COVID-19: Are You Still Holding Onto Trauma?

Listen to the full episode.

It’s been years since lockdowns, restrictions, uncertainty, and constant “breaking news” became part of everyday life. For some people, the pandemic feels like a chapter that’s closed. For others, it’s more complicated. You might think you’re fine — yet your body tells a different story through fatigue, anxiety, gut issues, sleep disruption, body pain, mood swings, or that constant sense of being on edge.

In Episode 157, Chris and Filly explore a powerful question: are you still holding onto COVID-19 trauma in your mind-body? Not in a dramatic, obvious way — but in the subtle ways trauma can linger and quietly contribute to Ending Body Burnout, chronic symptoms, and feeling like you’re never fully “back to normal”.

This is a conversation that sits right at the intersection of Holistic Health, Root Cause Medicine, and Mind Body Medicine. Because trauma isn’t just a memory. It can be a physiological imprint — a nervous system pattern — and it can shape your health and wellness long after the event has passed.

Why Anniversaries Can Trigger Symptoms (Even If You Feel “Fine”)

One of the most validating ideas Chris and Filly share is that anniversaries of distressing events can show up in the body, even when consciously you feel okay.

Your logical mind might say, “That was ages ago.” But your nervous system doesn’t track time the same way. It tracks cues — seasons, smells, dates, songs, headlines, weather, even the angle of light at a certain time of year. These cues can unconsciously remind the body of a period when it didn’t feel safe.

This is why someone might notice a flare of symptoms around the same time each year: fatigue, insomnia, irritability, low mood, digestive changes, inflammation, or a sudden dip in motivation. It’s not you being “weak”. It’s your system remembering.

In integrative medicine, we often see that the body holds patterns until it has enough safety and support to release them. Anniversaries can be a moment when those patterns rise to the surface — not to punish you, but to be processed.

The Collective Trauma of the Pandemic (Even If You Didn’t Get Sick)

When people hear “trauma,” they often think it only counts if something extreme happened personally. But the pandemic created layers of collective stress that affected almost everyone in some way.

Chris and Filly talk about how the collective experienced trauma during COVID-19, including:

Uncertainty and loss of control

Not knowing what was coming next, what rules would change, what the future would look like — that’s a nervous system stressor. Humans are wired to seek predictability. When predictability disappears, the body can stay in high alert.

Social disconnection

Isolation, separation from family, missing milestones, disrupted community — for many people, this was deeply destabilising. Connection is a biological need, not a luxury.

Fear-based messaging and constant threat cues

Daily case numbers, warnings, debates, and alarm — even if you weren’t consciously afraid, your nervous system was swimming in threat signals.

Grief and cumulative loss

Some people lost loved ones. Others lost jobs, identity, routine, confidence, health, time, or a sense of safety in the world. Even “small” losses can accumulate and become heavy.

Moral pressure and social tension

For many, there was stress around doing the “right” thing, fear of judgement, conflict with friends or family, and the feeling of walking on eggshells socially.

All of this matters in Burnout Functional Medicine and Holistic Wellness because chronic stress and trauma can change the way your body functions — hormones, digestion, immune response, inflammation, and energy production.

How Trauma Gets “Stuck” in the Body

A key theme in this episode is that trauma isn’t just psychological. Trauma is what happens when the nervous system experiences more stress than it can process at the time.

When the body doesn’t get to complete a stress response — when you can’t fight, flee, speak up, cry, move, or metabolise what’s happening — that energy can remain “stuck”. Not as a single thing, but as a pattern: hypervigilance, shutdown, tension, dissociation, overthinking, people-pleasing, or chronic busyness.

From a Mind Body Medicine perspective, the body can hold trauma through:

• muscle tension and bracing
• shallow breathing patterns
• gut motility changes
• sleep disruption
• heightened startle response
• inflammation and immune activation
• persistent fatigue (as a protective “slow down”)

This is why someone can be “past it” mentally, but still feel like their body is stuck in survival mode. Healing from within often requires working with the nervous system, not just the story.

Clues You Might Still Be Holding Unprocessed COVID Trauma

Chris and Filly share clues that your mind-body may still be holding onto unprocessed COVID trauma. These aren’t diagnostic labels — they’re patterns to get curious about.

1. Your body still feels unsafe, even when life is calm

You might notice you’re always scanning for what could go wrong. You can’t fully relax. You feel wired at night. You’re easily startled or irritable.

