Learning to Live in Your Body After Childhood Trauma
One of the most interesting side effects of childhood trauma is that many of us feel we are separated from our bodies. We acknowledge we have a body but view it as an inconvenient necessity that we prefer to ignore.
In this piece, we will focus on learning to live wholly in your body rather than just exist there.
How Did I Lose Contact with My Body?
When childhood abuse and neglect take place, the child may choose to numb themselves from what has happened to them. Some children, especially those who form dissociative identity disorder, can become disconnected from their bodies.
The reasons for body disconnection are many, and all involve overwhelming pain that must be splintered off so that the person can move on in life. This is also the reason children dissociate to remove themselves from the situation.
Your original person moves on despite what has happened, taking great leaps to ensure that we cannot consciously remember the abuse. In the process, we lose contact with our bodies, leaving us living in our heads.
I don’t remember disconnecting from my flesh, but I did.
What Can I Do To Get Back in My Body?
Numbing and losing connection with your body is a common behavioral reaction to the trauma you endured as a child. We all faced horrendous behaviors from our caretakers that placed us in the position of finding ways to stay alive and sane. Dissociation, body numbing, and losing contact with our bodies were the best defenses we could do as helpless children.
I wish to convey the one vital message that you will not get back into your body easily or quickly. It sometimes takes many years and many tears before you make a breakthrough in body reconnection.
That being said, there are some things you can do to help reconnecting become easier.
Use a mirror. This idea sounds easy until you put it into practice. The idea is to take a mirror and look at your body, naked if possible. At first, you will be upset about the way you look because you haven’t noticed your body for many years and feel you look different than you do. Keep in mind, during this activity, that your body is not ugly or disgusting. You look just like anybody else would after they have gone through what you have.
Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a medication that focuses on the moment you are living in right now. It’s done by utilizing deep breathing exercises and sometimes guided imagery. Practicing mindfulness allows you to relax and look inside yourself while intensely concentrating on the present moment. Doing this exercise will relax you and make it easier to remain in the present during therapist appointments. It will also aid you in reconnecting with your body.
Be patient. You cannot rush through treatment to reconnect with yourself. It takes much patience to learn and experience your past harms so you can live in your body, not just your head.
Why Do I Want To Reconnect with My Body?
When stressed, your brain is hardwired to focus on your most immediate challenges. One hardwired behavior is to become disconnected from your body. This behavior often means you stop noticing signals it is sending you that you have a body. Some multiples state they cannot feel pain because of this phenomenon.
Building body awareness is critical, as it is an integral part of reconnecting energy and health. If you are disconnected from your body, moving from your head into your body is challenging.
Also, it is critical to have some quality alone time so you can meditate on the now and leave the past in the past so you feel safe to return to your body.
Ending Our Time Together
It is necessary to reconnect and reclaim your body as a goal in therapy, a process that many do not know they are moving toward in treatment. I know I didn’t understand that. I awoke one morning suddenly feeling myself and reconnected to my body.
I suddenly felt every roll of fat and every excellent and lousy sensation my body was dealing with at that moment. I was shocked as I didn’t know this would happen. In fact, I don’t think anybody did.
Few people ever reach the level of fusion that I have experienced, and I spent decades in therapy fighting to stay alive and move forward with my life. When I reconnected with my body, I was both pleased and bothered.
It is both a curse and a blessing to feel your connection to your body as there is pain and pleasure all rolled up into one united self.
I hope you will consider reconnecting with your body sometime in the future so that you can finally live as a whole person.
“I do believe in the old saying, ‘What does not kill you makes you stronger.’ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.” – Angelina Jolie
“Trauma causes us to have an internal experience that is frightening, angry, and shameful. When we feel threatened, as we do when we are traumatized, our entire organism is geared up to find the source of that threat and to do something about it.” – Peter A. Levine.
This was an excellent article Shirley! I am currently working on the very faze. It’s been a battle since mirrors where used as a punishment, so my therapist I’d having me use video to look at myself. She also does this with the alternative states. It’s been a hard battle, especally with child alters. But like you my goal is to except myself and love myself, even if I feel or look old. ♥️