miles through the desert, do pushups or pullups for hours, and has been a role-model for millions on overcoming your mental limits and accomplishing more than you could ever imagine.
But, he had a problem, (well a couple of them) but one that he mentioned in his book, was immense body tension.
David Goggins said his body was extremely tight and locked up — especially his psoas, hips, hamstrings, and lower back — which caused chronic pain, reduced mobility, and injuries.
He said his body was like “cement” because years of running, weightlifting, and pushing through pain without recovery had built up so much tension that he was breaking down physically. Goggins believed that if he didn’t address this, he would eventually fall apart completely — no matter how mentally tough he was.
Pete Walker had a similar experience. Pete is the author of CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. He also grew up in an abusive and violent home. And he was constantly dealing with muscle tension and physical pain. But another interesting place this showed up was when we was swimming, he would go to the public pool and swim laps, but he said he had “full body flinching” when he was around other swimmers. This tension and nervous system reaction was hard for him to overcome at first.
What does this tension have to do with Childhood Trauma you may ask? In my opinion (and Pete and David’s)—everything. When you’re facing fear, abandonment, and terror, your body tightens up your body develops a reflexive tightening response. This is called armoring.
“This is usually a somatic flashback to previous abuses. In my case, the startle response was instilled in me by my parents through frequent face slapping.” —Pete Walker
Signs of Armoring in the Body, Emotions, and Relationships
Armoring is the physical and emotional tension that survivors of trauma develop to protect themselves from danger. It was first described by somatic therapist Wilhelm Reich almost 100 years ago.
When you’re facing a physical threat, like being punched or hit, your body naturally tenses. This is a protective mechanism, it’s fueled by the FFFF response.
When we’re in a constant state of hypervigilance, we develop a habit of being tense, and the body-brain gets stuck in a feedback loop, that leaves us to develop a habit of being tight and tense without noticing it. It’s always ready to fight or run away- even when there’s no threat currently present.
Our body becomes constantly tense. You’ll especially notice this in your back, torso and neck muscles, or headaches.
But it doesn’t just happen with our body, we also armor up with our emotions and with our relationships. We tense up and wall off to avoid hurt, shame or fear.
- Physical: chronic muscle tension (tight jaw, shoulders, chest, gut), Postural: hunched shoulders, clenched fists, shallow breathing
- Emotional: numbing, dissociation, inability to cry or feel, compulsive busyness, hyper-independence, stoicism
- Relational: hyper-independence, withdrawal, being numb to others, isolation, blame, anger, any form of protecting yourself from caring or hurting.
“This armoring helped us survive intolerable emotional pain in childhood. But what once protected us now traps us — it blocks connection, pleasure, and vitality.” (PW p. 245)
It’s clear that chronic armoring, being tense, tight, guarded, isn’t helpful in the long run. But it can also feel impossible to “just stop it”.
Even when we know we’re safe, or when we try to relax, the body might reflexively tighten back up. It’s like our nervous system says, “Wait! It doesn’t feel safe yet. Don’t let down your guard.” This tension is a protective response that’s been applied to every situation, and that makes it maladaptive, or harmful, to us. But over time, we can gently teach the body that it’s okay to let go.
“We can slowly disarm the freeze response and feel safe enough in our bodies to begin to grieve — to unthaw what’s been frozen.” —Pete Walker
Pete adds that, even though it took him a long time, with practice, he was able to stop flinching every time he went swimming. He retrained his body to feel safe and to soften up.
How to Release Trauma from the Body Without Retraumatizing
So let’s talk about how to do the work, and we can approach it from all three angles, but first, it’s really important to go slowly, since “ripping off the armor” too fast can retraumatize rather than heal. When you try to remove the armor, the body sometimes reacts by clenching.
Here’s a YouTube video of a somatic practitioner who shares an example of a client with a hernia injury that had long since healed, but the body continued to clench. As he worked with the client to soften, there was initially some uncontrolled jerking and clenching, but as the client softened, allowed that sensation to be there, and worked through it with his practitioner, the body finally, gently let go of that protective response.
Somatic Practices to Heal CPTSD Armoring
So how can you work with your body, as part of a holistic approach to dealing with trauma and stress? You could simply start by just setting a reminder on your phone to check in with your body a couple of times a day. What sensations are you experiencing? Is your body “asking” for something, like rest, or are you hungry or thirsty or tired? Many people with a history of trauma have built up walls around their body’s messaging, they numb it out or suppress it because the sensations might have been too overwhelming (“I don’t know how to handle this fear, so I’ll just eat something”) or they didn’t have the support to fill their needs (“I really want a hug, but no one in my home is safe for me”).
The first step is learning to listen to your body’s needs, and to honor them.
Mindfulness practice can help you learn to notice your physical sensations without immediately trying to dismiss them or to even fill those needs. You notice your sensations in your body, you observe them without judging them, you get curious, you allow them to be there, and you choose to be willing to feel them instead of struggling against them. (Here’s a link to a video where you can do this embodiment mindfulness practice with me.) And then in addition to this mindful stance, you can also try other body-based practices:
“Somatic work, such as breathwork, yoga, or simply learning to feel your body again, is essential to melting the armoring and reconnecting with the emotional self.” —Pete Walker
The second essential somatic practice for trauma-based armoring is stretching.
