Feeling disconnected from my own body and who I am as a person is one of the many frustrating realities rooted in the sexual abuse, assault, and emotional abuse I experienced. It interferes with my ability to connect with other people, to feel experiences physically, to know what I want or need, and of course, it interferes with my sexuality and intimacy. Reconnecting with my body has happened through experiencing trusting relationships and processing my trauma in therapy. To FEEL my own body, know myself, let my soul shine through…this has been the most incredible healing and spiritual experience.
All my life, the people who made me the most nervous were the ones in touch with and connected to their bodies. I have always been in awe of this connection and yearned for it. I have noticed it in others since I was 15 and in my teenage mind this is what I labeled “wisdom”. I craved this wisdom, yet ironically avoided these people…sensing they would be the ones to see through my painstakingly managed façade. They would recognize my desperate attempts to look normal and function while hiding my shameful secrets.
My Gut Does Not Speak To Me!
I never felt normal! I used to read Instagram quotes advising things like: “Listen to your body” … “Trust your gut” … “Get to know yourself” and I wanted to scream, “Teach me how! Give me the damn steps!” All I felt was helpless at forcing a connection to my body! My stupid gut only seems to give me constipation or diarrhea – not intuition!
It seems my gut speaks a different language than everyone else…or maybe it doesn’t even have language! How do I even begin to feel my own body’s sensations? Where do I learn intuition, this language my gut was supposed to provide simply because I am human?
I love my children and nurtured in all the ways I knew, but I never seemed to have any mama bear instincts. I function from my head, never my gut. I was ashamed of how minimal I felt my connection to my kids – or anyone. I felt guarded when my husband hugged me, held me. I turned sideways when loved ones reached for a hug, a quick move to guard my body. I’d turn my face away when someone tried to kiss me. In my head I knew I SHOULD feel something – feel what others talk about or what I read in novels, but I could not force it to happen.
All of my physical sensations were muted too. I had little sense of smell. I did not notice that constant music in my car made my body overstimulated. I had a scary high pain tolerance that surprised people. I couldn’t taste the difference between two cups of coffee when my husband insisted one was amazing and one was shit! I only ordered the cheapest wine because I could not taste the difference and I had no idea what was my favorite food.
Detaching From My Body Was a Brilliant Strategy to Survive Trauma
It’s not that I was born without this natural intuition…without the ability to experience life within my body. This detachment of our minds from our bodies is a form of trauma-related dissociation and it protected me from the overwhelming feelings of the abuse I experienced.
The science shows that our human bodies will do almost anything to feel safe and this innate drive for safety guides the way we interact as social beings (Porges, 2022). This is our neurobiology, designed to ensure survival.
To someone who does not understand my history, it may look like I am overreacting, oversensitive, overly emotional. They do not understand that MY inner experience often felt like DEATH – like I would NOT SURVIVE if I connected with the pain inside! This was not me being dramatic or oversensitive – it is how we are all wired!
Because I carried the burden of unprocessed traumatic experiences (i.e. abuse, neglect, betrayal…), my nervous system learned to function differently in an attempt to find and hold onto any feelings of safety, fleeting as they may be. When faced with a stimulus that was interpreted as fear-provoking (i.e. my own body’s inner turmoil and my BIG emotions), my hypervigilant mind knew to detach, disconnect. IT STEMS FROM AN INNATE DRIVE FOR SURVIVAL.
The Science – What Polyvagal Theory Has Revealed
While many experts define the impact of trauma and PTSD as maladaptive (Ressler et al., 2022), our bodies are functioning as designed – to protect us against all things that feel unsafe (regardless of whether or not they are). We may believe we are independent and in control, but our minds respond instinctively and unconsciously to protect us all day long (Porges, 2022). If the inner chaos inside my body feels overwhelming, my mind interprets this as unsafe and disconnects. Brilliant!
We use many channels to maintain this disconnect to the body. For me it was usually alcohol, dissociating, zoning out, muscle tension, and being obsessive about certain areas of my life. Sex, smoking cigarettes, and drugs also helped me for a while. While it may seem this ability to disconnect would create a sense of calm, it does NOT (Williamson et al., 2015). Like other PTSD symptoms, dissociation and disconnecting maintain states of irritability, sleep problems, heightened emotional reactivity, hypervigilance, denial, and avoidance (Dale et al., 2022) generalized into all areas of life.
