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What does it take to thaw a nervous system that's been frozen since childhood? In a powerful conversation on the Neurogenic Integration podcast, Svava Brooks shares her remarkable journey from what people called "the ice queen" to someone she now describes as the "Queen of Hearts." As a TRE (Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises) provider based in Reykjavik, Iceland, Svava's story offers profound insights into the nature of developmental trauma and the path toward nervous system regulation and embodied healing.

With an ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) score of 8 out of 10, Svava had experienced significant childhood trauma that left her living in what she describes as "functional freeze" for most of her life. Despite trying countless therapeutic approaches over two decades, it wasn't until she discovered TRE in 2015 that her body finally found a way to release decades of held tension and begin the journey toward true regulation. Her story isn't just one of personal transformation—it's a roadmap for anyone working with developmental trauma, whether as a practitioner or on their own healing journey.

1. The Push-Pull of Beginning: When Your Body Both Wants and Resists Healing

Svava describes a phenomenon that many trauma survivors will recognize: the simultaneous pull toward healing and the resistance against it. When she first discovered TRE through an online video, her response was visceral and immediate—her body literally pulled her toward the practice. Yet when she began the work, she encountered an equally strong internal "no" that made it difficult to practice alone.

This push-pull dynamic reflects what happens in a nervous system that has been organized around survival for decades. Part of Svava's system recognized that TRE offered something it desperately needed—a way to discharge chronic tension and shift out of freeze. But another part, the protective mechanisms that had kept her safe through childhood trauma, perceived the work as potentially dangerous. Her body would literally lock up during tremoring sessions, her thighs and chest seizing rather than releasing. This wasn't resistance in a psychological sense; it was her nervous system doing exactly what it had learned to do: freeze when threatened.

Understanding this dynamic is crucial for both practitioners and individuals working with trauma. The resistance isn't something to overcome or push through—it's information about how slowly and carefully the nervous system needs to be approached. Svava's experience validates that healing doesn't happen in a straight line, and that what looks like "not working" is often the nervous system carefully testing whether it's truly safe to let go. For practitioners, this highlights the importance of normalizing these protective responses rather than pathologizing them, and for individuals, it offers permission to honor their own pace of unfolding.

2. The Marriage of TRE and Self-Compassion: Building Safety from Within

One of the most significant insights from Svava's journey was her discovery that TRE needed to be paired with practices that cultivated internal safety and self-compassion. Around the same time she found TRE, she attended a workshop with Dr. Kristin Neff, a leading researcher in self-compassion, and learned about the relationship between self-compassion and the oxytocin system. This was revelatory: the same part of her nervous system that had protected her through dissociation was also the pathway to feeling care, nurture, and trust.

For an entire year, Svava committed to a simple practice: placing her hand on her heart three times a day when her phone alarm rang. At first, the practice felt foreign and almost embarrassing—she describes rolling her eyes at how "American" it seemed. But she trusted the research and gave herself permission to experiment. Over months, she began to actually feel the warmth of her own hand, to sense genuine self-kindness arising. She started asking herself three questions rooted in self-compassion: Am I being kind to myself or judging myself? Am I connected to my humanity? Am I present and mindful, or spinning in my head?

This practice became the foundation that allowed her TRE work to deepen. Self-compassion wasn't just a nice addition to her trauma healing—it was essential infrastructure. It helped her negotiate with her body when it wanted to lock up, to reassure her nervous system that discomfort wasn't danger, and to stay present with difficult sensations rather than dissociating. The combination of TRE's bottom-up somatic release with self-compassion's cultivation of internal safety and warmth created conditions for genuine nervous system reorganization. For practitioners, this highlights the value of integrating practices that directly activate the ventral vagal (social engagement) system alongside practices that release stored activation. For individuals, it offers a concrete, research-backed tool that can be practiced daily to support any healing work.

3. A Thousand Little Steps: The Reality of Healing from Functional Freeze

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of Svava's story is her honest description of what healing from developmental trauma actually looks like. She uses the metaphor of "a thousand little Lego pieces" to describe her path from the peak of sympathetic activation down into social engagement and regulated presence. This wasn't a dramatic transformation that happened in weeks or even months—it was a two-year concentrated journey, followed by ongoing deepening that continues today.

Svava describes starting from a place where she had no blueprint for safety, secure attachment, or genuine rest. These weren't just psychological concepts she didn't understand—they were literal neurological states her nervous system had never experienced. She was building neural pathways from scratch, teaching her body what safety feels like, what it means to receive warmth and connection, whether it's actually okay to let her guard down. Each tiny shift—a slightly longer pause between tremoring, a moment of actually tasting food rather than just eating it, the ability to hold eye contact without internal panic—represented genuine neurological change.

What made this possible was Svava's willingness to go "slower than slow." She learned to tremor in small doses, always with someone nearby for co-regulation. She practiced stopping frequently, using the pause not just as a safety measure but as an active practice of self-regulation. She learned to listen to her body's feedback and adjust accordingly, even when that meant barely tremoring at all in some sessions. This approach challenges the "more is better" mentality that often creeps into healing work and honors the reality that developmental trauma requires developmental repair—building capacity layer by layer, moment by moment. For practitioners, this underscores the importance of emphasizing self-regulation over discharge, and for individuals, it offers permission to honor their own pace without feeling like they're "not doing it right."

4. The ACE Study and Understanding Trauma's Impact on the Body

A pivotal moment in Svava's journey was learning about the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, which she first encountered at a trauma conference in San Diego in 2006. The ACE Study, conducted with 17,000 middle-class Americans over 15 years, revealed the direct correlation between childhood trauma and later-life health problems including heart disease, hypertension, and other high-risk illnesses. With her ACE score of 8 out of 10, Svava was told she had effectively lost 20 years of her life expectancy.

