Do You Really Store Stress in Your Body?

If you get enough back aches, someone will eventually tell you that’s where your body stores stress. If your stomach hurts, you’ll hear the same thing: Your emotions are trapped in your belly.

But what does that mean? Is your anxiety about work or money really coursing through your body and nestling into your organs and limbs?

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The idea that stress is stored in specific parts of the body likely comes from Sigmund Freud’s work more than 100 years ago. “There was this idea that when people repress or deny their emotions, those emotions would appear as physical symptoms instead,” says Camelia Hostinar, an associate professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Davis. “And if you acknowledge those emotions, that would treat the symptoms, and the symptoms would disappear.” As scientists have learned more about stress, however, it’s become clear that such thinking is too simplistic, she says. Rather than causing us to store anger in our back, or fear in our stomach, stress triggers a dynamic whole-body response—and it happens not just when people repress their emotions, but even if they’re fully aware of them.

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