The Snake Eats the Body and Rips It Apart: How Trauma Manifests Into Physical Pain

(content warning: this article covers topics related to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse)

Last night, I tossed and turned in bed, trying to find an angle where I can finally lay comfortably to sleep. But instead, with each movement I made, I was met with a sharp pain jolting throughout my back, neck, and shoulders. Every time I tried to turn, it felt as though something was slithering under my skin, making its way from my lower back to my neck, biting every muscle it could find.

My mom, who sleeps next to me, grumbled in annoyance while I tried to bend my body back and forth hoping to avoid the pain, but alas, failed.

I pressed the home button on my phone and saw that it was only 3 am. “Another long night”, I thought.

Since early November, I’ve found myself tied to my bed. Every time I walked from my bedroom to my kitchen for a glass of water, I was hunched over, my arm behind my back, and my neck perched down.

“It’s just cramps”, I told my parents. They had started to get worried whenever I grunted in pain every time I got up in the morning, which eventually became a rare occasion, as I was usually found sprawled out in bed underneath heating pads and a weighted blanket most of the day.

I had tried convincing my parents, or perhaps convincing myself, that my pain and stiffness was a sign I was going to get my period.

“Don’t worry. No need to stress over it. It’s almost the end of the month. I’m going to get my period!”, I’d say to them.

“But what if it’s like before? What if the pain is coming back-”

“No. Things are different, it’s not like before. I told you, everything is fine,” I reassured them.

They would look at each other, then back at me with uncertainty before nodding their heads knowing that there was no use in arguing with me as I had already made up my mind.

The pain eventually became worse day by day. I’d lay in bed for days to weeks to months, watching the sun go and return. Hot showers that were once comforting and helped relieve the pain started to feel like millions of tiny daggers piercing into my spine. I started to ignore emails from people that had recommended wonderful paid opportunities and friend’s requests to FaceTime after realizing I’ve become a broken record saying, “Not today, I’m not feeling so well. Maybe tomorrow?”

Simple things like lifting my arm to brush my teeth seemed impossible. Even a gentle embrace from my mother, something that I wanted so desperately, would make me feel as though my body was shattering. I’d look at my naked body after showering and wonder if there were any bruises or even bite marks. But there was nothing except for my skin staring back at me. I’d look at my back in anger, almost feeling as though my own body was acting innocent, pretending as if it wasn’t betraying me. I wondered with frustration how the pain was so overwhelming and yet not a presence was on sight. Invisible.

“Why are you attacking me?”, I’d whisper to my body. “Did I do something to you? Why are you hurting me?”

But worst of all, I had started to feel myself disappearing. Everything felt so exhausting and draining that I could no longer remember who I was before the pain. I was reverting back to my past self, something I was so deeply afraid of.

The pain gnawed every part of my body until it reached my heart. I found myself becoming aggressive whenever my parents tried to talk to me. When my mother tried to comfort me, I’d snipe and tell her that she couldn’t possibly understand, and then moments later, I’d erupt in sobs. The new year approached and I could no longer withstand the pain. I had to face my reality and that my mother, as usual, was right. The pain I was feeling was familiar and had been lurking inside of me, waiting to get out. It was only a matter of time.

The soreness began when I was 13 years old. It was slow and gradual. At first, it was just an occasional stiff neck and sharp pains around my lower back, which was always resolved with some lemon tea and a pain killer.

I remember watching my mother complain about her arm, my father asking me to massage his calf, and all of my other relatives fussing about a new aching pain that had recently formed. I reassured myself that this was the way of life and some pain was perfectly normal.

My parents and I felt as though this was simply something every young teenager was going through. After all, my body was changing and I was becoming a woman. How was I to become a woman if I didn’t endure some pain?

However, sooner or later, it morphed into something so excruciating that the thought of even standing for longer than a minute was dreadful. I began to frequently be absent from school and missing assignments started to pile up. This began to worry my parents. I wonder now if it was because the pain was unbearable for them to see, or if it was the fact that it impacted my schoolwork that concerned them.

My mother immediately started making appointments and we began hopping from doctor to doctor all over the city. We took hour-long train rides and spent our weekends waiting patiently in the doctor’s office in hopes of finding a solution. But they all had the same thing to say: “you need to lose weight and exercise, and only then will the pain go away.” They’d roll their eyes, stare down at their notes of my weight and height, and snipe at my mother and I whenever we asked questions.

I wondered what the doctors thought when they saw my brown blob like body. Would they sting with annoyance when they saw my mom and I walk into the office? I realize now that if I looked different, perhaps if I was white and skinnier, they would have welcomed me with a warm smile, asked questions calmly and gently, I wouldn’t be in such pain for so long.

Due to staying in bed and being unable to move around, I quickly gained more weight. I remember laying in bed, scrolling through my phone, and watching my classmates relish themselves in girlhood by spending their days with friends at the mall and going on dates. But instead, here I was, not being able to look at my body without disgust. The pain I endured reminded me that I was no longer a teenage girl, but a statue.

I tried every diet and exercise known to mankind (well.. the Internet) but the pain was stubborn and refused to leave. It was adamant about staying and never leaving the home that it made.

With the last glimmer of hope that my mom and I had, we decided to visit one last doctor before giving up. My mom got a suggestion for this doctor from a neighbor’s sister’s friend’s cousin. Right away, she scheduled an emergency appointment and we took a 2-hour train ride and a 40-minute bus ride the very next day.

I remember sitting in the leather chair, staring at the walls that were covered with cloud stickers. They had started to yellow around the corners and peel. I suddenly felt comforted, which I’d never felt at a doctor’s office before, as they usually poked around my stomach. But the stickers reminded me of my childhood bedroom.

