Trauma: What Everyone Needs to Know Ft. Zara Maqbool

I sit down with Zara Maqbool again today, a psychotherapist I have had on the podcast before and someone I always learn so much from. This time we are talking about trauma. Not only the big, loud events we immediately think of, but the quiet, everyday experiences that shape us. It is a conversation about why we react the way we do, why our bodies hold onto pain, and how we can start to listen to ourselves with a little more kindness. Zara brings so much warmth and plain honesty to a topic that can feel heavy, and I think this episode is going to land in a lot of hearts.

Not just the big life events

The first thing Zara wants us to unlearn is the idea that trauma is only what happens when someone dies, when parents divorce, or when there is a history of abuse. She says the word has been reserved for major catastrophes, but that misses so much. “A simple incident of being bullied in school can be traumatic,” she tells me. It is not about the event alone. It is about whether a child is left feeling helpless, without a safe space to speak. For one child, not being able to share their dil ki baat, their heart’s truth, with their parents can be the beginning of a story their body carries for decades. Every child is different, and so is every impact.

The body keeps score

Zara explains that childhood stress does not just sit in the mind. It changes the brain. The stress hormone cortisol can shrink the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory. That is why so many adults feel like they cannot remember big chunks of their childhood. “Your body is telling you something you experienced and it is frozen in your body,” she says. “Just because you don’t remember it and acknowledge it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” The body stores trauma as procedural memory. Physical symptoms, stomach issues, constant shoulder pain, unexplained anxiety. These are not random. They are the body saying: wake up, give me attention. This is where Zara brings in the book The Body Keeps the Score, a title she mentions with so much conviction. The science is clear: the mind and body are not separate.

When the thinking brain goes offline

One of the most liberating things Zara offers in this conversation is the permission to stop blaming ourselves for our reactions. When we are triggered, our limbic system hijacks us. The thinking brain, the prefrontal cortex, literally goes offline. So in a fight with your partner, if you find yourself shutting down or exploding, that is not a character flaw. “It’s biology,” Zara says plainly. “The woman in a freeze state, just quietly listening, is not choosing that. It’s her nervous system.” Understanding this changes everything. Instead of demanding your partner understand you in the middle of a heated moment, you can learn to call a timeout, let your nervous systems settle, and come back when the thinking brain is back online. It takes just a few minutes, but it can rewire how you fight.

What this means for parenting (and for us as adults)

We talk about tantrums, and Zara gives me a reframe that I have not stopped thinking about. When a child is having a meltdown, their rational brain is not working. They are flooded with threat, their heart racing, their face red. Teaching them a lesson in that moment does not work. They need comfort, a physical presence, a hug. They need you to co-regulate with them. Zara gently suggests that a child who is ignored so that the behavior is “discouraged” is a child whose inner alarm system is only getting louder. And honestly, the same applies to us. When we are deeply upset, we do not need a lecture from our partner about what we did wrong. We need a soft landing first. The lesson can come later.

The pressure our kids carry

I ask Zara about teen suicide, something we are hearing about in Pakistan with heartbreaking frequency. She tells me about a student who recently reached out to her, and she connects it all back to the overwhelming pressure we put on children. She shares her own story of O Levels, how the fear of not getting an A made her lose her appetite, lose weight, and feel like her life would be over. “The narrative that if you don’t do well in O Levels, your whole life is ruined, I call absolute BS,” she says. “I went through that, and alhamdulillah, I’m doing well now.” She wants parents and society to let go of this lie. A child who feels that their whole worth depends on a transcript will collapse under that weight. The black-and-white thinking of a child becomes a story of being all bad, and that is a terrifying place to live.

Comparison, validation, and coming home to yourself

Zara and I also unpack comparison, that exhausting loop of looking at someone else’s life and feeling less than. “Kisi ke paas zyada nahin hai, different hai,” she says. It is not that they have more, it is that they have different. And we have been conditioned since childhood, compared to cousins and classmates, to scan outside ourselves for proof that we are okay. I share that I am in a place now where I am celebrating my own mental health, not waiting for someone’s validation to feel whole. “The best line should be that I am enough for myself,” Zara says. That is not a cliché. It is a practiced skill of coming back to your own body, your own story, and deciding that you are not at the mercy of anyone else’s words.

Small steps to regulate yourself

Before we end, Zara offers practical, gentle steps for anyone who cannot access therapy but wants to begin tending to their trauma. First, simply acknowledge the pain. Say to yourself: I am hurting, and this matters. Second, notice how it lives in your body. The nausea, the tightness, the fatigue. Third, manage whatever external stress you can. Sometimes that means recognizing what is not in your control and pouring your energy into what is. Fourth, notice the power you are giving to others and find a way to regulate yourself in the moment. Even a simple five, four, three, two, one grounding exercise, or holding ice, or hugging your child can bring your nervous system down. It is not a one time fix. It is a practice of reconditioning the responses your body learned to survive. Zara reminds me that you can extend that gap between stimulus and response, not by force, but by repeatedly choosing to pause.

I hope this conversation makes you feel a little less alone in whatever your body has been carrying. You are not too much. You are not broken. You are a person with a story, and that story can be held with so much softness.