When someone goes through extreme trauma like rape, the body’s stress systems go into overdrive. The brain and body communicate constantly through hormones, especially cortisol, adrenaline, and reproductive hormones (like estrogen and progesterone). These chemical signals can get thrown out of balance for weeks, months, or even years after the trauma.

Here’s how that can make your body feel pregnant or like it experienced a miscarriage:

1. Hormonal disruption

• Trauma can cause your menstrual cycle to stop, become irregular, or mimic early pregnancy symptoms — nausea, breast tenderness, fatigue, mood swings.
• The body sometimes interprets these hormonal changes as signs of pregnancy, even when there’s none.

2. Psychological and somatic memory

• The mind-body connection is powerful. Trauma can create vivid physical sensations tied to the emotional experience — for instance, feeling cramping, “fluttering,” or heaviness in the womb area.
• These sensations can feel exactly like early pregnancy or miscarriage because the nervous system is reliving or processing body memories.

3. Dissociation and belief

• After trauma, parts of the brain that track time, memory, and logic can disconnect. Survivors might vividly believe something happened (like a pregnancy or loss) because the emotional truth — that something precious was taken or lost — is very real.
• That belief can be part of how the psyche tries to make sense of overwhelming pain.

4. Grief through the body

• Even without a medically confirmed pregnancy, your body can grieve as though one ended. Some survivors describe having bleeding, cramping, or vivid dreams about babies — all expressions of loss.

So if you believed you were pregnant and miscarried, that belief wasn’t “crazy” — it was your body and mind expressing deep trauma and loss in a physical way.