What “Playing Catch” Can Teach Us About the Body, Safety, and Letting Go

There’s something deceptively simple about playing catch.

You watch the ball leave the other person’s hand. Your eyes track its movement. Your body subtly adjusts. Your hands meet the ball at just the right moment, and then you let it go again.

Most of us don’t think about any of this. The body just knows what to do.

But when you slow it down, playing catch offers a surprisingly accurate picture of how the nervous system works when it feels safe enough to stay present.

Alertness Is Not the Same as Survival Mode

When you play catch, your system is alert. Your attention is engaged. Your body is responsive.

But you’re not braced.

There’s no urgency. No hypervigilance. No sense that something bad is about to happen if you miss the ball.

This distinction matters. Many trauma survivors live in a state where alertness has tipped into survival mode. The body is constantly scanning, preparing, and reacting, even when there is no immediate danger.

From the outside, this can look like competence or high functioning. Internally, it often feels like tension, fatigue, or never quite being able to settle.

Tracking the Body vs. Trusting the Body

In trauma work, people are often encouraged to “notice the body.” While this can be helpful, there’s an important difference between tracking the body and trusting it.

Tracking can become another form of monitoring. Another task to perform correctly. Another way to stay vigilant.

Trusting the body is different. It’s experiential rather than evaluative.

Playing catch requires trust. You don’t analyze every movement. You don’t micromanage your breath or posture. You allow your body to respond in real time.

For many trauma survivors, this kind of trust feels unfamiliar. Letting go of control can feel unsafe, even when nothing bad is happening.

Why Letting Go Can Feel Threatening

In environments where safety was unpredictable, staying ready mattered. Letting your guard down didn’t feel like an option.

Over time, the nervous system learned that vigilance was necessary. That holding on was safer than releasing. That staying prepared mattered more than staying present.

This is why practices that ask people to “relax,” “drop in,” or “surrender” can actually increase anxiety. The body isn’t resisting healing. It’s protecting against overwhelm.

Just like you wouldn’t throw a ball harder and harder at someone who’s already overwhelmed, the nervous system needs pacing and permission, not force.

How Trauma Shows Up Without Us Noticing

Many people move through their lives operating in this heightened state without realizing what’s happening internally.

That isn’t surprising when you consider how trauma is commonly understood. Trauma is often associated only with major, obvious events. Subtler, ongoing experiences are frequently overlooked.

What’s often missed is that trauma is not only about what happened. It’s also about what didn’t happen.

The moments of developmental repair that were absent. The attunement that never arrived. The protection, guidance, or reassurance that wasn’t consistently available.

When those experiences are missing, the nervous system adapts anyway. Not because something went wrong, but because survival required it.

Learning Safety Through Experience, Not Effort

Healing doesn’t come from forcing the body to calm down. It comes from creating conditions where safety can be felt.

Just like playing catch, this happens through repetition, timing, and responsiveness. The nervous system learns through experience, not instruction.

In trauma-informed, body-based therapy, the work is not about fixing or overriding survival responses. It’s about helping the body recognize when it no longer has to brace.

Over time, responsiveness replaces reactivity. Presence replaces monitoring. Letting go becomes possible because safety is no longer hypothetical. It’s felt.

A Closing Reflection

Playing catch reminds us that the body already knows how to be in relationship with the present moment.

Healing isn’t about teaching the body something new.
It’s about removing the conditions that kept it from trusting what it already knows.

And when safety becomes real, letting go no longer feels like a risk.

A Gentle Invitation

If you’re curious about how body-based, trauma-informed therapy supports nervous system safety, you’re welcome to explore that conversation further.

Reading can bring insight. Healing happens with support.

The next step is simple:

Schedule a free consultation