(Pete WalkerP44)
“Learning to stretch was a major ordeal for me because of my extreme body armoring…it was a task of self-nurturing that I resented intensely, and it took me a long time to adopt stretching as a regular practice…I had to weather many toxic shame attacks because I was the least flexible person in the group…Moreover when various people commented about how good it felt to stretch, I felt both puzzled and further shamed because it was anything but pleasant for me….persistent practice eventually gave me results I could not discount. I was rewarded by the resolution of decades old back problems. And although I still rarely enjoy the practice, I am absolutely convinced that it explains why I am still able to run, swim and play basketball in my mid 60’s. Stretching has become a true labor of love for me.” —Pete Walker
David Goggins also hated stretching and resisted it for years, but when he started to practice it, he said- stretching saved his life not just because it increased flexibility, but because it helped him heal chronic injuries, prevent further breakdown, and restore balance to a body that had been overloaded for years. He’s an ultra athlete, so he stretches for about two hours every day while watching a show. For the rest of us, practicing gentle stretches for 5-10 minutes a day might be enough to start softening up that stored body tension.
I mentioned yoga earlier, but it’s another practice that challenges us to listen to our body, stretch and expand our muscles, and relax into poses that are often uncomfortable emotionally or physically. I think the important thing to remember when you do body work is that the goal isn’t to reach some milestone or “get good at it” but simply to practice each day being with your body, being present and non-judgmental, and allowing yourself to sit with the sensations that come up. This is the essential emotional practice that helps you let down your defenses.
Healing Emotional Armoring from Trauma and CPTSD
All right, in my opinion the physical stuff is the easy work. What does it mean to do the emotional work around armoring? This is easiest to do with a great therapist. But you can also practice it on your own.
- Acknowledging shame that you may feel for having emotions. Many people with CPTSD have been punished for crying, for speaking up, for feeling sad or hurt or angry. They feel ashamed and weak after having been told that they are the problem.
- Letting yourself feel emotions requires you to let go of the armor that says “It’s weak to have feelings, I have to be strong” and instead say “It’s ok to feel sad sometimes, this feeling will come and go, but I can allow myself to feel it. It’s healthy and human to have emotions.”
- Expressing emotions This would look like saying out loud “I feel angry. I feel sad”. You could practice this by doing an emotional check in each day, or when someone asks you “How are you doing?” instead of saying “Good” search for a real word to express an emotion. “I’m feeling hopeful today. I’m feeling a bit down today”. I bet you can feel the vulnerability already. Dropping the armor can feel awkward at first. And if this is a step too far, you can just start with sharing your emotions with only the safest people around you- a therapist or pet.
- Grieving work: Often the feelings that come up are actually rooted in old feelings from when you were a child. Feelings that you had to suppress to survive. But now you’re an adult. You can deal with these feelings, grieve your hurts and losses, and allow suppressed sadness and anger to surface safely.
- Inner child work: You might recognize a desire to cry or to hide, working with your inner child might look like acknowledging reconnecting with the parts of you that had to armor up.
- Making space for “negative emotions” you can take an IFS approach, imagine your feelings are like family members- like Inside out. “Hi Fear, I see that you’re showing up today”. As Pete Walker says. Your inner critic starts yelling at you if you allow yourself to feel something. “You’re so weak. You’re so stupid!”
- Self-compassion Sometimes the most threatening, attacking person in our lives is ourselves, our harsh inner critic. It screams at us that we are weak, a loser, unloveable, and this can lead to walling off, withdrawing, and building up walls. Part of the emotional work of de-armoring is replacing harsh inner critics with loving self-talk. We can speak lovingly to the parts of ourselves.
Okay, that’s an overview of this emotional de-armoring. What would it look like to let your walls down, to allow yourself to have feelings, to express those feelings, to treat those feelings with kindness? That’s emotional de-armoring.
Releasing Relational Armoring to Rebuild Connection
What does relational de-armoring look like?
- Allowing yourself to be vulnerable to people- but the right people, people who love you, protect you, and respect you.
- Saying “I’m sorry”
- Admitting wrong “I made a mistake”
- Letting yourself love someone “I love you”
- Telling people how you’re actually feeling “I feel hurt”
- Letting people see your flaws, hurts, dreams, hopes, joys (Personal example One of the ways I protect myself is I don’t let people see how weird I am).
This is all going to feel terrifying, you’re going to feel yourself tense up, you’re going to want to withdraw, protect yourself, put the armor back on. The important thing to practice—and it is a practice—is to allow yourself to feel that fear, and stay with being vulnerable until you’re able to relax.
- Building healthy attachment
- Spending time with safe people. Pete Walker talks about how to build healthy attachment after trauma, and I’m making a video on it, But this is a process that has to start slowly and gradually. It often starts with a therapist, and then moves to an earned secure attachment- a friend or partner who you’ve created enough internal safety, that you can be safe with them, and they can be safe with you.
- Touching, hugging, hug until you’re relaxed)
- Setting boundaries and opening up (seems contradictory, but it’s true)
- I won’t tell everyone my story, but I’ll identify a few safe people.
Release Trauma Armoring from the Body & Relearn Safety
Again, you don’t need to force it, but little by little you can learn to set down your armor. It has been heavy all this time anyway. Armoring has prevented you from healing your trauma, from resting, from connecting. But it’s a learned response. If you learned it, you can unlearn it. You can gradually retrain your nervous system to feel more safe, to have healthy boundaries, and to truly connect with yourself and others.
Take the Next Step: Therapy in a Nutshell Courses
If you would like to deepen your understanding of how to regulate your nervous system and work through trauma you could check out these courses I’ve developed.
- My free course called Grounding Skills for Anxiety might be just what you need. It’s free—just follow the link.
- And there’s also a course called How to Process Trauma that’s included with the monthly membership. There are 10 courses in the membership with lots of video lessons that you can work through at your own pace. 99% of those who have taken my courses would recommend them to a friend. This is a great place to deepen your understanding of yourself and keep doing the work.
