Releasing Trauma From Your Body While Living With Chronic Pelvic Pain The Truth can be releasing
When Your Body Holds More Than Pain
How do I begin to even approach such a personal thing like trauma for those of us experienced with many forms of trauma, but today is about pelvic trauma from a horrific combination of conditions all wrapped up in years of tears and frustration for many of us living with chronic pelvic pain. Theres a time when we need to start unravelling the trauma of living with Chronic Pelvic Pain one day, week or month at a time.
When you live with Chronic Pelvic Pain, your body becomes both a home and a memory keeper it stores up trauma like a sponge absorbs water. Every ache, flare, inflammation, burning, electric pain, gaslighting/dismissal, surgery, procedure and disappointing medical appointment tells a unique story not just of the physical pain, but of everything your body and mind has carried for years all the pain, shame, guilt, hurt and confusion. Combing through memory’s that trauma represents as an individual is quite mind blowing, where do you start.
For many of us, pelvic pain is not only medical it’s emotional. It’s the weight of being dismissed, of procedures gone wrong, of living in survival mode for too long. Our bodies remember it all. The nervous system learns to protect us even when the danger has passed, leaving tension, sensitivity, and exhaustion that can feel impossible to release.
I’ve lived with this reality for years navigating pudendal neuralgia, myofascial pelvic pain, endometriosis, adenomyosis, child loss and the aftermath of multiple surgeries including three of which where major pelvic surgery’s removal of organs and parts of me I was born with. The nerve blocks and invasive examinations. Even after my hysterectomy (with my ovaries left), this different more severe pain remained (nerve and muscular damage) a reminder that healing is rarely simple, and that trauma lives deep in the body’s tissues in the aftermath of any surgery or changes made pelvically – there are the lucky few who can walk away with a pat on the back.
The Body Keeps Score And So Does the Pelvis
The pelvis is one of the body’s most emotionally charged spaces. It holds tension, grief, fear, and memories. For those of us with chronic pelvic pain, this connection becomes even clearer.
Trauma whether medical, emotional, or physical doesn’t just disappear when the moment passes. It lingers. Muscles stay tight, nerves stay alert, and the brain learns to associate certain movements or sensations with threat. You can be sitting still and still be bracing for pain.
It’s a strange kind of exhaustion when even rest doesn’t feel restful. When your body is on guard, even in sleep. When pain flares not only from activity, but from emotion, from stress, from the mere act of remembering. The pelvis remembers the bladder and bowel remember. The vagina, uterus, ovaries and cervix remember.
But here’s what I’ve learned: trauma held in the body can also be released from the body. Gently. Slowly. With patience and care with time and full need to be ready to do it. One small step at a time.
Learning to Release Slowly, Kindly, and Without Pressure
For me, releasing trauma has been less about “letting go” and more about allowing. Allowing the tears to come when they do need to flow without feeling weak, Allowing the muscles to soften without judgment by resting. Allowing myself to stop pushing myself so hard for once. Letting the rat race be what it is without participating for a beat.
It’s been about creating safety inside my body again something chronic pelvic pain steals from you.
That safety comes in small moments:
A deep breath that doesn’t feel forced.
A stretch that doesn’t demand.
A quiet cry that feels like relief, not defeat.
The realisation that I don’t need to fight my body I can listen to it instead.
Pelvic physiotherapy, mindfulness, and trauma-informed exercise have helped me reconnect to myself in softer ways. But so have the simple things heat/cold packs, grounding exercises, music, and art, reading and funny enough spring cleaning things that need revamping clearing making space for the new can be a release as well.
Using Creative Mediums as Healing
As a creative, my art has become my language when words fall short. When pain and exhaustion take over, creating something even something small helps me move emotion out of my body and into the world.
My work, routine or whether it’s using different mediums, writing, sewing, thrifting and upcycling is deeply connected to healing. It’s how I process the things I can’t say out loud. When I create, the pain feels like it has somewhere to go. It transforms from something heavy and silent into something expressive and alive it reminds me of my drive and passions and everything at my centre that’s always been driven by creation.