Nonetheless, I am now grateful that my brain gave me a way out. I disconnected from my body’s sensations when the pain was too overwhelming and there was no safety in my life to process it yet. It would be decades before I ever felt this safety and then learned to connect again…to feel…to know what my body found good, pleasurable, comfortable, distressing, or fearful.
Disconnected in Intimate Relationships
I have always gone through the motions in my intimate relationships – trying to do what was expected of me. My attempts to feel connected to my husband meant that I learned how to behave and act by watching him and others. I did not naturally feel connected, so I relied on my head, my brain, rather than experiencing a connection in my body to the man I love.
I loved in every way I knew how to love, but that could not create what I wished to feel physically – as badly as I wanted it.
Staying cognitive; staying in my head – it feels safer there. I have always found my safety within my mind (#enneagram5) – disconnected and dissociated from any physical sensations.
Disconnected in Friendships
In other posts I have written about my struggles with social anxiety and with connecting to friends. I did not realize that I was struggling with connecting to myself just as badly. I also did not understand that this connection with myself was a critical component of feeling connected to others.
Ironically, I could not heal the connection between my mind and body without the love and support of others in my life. We were not designed to heal alone. At times this has all felt like complex web and a vicious circle, but the truth is – God gives us pieces in all different places to keep us healing. The path is cyclical, not straightforward.
So How Do I Reconnect to My Body NOW?
The problem is…eventually…when life is better…safer…at least pretty good for the most part…this strategy of disconnection does not simply go away.
Basically, the strategy worked! Which was super cool to get me through years of trauma. But now what!? Because disconnecting and dissociating were effective strategies when needed, my nervous system did not stray from this pattern easily.
In my 40s…with most things in life going well for me…I felt stuck with my once brilliant strategies. I WANTED to now feel connected to my body! I WANTED to feel connected to people. I WANTED to experience all the good and bad emotions with their scary or joyful or any other physical sensations. I wanted to move through all the feelings and experiences – to LIVE FULLY! I was ready for my soul to find freedom, yet I could not force my body to trust after it has been hurt so deeply.
Parts of me worked so hard for so long to protect me from pain that it would be cruel to simply banish these parts now. These deep-down parts of my personality, they protected me from what felt intolerable. It was neither easy nor quick to convince these parts that I could handle all of life now. It took years of therapy with a somatic approach and EMDR to integrate my mind and body.
Even more crucial, reconnecting to my body took safe, trusting, and compassionate relationships to modify the neural pathways. Feeling connected to myself happened SLOWLY and it is not consistent.
I can soak in my newfound connection one moment and the next moment my walls go up and I am again detached – only a body that is numb or filled with anxiety. The vulnerability of situations is too much at times and the protective internal parts of me are back at their posts, guarding what hurts. This will likely always be me.
Discovering the Physical Sensations
As silly and childish as some of my somatic work in therapy felt at times, it gave me a safe channel to discover the signals in my body. Now as I walk into a room full of people, stand in an elevator, reach to shake an outstretched hand, or return a hug, I know whether my body feels fearful…unsafe…and I can choose to either ignore or respect these signals.
If I do force my body to do what doesn’t feel comfortable…
(because let’s face it, I have to freaking show up in life and function in society)
I can at least find ways to make my body feel a little better. Sometimes this means I escape to a bathroom for some deep breathing exercises. Other times it means I pull my sweater tightly around my body to at least give a little comfort to the fearful parts of me. Some mornings it means I treat myself at my favorite coffee shop before showing up to a room filled with people that expect me to interact! Small responses return a sense of safety to my body.
The Spiritual Experience of Reconnecting to My Body
Did reconnecting to my body fix all the problems in my life? I wish! I still have the same struggles with my husband. My voice still disappears when I have the urge to express myself. Chaotic environments still overwhelm me and I am quick to seek isolation. I am still me. I will always have similar struggles. Neural pathways are being modified but not erased. However, my life feels so much better these days, so many moments of freedom for my once-trapped soul.