2. Your fatigue doesn’t match your current life

You’re not doing as much as you used to, yet you still feel exhausted. Rest doesn’t feel restorative. You wake up tired.

3. Your sleep is light or broken

You fall asleep but wake at 2–4am. Or you sleep but don’t feel like you’ve truly dropped into deep rest.

4. Your gut is more sensitive than it used to be

Bloating, constipation, diarrhoea, reflux, nausea, food sensitivities — the gut is deeply connected to the nervous system, and stress can change digestion fast.

5. You’ve lost your spark

You feel flat, unmotivated, or like joy is muted. You’re functioning, but not thriving.

6. You’ve become more controlling or perfectionistic

After a period of uncertainty, the nervous system often tries to regain safety through control: rigid routines, over-researching health, fear of making mistakes, or needing certainty before you act.

7. You avoid certain topics, places, or conversations

Avoidance can be a sign the nervous system still associates something with threat. It’s not weakness — it’s protection.

These clues matter because they point to root patterns. And Root Cause Medicine is about addressing patterns, not just chasing symptoms.

How COVID Trauma Can Contribute to Body Burnout and Chronic Health Issues

When the nervous system stays in survival mode for too long, it can affect multiple body systems. This is where integrative medicine and functional nutrition become incredibly useful — because you can support the physiology while you also work with the deeper stress imprint.

Some common pathways include:

Stress hormones and adrenal signalling

Long-term stress can dysregulate cortisol rhythms, leaving you tired in the morning, wired at night, or crashing mid-afternoon.

Inflammation and immune activation

Chronic stress can increase inflammatory signalling. For some people, this shows up as body pain, headaches, skin flares, autoimmune flares, or feeling generally “inflamed”.

Gut-brain axis disruption

The gut and nervous system are in constant communication. When stress is high, digestion often changes — which can then affect mood, energy, and nutrient absorption.

Mitochondrial downshifting

When the body perceives ongoing threat, it may conserve energy. This can look like chronic fatigue that doesn’t respond to the usual basics.

Nervous system shutdown

Some people don’t stay in fight-or-flight. They drop into shutdown: numbness, low motivation, brain fog, disconnection, and that “I can’t” feeling.

This is why healing naturally often requires a whole body health approach — not just one supplement, one diet, or one mindset shift.

How to Start Moving Trauma Through the Body (Gently)

Chris and Filly mention that this is part one, and there’s more coming in part two. But even from this episode, the direction is clear: start with safety, not force.

Here are gentle starting points aligned with Mind Body Medicine and Holistic Health:

Create micro-moments of safety daily

Safety isn’t a big event. It’s repetition. A few minutes of slow breathing, grounding, sunlight, or quiet can teach the nervous system that the present is different from the past.

Let the body complete stress cycles

Movement helps. Walking, shaking, stretching, dancing, gentle strength work — not as punishment, but as completion.

Name what your body is doing without judgement

Instead of “I’m broken,” try “My nervous system is protecting me.” That shift alone can reduce internal threat.

Support the physiology with functional nutrition

Protein, minerals, hydration, blood sugar stability, and gut support can reduce the overall load. Nutrition and wellness basics matter more than ever when the nervous system is taxed.

Get curious about triggers and anniversaries

If symptoms flare at certain times of year, treat it as information. Your body may be asking for processing, not pushing.

If you want support with both the physical and the deeper nervous system patterns that keep you stuck, that’s exactly what the Ending Body Burnout Method is designed for — a blend of functional testing, functional nutrition, and deeper root-cause work to support healing from within.

A Gentle Next Step If This Hit Home

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yep… that’s me,” you don’t have to figure it out alone. If you’d like help connecting the dots between your symptoms, your stress history, and what your body is asking for now, you’re warmly invited to book a Discovery Call or connect the dots with us. It’s a supportive, no-pressure way to explore what might help you move forward.

Listen to the full episode.

Chris & Filipa Bellette are the Founders of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, which is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood and gut issues. They have worked with over 3,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 30+ years, with their own passion for ending body burnout coming from their own personal experience of body, mind, family & business breakdown, after a prolonged period of physical and mental stress.

Filipa is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a Ph.D. Scholar, author & regularly featured the media, such as Forbes, Body+Soul and The Daily Telegraph. Chris is a Burnout Recovery Coach & an accredited Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, with a Bachelor of Human Movement Science. He has existed in high-performance realms of the sporting (think national athlete) & business industries and knows what it takes to get out of hustle-and-grind culture to thriving. 

They were recently awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards.