Trauma Zombies: The Body Keeps ScoreTrauma Zombies: The Body Keeps Score
Secret Life
Brianne Davis-Gantt talks about her idea of "trauma zombies" and how buried experiences can show up as panic, rage, sadness and anxiety. She shares signs that trauma may still live in the body and offers practical ways to listen to those feelings instead of pushing them away.
18:04•22 Jun 2026
Trauma Zombies and Why Your Body Won’t Let Things Go
Episode Overview
- Trauma doesn’t vanish when ignored; it gets buried in the body, where it continues to influence reactions and behaviour.
- Symptoms like panic attacks, rage, deep sadness and anxiety can be signs of old pain trying to surface, not evidence that someone is broken.
- Checking in with questions such as "What is this feeling trying to show me?" and "How old do I feel right now?" can reveal the roots of intense emotions.
- Bringing attention to breath, tension and physical sensations helps the body realise the danger has passed and lets emotions move through.
- Shifting from self-criticism to truth-telling – acknowledging survival and present safety – supports integrating those "trauma zombies" instead of fighting them.
“"Your body remembers what the mind wants to forget."”
How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober when their past keeps jumping out at them like a horror film extra? Brianne Davis-Gantt has a name for that feeling: **"trauma zombies"**. In this raw solo episode of *Secret Life*, Brianne talks about how unprocessed trauma doesn’t die, it just goes underground. As she puts it, **"what's buried alive always tries to come back"**.
Panic attacks, rage outbursts, random tears, constant anxiety – she frames these not as proof that you’re broken, but as signs that something inside you is finally trying to come back to life. Drawing on her work in recovery and with clients, Brianne explains how childhood fear, neglect, criticism and chaos get buried in the body and later run the show from the shadows.
She breaks it down with everyday examples: the parent screaming at a child on a park bench, the partner who "overreacts" to a text, or the person whose life is going well but still waits for the other shoe to drop. You’ll hear her list the many ways buried trauma shows up – overreacting to small things, chronic tension, emotional numbness, avoiding silence, exhaustion despite sleep – and why **"buried isn't healed, buried is just hidden"**.
She also shares her own history with rage and what helped, from rage rooms to screaming along to Rage Against the Machine. Brianne then offers practical steps: asking "What is this feeling trying to show me?", checking how old the emotion feels, coming back to the body, letting feelings move instead of stuffing them down, and using a "truth reset" to remind yourself you’re no longer that powerless child.
For anyone in recovery wondering why old pain keeps crashing into their sober life, this conversation might help you see your so-called monsters as messengers. What could change if you stopped running from your trauma zombies and started listening to them instead?
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