248 - When Your Body Has the Memory and You Don't: Repressed Memories & Somatic Healing w/ Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia248 - When Your Body Has the Memory and You Don't: Repressed Memories & Somatic Healing w/ Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia
Adult Child
Andrea and Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia talk about repressed trauma surfacing through the body, the intense somatic work that followed, and how this shifted family dynamics and self-trust. The conversation focuses on learning to feel safer in the body after years of cognitive healing that never quite reached the nervous system.
1:05:07•16 Sept 2026
When Your Body Remembers: Repressed Trauma and Somatic Healing with Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia
Episode Overview
- Healing needs to include the body, because the wound is stored in the body and nervous system, not just in thoughts.
- Somatic therapies like sensory motor work and somatic experiencing can help complete frozen fight-or-flight responses from past trauma.
- Your system tends to release memories only once enough safety and regulation have been built over time.
- Supportive relationships and community make it easier to face intense body-based processing and maintain boundaries with family.
- Resistance to somatic work is often dysregulation rather than stubbornness, and scheduled, co-regulated practice can help you stay with yourself.
“Your body will not hand you a memory until it is convinced you can survive it.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This Adult Child instalment leans hard into the body’s role in healing, especially for those who grew up in dysfunctional families and are still stuck in the same painful patterns. Host Andrea chats with returning guest Dr.
Deniz Ahmadinia, a clinical psychologist and trauma survivor, about what happens when "your body has the memory and you don't." Deniz walks through years of feeling that something terrible had happened without being able to remember it, then slowly piecing things together through somatic work, parts work, and a powerful medicine journey. She describes full-body memories surfacing without clear visuals, and the exhausting yet relieving process of letting her body complete frozen fight-or-flight responses.
You’ll hear how sensory motor therapy, somatic experiencing, and nervous system regulation helped Deniz move from paralysis and shame to deeper self-trust. Her line, "Your body will not hand you a memory until it is convinced you can survive it," sums up the pace and wisdom of her process. Andrea relates this to her own resistance to body work, joking that for years she thought somatic stuff "didn’t apply" to her… until it absolutely did.
The conversation also looks at what happens inside family systems when repressed memories surface: scapegoating, denial, small glimmers of accountability, and the painful work of holding boundaries while refusing to self-abandon. Both women keep it very real about grief, anger, disgust, and the slow relief of finally feeling more at home in their own bodies.
If you’ve done loads of therapy in your head but still feel numb, hypervigilant, or hijacked by an inner critic that "just feels like who you are," this episode might speak directly to you. Could befriending your nervous system be the missing piece in your recovery?
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