I feel like I can move WITH the energy of my day rather than be in a chronic state of rigidity and resistance.
For as long as I can remember, people who genuinely care about me also get frustrated with my detachment. They’d ask things like, “Which restaurant sounds better to you?”…”Do you like that song?” … “How do you feel about this?” I hated that no answers bubbled up from my body and usually responded, “I’m good with whatever!” rather than admit that I HAVE NO FREAKING CLUE what my preferences are or what feels or tastes good to my body or even my opinion! If I sensed their frustration I would just lie and randomly choose an answer.
This whole journey of therapy and being vulnerable with people I trust has been a true spiritual transformation. I now have compassion for my struggles and why I am the way I am. Finally, I love who I am. I love my mind. If I can looking past the aches and pains that still exist and the extra pounds I still need to lose, I love my body for the gift it is. This hard work is worth it.
I love me in this skin.
I traveled across the country this summer and spent time with my dear friend Amy, whom I rarely get to see. I have always loved her, responded to her hugs with open arms…because it was what you do without questioning the internal experience…
On this trip however, I noticed that Amy’s hugs felt like love. I could melt into it and enjoy it without the urge to pull away and have it over with so that we could get on with enjoying our visit. I RECEIVED it. There were times I wanted another hug or wanted to put my arm around my friend’s shoulders. These urges from my body are new.
Finding comfort and enjoyment in physical touch is becoming more normal. We always thought brain development permanently ended after adolescence. Now science has shown that our brains have plasticity until the day we die. New neural pathways are being paved in my nervous system, in my brain, right now and others are changing. I am not hopeless! My body is feeling joy and freedom through the slow changes in my nervous system.
Your Eyes Cannot See How I am Different Now
If you compared me now to a photo from 10 years ago or even 4 years ago… of me with my husband next to me, touching me…me with my kids holding onto me…me with my arm around a friend…you probably wouldn’t see much difference at all. I would look about the same. More gray hairs, wrinkles and sun spots of course…but otherwise I doubt you’d see what has changed in me.
But when I look at the photos of then and now, I quickly attune to the difference in me. I feel it in those old photos. There is a new awareness of how tightly my body was held then…the anxiety in me…the clenching in my chest muscles, the clamping of my jaws, my belly, and my shoulders. I look at a photo and know that my feet were not grounded then. I had no awareness of how my feet felt against the earth…or an awareness of my body in space and time…how my body moved against gravity.
This is what my body knew, even if it did not show in the photos.
But now…my muscles aren’t so tight because they don’t hold the heavy duty of guarding me 24/7 from the risk of vulnerability. My shoulders are softer. My belly isn’t so knotted. I feel my hips want to move and my arms want to sway to music. I pay extra to get the coffee that tastes good to me and I know my favorite foods are lamb and sushi. I select the songs my body enjoys instead of what is popular, and I always pause to smell the mint growing in my garden.
I know I will not be able to go through every day, every hour, feeling connected to my body. Nobody does. My muscles will still naturally tighten, bracing for hurt. My body will detach, zone out as needed to guard against overwhelming emotions. That’s just me with all my protective parts and their brilliant strategies. But I have more and more hours, days, feeling connected to all that is within me – joyful feelings, painful feelings, my physical sensations, desires, needs, my messiness, my sexuality, and the beauty of my humanity. I am not broken. I am human and beautiful.
“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”
St. Catherine of Siena
References
Dale LP, Kolacz J, Mazmanyan J, et al. Childhood maltreatment influences autonomic regulation and mental health in college students. Front Psychiatry. 2022;13:841749. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.841749
Porges SW. Polyvagal theory: a science of safety. Front Integr Neurosci. 2022;16:871227. https://doi.org/3389/fnint.2022.871227
Ressler K, Berretta S, Bolshakov VY, et al. Post-traumatic stress disorder: clinical and translational neuroscience from cells to circuits. Nat Rev Neurol. 2022;18(5):273-288. https://doi.org/1038/s41582-022-00635-8
Williamson JB, Porges EC, Lamb DG, Porges SW. Maladaptive autonomic regulation in PTSD accelerates physiological aging. Front Psychol. 2015;5:1571. https://doi.org/3389/fpsyg.2014.01571
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