Your Body Has Been Keeping Score (And You Probably Haven't Been Paying Attention)

A nod to Bessel van der Kolk's groundbreaking work "The Body Keeps the Score" - if you haven't read it, stop what you're doing and get a copy. It fundamentally changed how I understand psychology and

Your Body Has Been Keeping Score (And You Probably Haven't Been Paying Attention)

A nod to Bessel van der Kolk's groundbreaking work "The Body Keeps the Score" - if you haven't read it, stop what you're doing and get a copy. It fundamentally changed how I understand psychology and psychiatry, and gives me real optimism about the future of mental health treatment.

What if the tension you carry isn't a problem to solve, but information about how you've learned to survive?

Most people think "baseline" means relaxed. Your body at rest. Calm. But here's what I've learned working with thousands of clients: your somatic baseline isn't about relaxation—it's about what your nervous system has decided feels "normal."

What Your Baseline Actually Tells You

Your somatic baseline is the level of held tension, alertness, and activation that your peripheral nervous system maintains as standard operating procedure. It's not pathological. It's not wrong. It's adaptive information about your survival strategy.

Here's what's fascinating: some people know exactly what their baseline feels like, and you can tell immediately. Others have no clue, and that's information too.

I've worked with clients who appear extremely anxious—sweating, fidgeting—who genuinely say "I feel fine" and mean it. Their system is activated, but they're disconnected from that data. Then there are others who walk in calmly saying "I'm freaking out, man" and you think, "Yeah, I can see that."

The signs aren't always observable. Sometimes somatic dissociation shows up as chronic migraines, GI distress, or other physical symptoms that seem disconnected from emotional states. The body is holding the stress, but the conscious mind isn't getting the memo.

The key insight? Your baseline isn't neutral. It's prepared.

Why Your Nervous System Doesn't Aim for Calm

Your nervous system has one job: keep you alive. Not calm. Not happy. Not relaxed. Alive.

So it maintains whatever level of activation it has learned is necessary for safety in your particular environment. If you grew up in a house where emotional explosions happened without warning, your system might maintain a state of subtle bracing. If you learned that being too present in your body wasn't safe, your baseline might be a kind of dissociated readiness to mentally escape.

This operates through what I call Developmental Reinforcement Theory. Families often share baseline patterns. So do communities. What feels "normal" to your nervous system is partly learned from the people around you, absorbed through countless micro-interactions over your developmental years.

The Information Your Body Is Tracking

Here's where it gets interesting: your somatic baseline reveals what your system is scanning for, even when you're not consciously aware of it.

A high somatic baseline—lots of held tension and activation—often pairs with cognitive management strategies. Your body stays ready while your mind works overtime to maintain control and predict problems.

Low awareness of your baseline often indicates mental-focused survival patterns. You've learned to live primarily in your head, disconnected from the data your body is constantly collecting.

But here's what I notice clinically: people often get stuck in self-focused anxiety, unable to grasp the larger group dynamics at play. We're constantly absorbing information through our sensory experience—the energy in a room, micro-expressions, tone shifts—and this input translates into how threatened we feel.

Your brain catches up much later. So when anxiety hits and feels like it's "coming out of nowhere," ask yourself: were you already primed for red alert due to a normalized high somatic baseline? Your nervous system may have been tracking threats for minutes or hours before your conscious mind noticed.

Regardless of what we think we're going through, we can be holding onto way too much stress. Our mind can say all sorts of things about our situation, but our "grown up" mind—late to the party—shows up and makes excuses for why our body is dumping out cortisol like we're about to sumo wrestle a silverback gorilla. Meanwhile, we're just sitting in a staff meeting.

Why This Actually Matters

You can't change what you can't notice.

Most people try to "fix" their tension without understanding what it's there for. They treat their hypervigilance like a malfunction instead of information. But your somatic baseline isn't a bug—it's a feature. It's your nervous system's way of staying prepared for whatever it has learned to expect.

Understanding your somatic baseline is the first step in recognizing your survival mode. And recognizing your survival mode is the first step in giving your nervous system other options.

Your body has been keeping score of threats you forgot you were watching for. The question isn't how to stop the scoring—it's how to understand what the score means.

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This is the first in a series exploring my Developmental Reinforcement Theory. Next up: how these patterns organize into distinct modes that shape not just how we feel, but how we think, relate, and navigate the world.