Certain emotional climates still make my body smaller before my mind knows why

Dear Delyara, That’s how I recognize trauma still living in me. The body changes before the explanation arrives. I get quieter, more measured, more careful, more aware of consequence than of possibility. It doesn’t always take much. Sometimes only the right tone in the wrong atmosphere. From the outside, it might look like maturity or restraint. Inside, it feels like retreat. I wish more people understood that survival can be very quiet in how it appears. That quietness doesn’t make it small.