The doctor came into the room, smiled warmly, and sat in front of me. I realized that she looked like an auntie I would see passing by me in my neighborhood. I felt safe.

She asked a few standard questions which I memorized from the past 3 months of going to appointments. I rolled my eyes and looked at my mother. “This appointment isn’t going to be any different. She’ll just say what everyone else has been saying,” I huffed to myself.

After scribbling something down in her notepad, she looked up at me and stared at my face. I became increasingly uncomfortable as her stare was fixed into me, as if she was seeing something no one else could see. I quickly looked down and started pulling at the thread from my sleeve.

“So tell me,” she began. “Has something happened in the past year? Did you go through a big change in your life recently?”

I stopped and suddenly my lungs tightened. I looked up and saw the doctor and my mother waiting for me to answer.

“Well.. what do you mean? I mean I guess-”

“She started middle school this year. She goes to a top gifted and talented school. It’s really well known,” my mother interrupted. The doctor nodded and smiled.

“Adjusting to a new environment can be stressful. Has anything else happened? Maybe at home? Or even at school?”

My lungs tightened with every word she spoke. My stomach twisted and turned, begging for the words I locked deep inside of me to purge. But instead, I swallowed them and said,“No, not really. Some kids have been bothering me at school, but it’s no big deal.” This wasn’t exactly a lie. Ever since I gained weight and missed school, I simultaneously became isolated and the target. There was something I wanted to desperately say, but I knew I couldn’t. I looked at my mother and noticed her hands tightening around her scarf. If I admitted what had happened recently, it would break her heart. It would be better to be in pain than having my mother know the truth.

I guiltily retrieved back to my chair as the doctor looked at me momentarily.

“I see. Well, I’m going to send you to a therapist and a physical therapist. Your pain seems to be triggered by anxiety and stress. Talking to a therapist will help you. It’ll be a long road, but it'll get better. Trust me.”

My eyes widened as I heard what she just said and so did my mom’s. We didn’t speak another word until we left the office.

“Anxiety? Therapist?”, I thought. “What does she mean?” This was a new concept to me, something I never heard before. I had watched Girl, Interrupted earlier that week and remembered what a therapist was. I wondered if she was suggesting that I was crazy and suddenly panicked.

I had thought I heard my mom mutter under her breath about what stress I could possibly have as I was just a young girl. But I wasn’t sure if she had really said this, or if it was just my own voice in my head wondering if my mother was truly thinking this as we sat on the empty train. My mom and I sat in complete silence all the way back home.

When we got home, my mother came up to me a few hours later and said, “I made an appointment with a physical therapist just a few blocks away from us. You’re going to start going this Thursday after school. I’ll take you.”

I nodded and waited for her to go back to cooking. She lingered a few more minutes next to the door and said, “I also made an appointment with a therapist. You’ll go next week.” She went back to making dinner.

I have been going to therapy off and on ever since then. In the first few sessions, I had come to terms realizing that my body pain had begun when layers of horrific trauma occurred in my life. But it wasn’t until I was 18 years old when I fully realized the direct reason, or perhaps the final straw, of why my body was always in so much pain.

Earlier that year when I was 13 years old, I was raped by a stranger on the train on my way to school. And with a nasty combination of emotional and verbal abuse that I had endured from distant relatives, the excruciating agony had taken its form of a slithering snake traveling through my body.

While trauma can deeply impact your mental health and interpersonal relationships, trauma can also manifest itself physically. We often view functions of the mind and body as separate, when in reality, they coexist with one another. So if our mind and spirit are in pain, how could our physical beings not be?

As a result of the abuse, I found myself in constant survival mode, which had led my body to become paralyzed with stress. Ann-Marie D'arcy-Sharpe explains, “We know that our mind and body are connected. They can influence each other in many ways. There are many ways in which stress worsens pain, including causing tense muscles and increasing inflammation. Trauma and unresolved emotional issues cause stress, so, therefore, contribute to the pain and stress cycle. This means that when we experience trauma which takes its toll on us emotionally, it can also have physical effects.”

Trauma also causes the nervous system to be overly active. When faced with a traumatic event, the body’s nervous system goes into a state of stress. After the incident is over, the body may have trouble reverting back to normal. However, if your body continues to stay in survival mode, like many victims of rape and abuse, stress hormones remain elevated. This ultimately has a long-lasting negative effect on the body’s immune system, which prevents it from healing. When the body and mind are constantly in distress, it sees no option other than to be in continual pain.

As I proceeded to go to therapy and had someone to talk to, I found the pain starting to ease. Of course, it didn’t entirely disappear. The pain was still hidden somewhere, but it had retrieved itself once my journey towards healing began.

Slowly and surely, I was able to get out of bed. It took a while, but I got there. My mother was finally able to fully embrace me without me wincing in pain.

When the familiar pain that I haven’t felt in years struck again late last year, my mother encouraged me to make an appointment with my therapist, whom I had ghosted when the pandemic first hit. After a few sessions, I had realized that days before the aching occurred, one of my abusers had left a voicemail asking how I was doing. I didn’t think it bothered me as I overcame what they had done to me, or so I thought.

The pain reappears when I am reminded of my trauma or when new forms of trauma occur. Once I started to pick up my friends’ calls, telling them what had happened and consistently attending my therapy appointments, the pain started to go away. Not completely, as it is still as stubborn as it was back then.

It will find its way back to me every now and then. But this time, I know that I will no longer allow it to have a hold on me