The body remembers what the mind forgives

For years after getting clean, my body didn't believe I was safe. I'd be sitting in a meeting at work — sober, employed, functioning — and my hands would start shaking. Not the tremor of withdrawal. The tremor of a nervous system that had been stuck in survival mode for so long it forgot how to stand down.

My therapist called it hypervigilance. I called it being broken in a way that nobody could see. The stigma of addiction had taught me to hide, and I'd gotten so good at hiding that I was invisible even to myself.