It’s not about perfection. I get inflammation from sitting to long and pain so I have to work around those thing but at the end of the day It’s about expression. It’s about reclaiming a sense of control in a body that often feels unpredictable.
Studying Mental Health Understanding the Mind–Body Connection
Studying mental health has given me language for what I’ve lived. It’s helped me understand that the nervous system, trauma, and pain are deeply intertwined.
What we call “chronic pain” isn’t just physical. It’s the body’s memory, the mind’s fear, and the nervous system’s attempt to protect us. That doesn’t mean the pain is “in our head” it means it’s everywhere. It’s physical and demanding mentally, physically and spiritually.
Understanding that has made me more compassionate with myself. Healing isn’t just medical it’s emotional, psychological, and spiritual. It’s a whole-body process, and it takes time.
Motherhood, Pain, and the Courage to Rest
Being a mum while living with chronic pelvic pain is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. There are moments I’ve felt guilty for needing to rest, for missing out, for saying no. But I’ve learned that rest isn’t failure it’s survival. Im an amazing, nurturing mother even with Chronic Pelvic Pain.
My children are my reason to keep going, but they’re also my teachers. They’ve taught me that love doesn’t always look like doing everything sometimes it’s simply being present, soft, and real. I want them to grow up knowing that self-care is strength, that listening to your body is brave, and that healing is something worth fighting for. But sometimes truefully the reality of living with Chronic Pelvic Pain around them is tough, there are bad days the tears and struggling to walk or even think straight. Resting till medication kicks in, unable to be fully present even thought I try. Plain Exhaustion. Survival. Strength from Chronic Pelvic Pain I never wanted.
The Ongoing Journey of Release
Releasing trauma from the body isn’t a single event. It’s an ongoing practice, one of breathing, forgiving, softening, coming home to yourself and being in the moment
Some days, healing looks like rest.
Other days, it looks like creating.
And sometimes, it looks like falling apart only to rebuild again, slower and kinder.
Healing from chronic pelvic pain isn’t just about managing symptoms. It’s about rebuilding trust with your body and trusting your intuition, its the same body that’s carried your pain, your trauma, your motherhood, your creativity, and your survival.
Your body isn’t your enemy. It’s the place your healing lives.
I’ve learned that healing isn’t about going back to who I was before pain and the old coping mechanism’s I used to get through, it’s about becoming someone new through it, rediscovering new coping mechanism’s. Pain reshapes you, but it also reveals your strength amongst the chaos it brings, you have to evolve in it, because of the growth and learning to cope.
My art helps me make meaning of it like many other things in my life and it heals the parts of me unseen.
My studies give my pain and struggle purpose so I can make a difference for woman who deal with the complex physical and mental struggle I understand about chronic pelvic pain and loss.
My children give me the gift of love, they naturally feed the side of myself that needs nurturing and unconditional love and in return I do the same with everything inside me, qthats driven by love and helps me living with Chronic Pelvic Pain
My partner support’s and unconditionally loves me through all of the trauma and pain, he helps me understand my strength and helps me to carry it proudly from all I have accomplished living with it.
This is why I share my story’s – my blog, because somewhere out there, another woman is lying awake in pain, hiding their chronic pain with a fake smile holding themselves together in public barely, feeling unseen, suffering severe pain and questioning everything, severe pain making them question themselves to the core of their existence, holding on somedays by a mere thread, suffering through dismissive/gaslighting specialists and doctors trying hard to advocate for themselves. Tears just flowing on a still face thats having a world war three inside their own body their emotions. I want them to know they are not alone.
Because I feel this too, you’re not alone. Our Trauma is real big or small trauma with Chronic Pelvic Pain isnt a one size fits all type of thing each one of us has input on how we release and come to terms with trauma.
Releasing trauma is not about forgetting. It’s about remembering yourself the parts that are still soft, still creative, still capable of love, even in the middle of it all.
Our body’s carry so much, you deserve peace.
Cassie x
Artist, Mum and Mental Health Student Living With Chronic Pelvic Pain
Welcome Beautiful 