The Roots Beneath: Trauma, Stress, and Autoimmunity

When I stood at the podium at the Manchester Royal Eye Hospital Conference, surrounded by clinicians, researchers, and patients, one theme echoed through every conversation: burnout affects both patients and professionals.

I wasn’t there as a Doctor.

I was there as someone who had lived the system from the inside out — as a patient, a practitioner, and a woman who once lost her health, only to find her way back through understanding the nervous system’s wisdom.

The message I carried was simple:

“Our health system cannot heal if its people cannot rest.”

Because when our healers are exhausted, our patients feel it.

When our systems are overwhelmed, the people within them begin to mirror that stress in their own bodies.

The Body Keeps the Score — and the System Does Too

For decades, medicine has separated the body and mind. But neuroscience and psychoneuroimmunology now confirm what many of us have long felt — chronic stress reshapes our biology.

Trauma isn’t just an emotional imprint.

It’s a physiological legacy, written into our cells, immune function, and hormones.

Dr. Gabor Maté writes:

“When the body says no, it’s not betraying you — it’s protecting you.”

Autoimmune conditions are one of the most striking examples of this.

When our system has been on alert for too long, the immune response that once kept us safe begins to misfire. The body no longer knows where danger ends and safety begins.

This is not self-attack.

It’s self-protection gone on too long.

From Survival to Safety

As I recovered from my own autoimmune condition, I began to understand what my body had been trying to tell me all along.

It wasn’t broken — it was communicating.

The fatigue, the inflammation, the anxiety — all of it were messages from a system stuck in survival.

When we begin to work with the nervous system — through breath, sound, gentle movement, and emotional integration — something remarkable happens: the body starts to remember safety.

In my coaching work and through the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine’s Voices of Lived Experience team, I advocate for bringing this understanding into mainstream healthcare. Because healing doesn’t begin with protocols; it begins with permission — to rest, to listen, and to feel.

The Polyvagal Lens

Polyvagal Theory helps us understand how the body moves between states of safety, stress, and shutdown. It gives language to what many of us sense but cannot name — that our bodies respond to life far before our minds do.

When your system learns that constant vigilance is necessary, it becomes the baseline.

And yet, with gentle practice, you can re-educate the body to experience calm without collapse — and connection without fear.

This is why somatic tools matter.

Why sound, breath, and stillness are not luxuries, but medicine.

The People-Pleaser’s Disease

For many living with autoimmune or chronic fatigue, the story begins not with stress at work — but with childhood conditioning.

People-pleasing often masquerades as kindness. But beneath it lies a nervous system that once learned:

“If I am good, I am safe.”

That pattern of over-care, over-responsibility, and self-abandonment is exhausting. And over time, it teaches the body that belonging requires suppression — of needs, of boundaries, of truth.

But healing asks us to turn toward ourselves.

To remember that boundaries are not rejection — they’re regulation.

What if setting boundaries is the most healing act you’ll ever perform?

From Awareness to Agency

The most powerful shift I see — both in myself and my clients — is not in symptom reduction, but in the reclamation of agency.

To move from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What is my body asking of me?”

To shift from self-blame to self-leadership.

When we integrate the science of the nervous system with the wisdom of lived experience, we create a bridge — one that reconnects the mind and body, the clinician and patient, the human and the system.

And that’s where true healthcare reform begins.

Go Deeper: The Body Remembers

In my paid Substack community, I’m sharing a deeper dives into exploring how education and practice can help you teach your body what safety feels like again. Join me on Substack – The Journal by Emma Toms to access guided practices, journal prompts, and embodied teachings.

Continue Exploring

Read my latest expert feature on Brainz Magazine — exploring integrative wellness, stress physiology, and trauma-informed care.

Visit my column on Expert Profile for professional insights, event updates, and media appearances.

Learn more about my work with the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine’s Voices of Lived Experience initiative here.

Because healing the system begins with healing ourselves.