Feeling disconnected from your body is so common that you may not even notice it’s happening.
You may be so trained to focus on thinking and intellectual knowledge that you often forget there is a body connected to that head of yours. Maybe you’ve heard messages throughout life that your body wasn’t good. You may have been surrounded by people who were focused on changing how their bodies looked or functioned, and you learned to separate from your physical self to avoid the pressure to change. Maybe you heard messages that your physical needs or desires were not appropriate, or would get you in trouble, and you learned to shut them down. You may have even grown up with encouragement to be part of the “clean plate club”, and somewhere along the way you lost the inner awareness of your own hunger or fullness.
What Happens When I’m Disconnected From My Body?
Sometimes the word dissociation is used to describe the disconnection from your body that you might feel. This disconnection is often rooted in a way that we learned to survive certain situations. For example, if you were praised when you ate everything on your plate and punished when you didn’t finish all the food, it is natural for you to figure out a way to disconnect from any pain that might come with eating too much and to make sure you ate all that food on your plate in order to please your adults. This is an example of how dissociating in this way can be beneficial in one scenario (i.e. helping you avoid punishment), but can cause problems for you in other areas (i.e. difficulty recognizing when you’re hungry).
Here are a few of the things that can happen when you’re disconnected from your body:
ISSUES AROUND EATING. As mentioned above, being disconnected from your body can make it difficult to know when you’re hungry. This may mean that you go hours or even days without eating because you don’t actually recognize the internal cues that your body is giving that it needs nourishment. You may also find yourself feeling ravenously hungry and eating far more than you planned, or than is physically comfortable, once you actually feed your body. Your body and nervous system are in an ongoing state of chaos, not knowing when food might be available. You may even be someone who experiences your body or nervous system “acting out” with illnesses or other symptoms in an attempt to get your attention and help you reconnect to your physical being.
INABILITY TO EXPERIENCE PLEASURE. Sometimes we learned disconnection from our bodies to avoid experiencing pain. The flip side of that is that being disconnected from your body can make it difficult to experience physical pleasure. This could mean that you have difficulty orgasming due to being “in your head” and don’t experience sexual pleasure, with alone or with a partner. You may struggle to enjoy physical activities such as dancing or rock climbing (or whatever sounds fun to you) due to being unable to be in your body and allow pleasure to arise.
DIFFICULTY REGULATING YOUR EMOTIONS. Our bodies often give us the first signs of what we’re experiencing emotionally, but many people have learned to disconnect from their emotions. One thing that can cause disconnection from your body’s emotional signals is messages such as “don’t feel that way” when you have expressed emotion in the past. This type of message may lead to disconnecting from your emotions, and the body awareness that comes with them, in order to maintain relationships. When you’re connected to your body, you might notice that your fists tighten when you’re starting to get angry or that an automatic smile emerges when you find something funny. Being disconnected from your body may mean missing those physical signals. You may not even notice that you are feeling something until the emotion feels overwhelming. It’s much easier to regulate an emotion if you’re able to acknowledge it as it arises and be curious about the information it’s providing. Strengthening connection with your body helps make this process easier.
How Can I Reconnect With My Body?
INTENTIONAL BODY CHECK-INS. One way to grow your connection with your body is to intentionally check in with your phsyical self on a regular basis. This can take many forms. You may choose to set an alarm to remind you to ask yourself a question such as, “what do I feel in my body at this moment?” You may decide to focus on your levels of hunger and satisfaction, asking yourself before and after meals how you would rate the way your body is feeling in regards to level of fullness. You might schedule a massage and focus on noticing the different sensations you experience as your massage therapist does their work.
I have also found that guided meditation can be helpful for checking in with my body and noticing what’s going on at the physical level. These meditations may be short, like the 4-minute version I have shared below, or they may be much longer. Personally, I find that having a sort of guide keeps my mind from wandering as much and allows me to truly tune in to my body. I encourage you to try a few different options and see what works best for you.
BODY MINDFULNESS. If you’ve been around the blog for a while, you may be familiar with Body Mindfulness. This is how I describe my approach to working with body image concerns, disordered eating, and disconnection from the body. This approach incorporates mindfulness (being aware of the present moment without judgement) with principles from Intuitive Eating, social justice concepts drawn from Health At Every Size, and lived experience to support folks in learning to listen to and trust their body.
I use this approach in working with folks in individual therapy. I offer a Body Mindfulness Virtual Therapy Group on a regular basis, which you can learn more about here. I’m also very excited to being collaborating with a yoga studio local to my area of North Carolina – Yoga Garden PBO – to offer a 4-session, in-person Body Mindfulness Workshop. You can learn more about that offering here – scroll down until you see “Body Mindfulness” – and you can even read some thoughts from one of the owners of the studio in her recent blog post. If you’re in the Triangle-area of NC, and interested in joining us, there is still time to register prior to the first session on February 5, 2023.
Michelle F. Moseley is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in NC and a Registered Telehealth Provider in FL. She believes ALL people deserve respect, compassion, and access to mental and physical healthcare. Michelle specializes in working with survivors of religious trauma and with those who have body image concerns, finding there is frequent overlap in these areas. You can learn more about Michelle by visiting her website at MichelleFMoseley.com, where you can contact her directly, or following her on Instagram – @therapy_with_michelle