What Your Body Remembers: A December Nervous System Reset for Emotional and Spiritual Healing
- Jettie LPC
- Dec 20, 2025
- 5 min read
A guided somatic reflection to help you release stored stress and create space for renewal.
Throughout the year, many of the people I support move through life carrying far more than they ever name out loud. They hold emotional responsibility for their families, manage work demands, support loved ones, and remain steady in spaces where others lean on them. They are the dependable ones. The resilient ones. The ones who continue showing up even when they are stretched thin.
As a licensed therapist, I often see how this sustained load shows up not only in their thoughts, but in their bodies. By the time December arrives, their minds may be ready to slow down, yet their bodies are still holding tension, emotions, and exhaustion that never had room to be processed. What they experience is not weakness. It is the body’s honest record of the year.
Many people expect their bodies to release stress the moment life becomes quieter. But the nervous system does not move on simply because the calendar does. It responds to what it has carried and how long it carried it. Spiritually, Psalm 139 reminds us that God has seen every moment of that internal work. Nothing stored in your body is unknown to Him. Nothing held in silence is overlooked.
Understanding this helps us approach year-end with compassion rather than self-judgment.
Why December Feels Heavy for Many People
December often activates a level of awareness that was difficult to access throughout the year. As responsibilities slow down, the body finally has enough space to speak. Many people begin noticing fatigue they ignored, irritability they didn’t understand, restlessness without a clear cause, or a heaviness they can’t quite name. These experiences are not unusual. They are signs that the internal load of the year has begun rising to the surface.
Your body remembers every moment you powered through. Every time you stayed calm for someone else. Every transition forced you to adapt quickly. Every emotion you filed away because something else needed your attention more urgently.
When someone tells me they feel overwhelmed, I ask them to describe what overwhelm looks like inside their body. Not in general terms, but in sensations. Overwhelm might appear as tightness in the chest, difficulty focusing, disrupted sleep, irritability, mental fog, or the desire to withdraw. These are physiological cues that the nervous system has been activated for too long.
Naming these cues is the first step toward healing.
How the Nervous System Stores the Year
Polyvagal Theory teaches that the nervous system continually scans for cues of safety or threat. Throughout the year, experiences that were too fast, too demanding, or too emotionally heavy to fully process get stored as “incomplete stress responses.”
Your body may still be holding:
Unexpressed grief
Moments you had to be strong
Emotional labor others never saw
Anxiety, you quieted so you could function
Courage, you never acknowledged
These stored impressions don’t disappear on their own. They wait for the right combination of slowness, awareness, and safety. December often creates that opening. Not because life becomes easy, but because your internal world finally has room to be noticed.
This is where integration begins.
How I Support This Work
As a licensed therapist, I help clients understand how their bodies communicate what their minds have not yet processed. We explore the patterns that show up physically, the internal parts that activate under pressure, and the ways the nervous system tries to protect them throughout the year. My work blends clinical tools, somatic strategies, and biblical truth because healing is not one-dimensional. It involves the mind, body, and spirit working together.
Once clients begin approaching their bodies with curiosity instead of pressure, they experience a shift. The nervous system responds more gently. The internal load becomes more understandable. Healing becomes possible.
You do not have to rush your becoming. You simply need room to honor what your body remembered.
A Practical December Body Scan Practice
If you want to support your nervous system this month, try this simple reflective practice.
Settle into a comfortable position and let your breath move naturally. Bring your attention to your head and face. Notice whether these areas feel tense or relaxed. Move to your jaw and neck, where many people hold unspoken frustration or worry. Shift to your chest and pay attention to the quality of your breath. Is it open or restricted? Then observe your stomach, which often stores fear or anticipatory stress. Finally, notice your legs and feet and whether they feel grounded or unsteady.
Research on interoception shows that this type of awareness increases emotional clarity and decreases stress. It helps you identify what your body has been holding so you can respond with compassion.
Rest as a Nervous System Reset
Rest is not the absence of effort. It is the nervous system’s opportunity to reorganize, release stored tension, and repair what chronic stress has affected. When you allow yourself to slow down, your body moves from protection into restoration. This is the physiological foundation of healing.
Rest is also spiritual. Psalm 139 reminds us that God understands our internal state before we name it. He meets us in honesty, not performance. When you rest, you create space for alignment between your body and your spirit.
Rest prepares your internal world for renewal instead of burnout.
A Faith-Integrated Reflection
As you move toward a new year, consider asking yourself two grounding questions:
What has my body been holding without my awareness?
And what might God be inviting me to release so I can enter the next season with more clarity and peace?
These questions help bridge somatic awareness with spiritual insight. They remind you that your body is not an obstacle to healing. It is part of the healing process.
As you honor what your body remembers, you create space for renewal.
As you move into a new year…
As you move into a new year, remember that your healing is not measured by how quickly you move but by how honestly you listen to your internal world. When you are ready to take the next step, I would be honored to support the work God is already doing within you.
References
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation.
A foundational text explaining how the nervous system processes safety, stress, and emotional load.
A widely referenced work describing how the body stores trauma, tension, and unprocessed emotional memory.
Research connecting internal body awareness with emotional clarity and regulation.
A grounding Scripture for being fully seen, known, and understood by God.
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