What’s your relationship with your body like?
What are some of the first thoughts that come up for you when you think of your body?
Is it appreciation for what it does for you every day or frustration with the way it fails to perform the way you want it to at times? Do you think of all the things you dislike about your body or what you love about it? Do you consider your body a part of who you are, or is there an empty space and silence when you try to get in touch with it? Why are so many of us struggling to have a healthy relationship with our body and why might we want to work on having one?
Our connection to our body, ability to listen to it, hear it and treat it with respect has always fascinated me. I learnt a lot about this topic through my personal experience, which provided a lot of insight later while studying counselling. I was an athlete from a very sporty family and there was a lot I loved about that. However, I also happened to be a very sensitive child, with other interests that didn’t get much space or attention and as a result of this and other factors, I developed an eating disorder. The experience of overcoming it was a big drive for becoming a therapist. It also showed me how much I had to unlearn and learn from scratch if I was to ever have a healthy relationship with my body and with food.
For many generations we’ve been brainwashed by the diet industry and societal beliefs around our looks. A lot of unhealthy ideas about (especially female) bodies have been normalised and deeply embedded in us. Any effort to be free from someone else’s ideas about what we should look like gets challenged repeatedly every day by what we see and hear in the media and around us. The messages about all the things we should be actively trying to change about our bodies bombard us from every direction. It’s no wonder we get fixated on trying to make our body look a certain way and learn not to listen to its signals. We stop hearing our body communicating its needs with sensations like hunger, fatigue and many other things our body can inform us about.
Our emotions, feelings and instincts are experienced in our body. When we become disconnected from our bodies, we lose our ability to hear important information that our body may be trying to give us. Our feelings and emotions are responses to our environment. Whether it is something pleasurable like joy and happiness or something less comfortable like sadness or disappointment, our emotions tell us a lot. This may be that we value something, care about someone deeply or that our boundaries have been crossed. Suppressed emotions tend to bottle up and either explode at some point, when it may feel like it’s come out of the blue, or they often find a place in the body where they start causing trouble. They can present as anxiety and depression, but also - chronic pain, digestive issues, sleep difficulties, fatigue, heart disease and even autoimmune disorders.
Our instincts, which are also felt in our body, can often keep us safe by giving us an urge to move a certain way or stay away from someone. We may just feel like something is off about a situation, an offer we got or a particular person. We don’t have to have any logical reasoning for it, but if we can be in touch with our intuition and listen to our instincts, we just know when it’s time to say “no thank you” or leave a place. When we are disconnected from our body, we may miss these signals.
Many of us have learnt to override our body’s needs. If your family valued thin-ness and feared fat and bigger bodies, your sense of belonging and connection may have become strongly linked to staying thin. In order to feel loved and accepted, you might have become quite dismissive of your body’s signals, especially if they posed a threat to keeping yourself within “the lovable weight range”. Some of us have been told that our body’s signals are wrong so many times, we no longer feel we can trust them. Perhaps we were encouraged to power through pain and exhaustion. If achievements were the only thing that led to acceptance and affection, you might have learnt to push yourselves beyond your limits in order to get it. Our natural need to feel loved and accepted means that we will adjust to our environment in order to get it.
If your body was to talk to you right now, what would it say? What’s your body’s voice like? Is it talking quietly or is it loud? What might be your response when you hear your body’s message? Are you noticing any feelings as you’re thinking of having a conversation with your body? Imagine for a moment, that your body is your best friend. Would you treat it differently to the way you usually do? What would be different?
Your body isn’t your enemy or an inconvenience. If it feels that way or if the idea of getting in touch with it seems scary, there may be some things to unpack with a supportive counsellor or a psychotherapist*. When we learn to listen to our body, we realise that it really is our friend and want to treat it that way too.
*For people who have experienced trauma, being present in their body may not feel safe. Learning not to spend much time in the body then not only makes a lot of sense, it is also a creative way of adjusting to life’s circumstances, which has probably worked well for a while. If this is you and you’re finding this topic difficult, please be kind to yourself and seek support with learning to get in touch with your body. It may be a journey you’ll need some company on.
