What Your Body Is Really Holding
By Abi Beri | Integrative Therapist | Dublin, Naas & Newbridge
There is someone you cannot stop thinking about. Maybe it ended months ago. Maybe years. Maybe decades. You have done the work — dated other people, analysed it to death, told yourself all the reasons it was not right. And still, there they are.
Maybe you feel embarrassed. You should be over it by now. What is wrong with you?
Here is what I want you to know: you are not weak. Attachment bonds do not live in your mind. They live in your nervous system. In your body. In places that logic cannot reach.
Attachment Is Stored in the Body
When you are in a relationship with someone — a real relationship — your nervous systems start to co-regulate. This means you literally help regulate each other’s stress responses. Their presence calms you. Their voice settles you. This is not metaphorical. It is biological.
When that person is suddenly gone, your nervous system experiences a kind of withdrawal. It is still looking for them, reaching for a regulation that is no longer there. This is why breakups can feel like physical pain — the brain processes romantic rejection in some of the same areas that process physical pain.
If you pay attention, you can probably feel where they live in your body. The chest — that ache. The gut — a kind of longing. The throat — words unsaid. Your body is holding them. Not your mind.
The Wound They Touched
Powerful attachments usually touch an older wound. Our first experience of love — with our caregivers — creates a template. If your early experience of love was inconsistent, your nervous system may confuse those feelings with love itself.
The person you cannot get over may have touched this wound. They may have felt like a continuation of your original attachment story. Not because they were good for you, but because they were familiar to your nervous system.
There is often a younger part of you that is still bonded, still waiting, still hoping. An adult who knows the relationship is over, but a child inside who cannot let go.
Were They a Stand-In?
Sometimes the attachment is not even about your own history. In Family Constellations, we see that we sometimes carry feelings and loyalties that do not belong to us.
Could this ex be a stand-in for an unavailable parent? The one who was there but not there, the one whose love you spent your childhood trying to earn? When you find someone who triggers that same dynamic, the child in you bonds intensely.
Releasing the ex may require releasing this dynamic with the parent first.
What Release Actually Looks Like
Release does not mean forgetting. It means they no longer take up so much space. You can think of them without the charge.
The body does not need closure — it needs completion. Closure is mental. Completion is somatic. It means the nervous system has released its grip, the energy returns to you, and the story is finished at the body level.
Working Together
If you cannot get over someone and cognitive approaches have not worked, somatic therapy and Family Constellation work can help you release what your body is holding. I work in Dublin, Naas, and Newbridge, and online worldwide.
In-person: Dublin | Naas | Newbridge
Online: Ireland & Worldwide