Rather than being paralyzed by this information, Svava describes it as "a kick to the gut" that galvanized her commitment to taking responsibility for her health. The ACE Study gave her a framework for understanding that her chronic migraines, muscle tension, stomach issues, and other stress-related symptoms weren't character flaws or psychological weakness—they were the predictable result of a nervous system organized around survival. The study validated her experience and made clear that healing wasn't optional; it was essential for her longevity and quality of life.

What's particularly powerful about Svava sharing this is how it normalizes the profound impact of childhood trauma on the body. Many people with high ACE scores feel shame about their physical symptoms or believe something is fundamentally wrong with them. Understanding the ACE research helps shift this from self-blame to self-compassion—recognizing that the body is responding exactly as it's designed to respond when subjected to chronic stress and trauma. For practitioners, familiarity with the ACE Study is essential for helping clients understand their symptoms in context. For individuals, learning their ACE score and understanding the research can be both sobering and liberating—offering clarity about why certain patterns persist and motivation to engage in somatic healing practices that can literally change the trajectory of one's health.

5. From Bulldozer to Heart-Centered: The Transformation of Relationships

One of the most poignant aspects of Svava's healing journey is how it transformed her relationships, particularly with her children. She describes her pre-TRE self as productive but harsh—"kind of a bulldozer" who would push through stress by running and fighting until she collapsed. Her children would sometimes look at her with fear, and she could see herself becoming the kind of parent she never wanted to be. The protective strategies that had kept her safe as a child were now harming the people she loved most.

The shift that occurred through her TRE and self-compassion practice was profound. Svava describes becoming "a completely different mom"—soft, silly, playful, generous, unbothered by messes, filled with joy. She learned to love herself, which meant she could model self-love for her children. She recognized that healing the six-year-old version of herself inside was essential to being the parent she wanted to be. This wasn't just psychological insight—it was the result of her nervous system literally reorganizing, moving from chronic sympathetic activation and freeze into ventral vagal social engagement.

The transformation extended beyond parenting to all her relationships. Where she had once been disconnected from joy, she began experiencing genuine pleasure in simple things like eating food. Where she had kept people at arm's length, she found herself genuinely loving people and creating safety for them to share their stories. She even ended her marriage, recognizing that the patterns that had brought them together were no longer the foundation for who she was becoming. And she discovered creativity—painting and drawing became daily practices that brought immense joy. These weren't just lifestyle changes; they were evidence of a nervous system that had moved from survival mode into a state where connection, pleasure, creativity, and authentic choice became possible. Her story offers hope that transformation isn't just about managing symptoms—it's about reclaiming the full capacity to live, love, and create.

6. Co-Regulation and Community: Why Healing Doesn't Happen Alone

Throughout her journey, Svava emphasizes a crucial point that's often overlooked in individualistic approaches to healing: she couldn't do TRE alone, at least not at first. Her body simply wouldn't allow it—when she tried to practice by herself, she would "black out," dissociate completely. What she discovered was that she needed the co-regulating presence of another person, even if they were just in the next room watching TV. Having someone nearby—hearing their voice, knowing they were there—provided the external safety cue her nervous system needed to begin releasing.

This insight led Svava to become a strong advocate for peer practice among TRE providers and practitioners. Since 2019, she has maintained a regular practice of meeting with a colleague two to three times a month to hold space for each other's tremoring. She describes being "blown away" by how impactful this ongoing, consistent practice has been for her body, nervous system, and depth of tremoring. She now tells students that if there's one thing she wishes she'd known earlier, it's to do as many peer swaps as possible—not just for skill development, but because the co-regulation itself is crucial to the healing process.

This emphasis on co-regulation aligns with polyvagal theory's insight that safety is inherently relational. Our nervous systems evolved to regulate in the context of safe connection with others, and healing from trauma often requires rebuilding that capacity for co-regulation before we can fully self-regulate. For practitioners, this highlights the importance of offering ongoing group classes and peer support, not just individual sessions. It also validates the instinct many trauma survivors have that they need support to do this work—that instinct isn't weakness, it's wisdom. For individuals, Svava's experience offers permission to seek out connection and support, whether through classes, peer practice, or simply having a trusted person nearby. Healing happens in relationship, and acknowledging our need for that connection is itself a sign of nervous system health, not dysfunction.

Conclusion

Svava Brooks' journey from "ice queen" to "Queen of Hearts" is more than an inspiring personal story—it's a detailed map of what healing from developmental trauma through somatic practices can actually look like. Her experience illuminates several essential truths: that healing requires patience and self-compassion, that the nervous system's protective responses deserve respect rather than override, that co-regulation is not optional but essential, and that transformation, when it comes, touches every aspect of life—from parenting to creativity to capacity for joy.

For trauma-informed practitioners, Svava's story offers valuable guidance on how to support clients with developmental trauma: emphasizing self-regulation over discharge, normalizing protective responses, integrating practices that build internal safety, and creating opportunities for co-regulation. For individuals on their own healing journey, her story offers something perhaps even more valuable: hope grounded in honest reality. The path isn't quick or linear, but it is possible. The body does have the capacity to reorganize, to learn safety, to open to connection and joy—even after decades of trauma.

Today, Svava is bringing this work to Iceland, training new providers and building a community where TRE and somatic healing can become accessible to everyone from trauma survivors to healthcare professionals. Her vision of having a TRE provider in every town around Iceland reflects her understanding that this work isn't just for individuals—it's for communities, particularly those carrying historical and collective trauma. As she continues to teach and hold space for others' healing, she embodies the transformation she describes: living with an open heart, connected to her body, able to be present with both vulnerability and joy. Her journey reminds us that healing is possible, one small Lego piece at a time.