#124 Why You Feel Unwell When Medical Tests Are Normal | Trauma & The Nervous System#124 Why You Feel Unwell When Medical Tests Are Normal | Trauma & The Nervous System
The Trauma Recovery School
Bonita Ackerman du Preez explains how trauma can show up as physical symptoms even when medical tests look normal, framing these sensations as the body’s way of speaking. She offers a gentle, practical approach to listening to those signals instead of fighting them.
4:21•6 Jul 2026
Why Your Body Feels Awful When Tests Say You’re Fine
Episode Overview
- Physical symptoms like racing heart, gut issues and fatigue can be expressions of trauma stored in the body, even when tests are normal.
- The nervous system may react to present situations that resemble past events without checking if current danger is real.
- Standard medical tests cannot diagnose a dysregulated nervous system, which may leave people feeling invalidated or confused.
- Fighting your body can intensify distress; treating symptoms as messages instead of enemies opens space for recovery.
- When a symptom appears, placing a hand on the area and asking, "What might my body be trying to tell me?" can be a powerful first step.
“"Your symptoms aren't attacking you. They're asking you to listen."”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety when their body keeps sounding the alarm? This episode from The Trauma Recovery School speaks directly to anyone who feels unwell, has normal medical tests, and is secretly wondering if they're imagining everything. Host Bonita Ackerman du Preez talks about racing hearts, unsettled guts, tight shoulders and bone-deep fatigue that no amount of sleep seems to fix. She explains that, "trauma is not stored as a memory in your mind.
It's stored as an experience in your body" – in your heart rate, your breathing, your tension and your gut. Rather than blaming character or willpower, Bonita describes how the nervous system can keep reacting as if danger is still present when something today looks, sounds, or feels even slightly like a past threat. The body doesn’t pause to double-check; it simply reactivates the old survival pattern.
So those intense sensations aren’t you being dramatic – they’re your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. For anyone stuck between debilitating symptoms and “everything is normal” test results, this conversation helps reframe what’s happening: your body isn’t broken, it’s dysregulated, and standard medical tests can’t measure that. Instead of fighting your body, Bonita suggests starting with kindness and curiosity: your symptoms aren’t attacking you, they’re asking you to listen.
She briefly introduces the first phase of her trauma recovery method, called “release”, where the body finally gets to put down all the puzzle pieces of long-held reactions and complete unfinished survival responses.
A simple, practical suggestion runs through the episode: when a symptom shows up this week, place a hand where you feel it and swap the question “What’s happening to me?” for “What might my body be trying to tell me?” If you’ve ever felt unwell, dismissed, and alone, this episode offers a fresh way to understand what your body might be saying – and a gentler way to respond.
What could change if you treated your symptoms as messages rather than enemies?
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