Have you ever felt like your body has let you down?

That feeling that your body has catastrophically disappointed you? It can be caused by issues like infertility, unexplained pain or physical illness/injury, body image, gender identity issues or trauma.

When it happens, you perceive your body as a failure; you reject it and mentally separate off. You can feel helpless, despairing with a strong desire to punish it for not being ‘normal’. Mixed in with this might be shock, shame, self-loathing and fear about feeling physically ‘broken’.

Your body becomes a detached ‘thing’ which carries you from place to place; disembodied, with a dark twist. It is surreal and lonely. It is hard for others to understand whay you are experiencing, and it can lead to disconnection, dissociation, depression and addiction.

Interestingly, for women, this issue can be particularly real within the pelvis area; infertility, pelvic pain, sex, physical illness/injury. Research shows how the female reproductive system stores unprocessed trauma and emotions, stress and tension. It is connected with sexuality and identity; our strong sense femininity. The pelvis can hold onto suppressed emotions and trauma for a long time, until something eventually goes wrong or gives way.

What is embodiment?

Embodiment refers to a mind/body connection. It is the sensations in the body alerting you to listen, take heed; something needs attention. If these alarms bells go ignored, things can go wrong.

The research, simplified, is that when a traumatic event happens, the body responds far quicker than the mind; freeze, fight, flight, fawn. In nature, an animal will respond to danger and either get killed or escape. If they escape, their cycle of response completes from survival back to safety, often by shaking. A survival loop.

Often, for humans, that loop isn’t completed and the body is stuck in survival mode and left on alert, reacting to every threat, stress, whether real or imagined. This unregulated, hyper aroused state can manifest into anxiety, depression, panic attacks, addiction, numbness or other disorders. The physical effect of living one’s life in constant survival mode had can have a detrimental physical effect on the body.

I have mentioned in social media posts that I have training in somatic-informed therapy. Social media is overflowing with somatic yoga/breathing posts, which is good, but one can’t be cured of trauma, supressed emotions and other mental health issues purely by doing yoga or mindfulness. Building awareness of sensations in your body whilst doing yoga/mindfulness is important for wholeness, but you need to also explore why.

Feeling emotional and releasing it in a yoga creates calm, but for it to sustain you need to explore the underlying source. Why is it there in the first place? You need a deeper understanding of what is happening internally to enable your nervous system to regulate and feel safe.

Unbodied? What is that?

I’ve been searching for a word which encapsulates what I’ve wanted to write about for a long time and came across ‘unbodied’. Other words describing the opposite of embodiment are: abandon, destroy, exclude, fail, lack, neglect, reject. These words sum up those feelings of being let down by your own body; the one thing which is supposed to be on your side.

For me, unbodied differs from disconnection, dissociation and disembodied disorders commonly mentioned; these disorders are when a person becomes numb or detached from their thoughts, their sense of self and the world around them. I wanted to find a new, different word which specifically deals with this issue of when your relationship with your body turns hostile and sour.

Unbodied is not numbing or disconnection, but instead an actively intense, focused and angry relationship with your physical self. It can be all-consuming, distracting and destructive mentally. It can create an endless cycle of asking; Why me? Why can’t my body be normal? What have I done to deserve this?

How can counselling help?

You will receive compassion, empathy and acceptance that what you are experiencing is real and causing you distress, affecting your life. No judgement, no criticism for ‘overreacting’, no dismissive attitudes. Your counsellor will help you work through your anger, fear and rejection of your body and explore the underlying root causes, to build a compassionate and positive relationship with your body again.

Your counsellor will help you bring awareness of body sensations whilst you are talking, or they might pause you to invite you to explore what is happening internally, listen for physical signs of tension, stress, feeling unsafe. To rebuild a connection between mind, body and emotions.

They might feed back to you things you were not aware of, like picking at skin, clenching fists, tapping legs, touching your face. It’s about incorporating whole-body awareness and linking them to your thoughts, past experiences, life events or childhood.

You can then gradually start to complete the unfinished loop to enable a feeling of safety. It can be really hard to feel, express or acknowledge repressed emotions and sensations, as often they are linked to fear, danger, distrust, threat or rejection; your body protected you by locking away those feelings, those parts of you, so you can function and survive.

Your counsellor will go at your pace, ensuring you return to state of safety and trust. You can change the narrative of your somatic experiencing, from one of high alert to that of calm, whilst talking through and processing the issues which arise. You will learn how to experience negative emotions like fear, anger, guilt and sadness safely; that it is ok to have those thoughts, to feel them, accept them and process them in a regulated way, so you return to a calm place. No repression and storing them within the body. Complete that loop.

The benefits of working like this can reduce anxiety, panic attacks, numbness and other related mental/physical issues. It can bring about the ability to self-regulate, create healthy boundaries, process difficult traumatic events, be present in the ‘here and now’, feel joy.

Moving from an hostile state of unbodiment to that of wholeness, using acceptance, knowledge and compassion, can have a significant impact on the physical issues which created unbodiment in the first instance. Whilst there is no guarantee it will heal those physical issues, it will change how you respond to them; stop you turning against yourself to enable living positively, in a self-regulated and compassionate way.

Don’t suffer in silence

If you can relate to anything in this blog, or struggling with anxiety, depression, loss, relationship issues or anything else and would like to talk about it, please do get in touch. We can have a free 15 minute chat about your concerns prior to booking an appointment, so you can decide if you feel it will be helpful for you. Call: 07831 841 096 or email: info@instinctivecounselling.co.uk