Reconnecting With Your Body

Live Class Recording - Trigger Warning! In this event, we’ll explore how to rebuild peace with your body so you can feel safe and accepting, from the inside out. I will share with you what you can do to overcome body shame. You'll leave with mindset tool to build a genuine connection with yourself again.

Transcript

Reconnecting with your body. Three personal stories that might be triggering, But they are stories where I disconnected with my body. And yes, In the end, I would also give you like how I reconnected with my body and what you can do. But I start with these three stories first to give you an insight of how disconnection could look like. Because often when we think about disconnecting with your body, It's about the way our body looks. We don't like it, We are ashamed, We blame it, Whatever. But that's the, I would say, The most common idea that comes up when we talk about disconnecting with our body. For me, These three stories are a bit different, But I want to share them with you just to give you like a scope of ideas what else it could be. And you might not even recognize it as a disconnect to your body. So I want to start with a story with something with bulimia. And I had bulimia when I was 17 up until I was almost 20. And what bulimia is, Is that you eat and then you throw up. And I remember that at the time, While I was in that phase, In that eating disorder, What I told people, What I told myself is I'm doing this because I want to fit into my old pair of trousers. There was always this idea, Even when I had relapses and I got asked, Why do you do it? I said, Because I still don't fit into that pair of trousers that I fitted when I was 16 or whatever. So that was the idea in my head. That's what, That was the story that I told myself. And I even went that far that I threw myself parties where I would go and buy a lot of food, And then I would eat it and then I would throw up. And the idea was, It's all about the way I looked. And when my parents found out, Because they found out because I had an operation and the doctor was a bit suspicious. And then he asked them, They asked me and I said, Yes, Yes, It is what it is. And they sent me to rehab. So I went to, It was about one and a half hours drive from my parents' place and I stayed there for a couple of weeks. And I was in a room with a girl and she had anorexia. And I was in this group with other girls that had either bulimia as well or anorexia or overeating. So we were all a bunch of eating disordered ladies that tried to find help in that rehab. And I remember that I was pleading to my mom after about two and a half weeks. And I said, Mom, They all want to die. It feels like they all haven't given up on life. And I want to live. That's not why I'm doing it. I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing, But it's not because I want to die or I want to disappear or that I want your attention. Because that was the common theme in our therapy group that these ladies wanted some sort of attention from their parents. And I thought, I get that. I have the attention from my parents. I feel loved and supported. So what the hell am I doing here? So those were my thoughts. And my mom agreed. So after about three weeks, I was allowed to come back home. And of course, I relapsed because there was no cure for me in that moment. And it only happened. And here's the funny, Interesting thing. I got married when I was 20. And my ex-husband now, He read a book on bulimia because he wants to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. And he once said to me that in this book, It says that you're afraid to lose control. And I said, Mom, I'm not afraid to lose control. I'm OK with losing control. I like to go on a day. That's losing control. I don't have this need to be perfect or that everything needs to be in order. I said, That doesn't ring true to me. I don't know where you get that or what these people talk about, But it's not me. And it took my brain, I think, A couple of months to get to this idea that control can mean different things. And I don't remember. I mean, It's almost 30 years ago. I don't remember when the time was, What happened that triggered the idea of Anna. Losing control can also mean that you have no control about what's happening to you. And that hit me hard because I got sexually abused when I was 11 and I didn't understand at the time what happened to me. I just knew I didn't like it and I couldn't control it. I couldn't get away from it. And that's how I see it now was the starting point of me becoming afraid of losing control. So that was the start, Like I said. And then I forgot about that event because it didn't make sense to me. I had no idea what was happening. So it went somewhere in the back of my mind. And only when I had my first boyfriend, About 15, Where you hold hands and shy kisses, I remembered it. It came back. These memories came back and I still couldn't really put them somewhere. But then the first breakup came. And that was, To me, Again, Some sort of losing control. I couldn't control what was happening around me. And that's when the bulimia started. Not full on flash, Here you go. But slowly, It became a way for me to gain control. When everything fell apart around me, Or I felt like everything is falling apart, That was the one thing that I felt I could control. The eating and keeping it or not keeping it. That was my little heaven of control. And it got worse with another boyfriend I had and he physically abused me. So in those two years, It got really bad. And only later I understood why all of this happened, Why it got better, It got worse, It got better, It got worse. And why I felt that need because it was of this need to have some control because I lost that control at one point. And it made me realize that it was never about my body. I used my body to deal with something my mind didn't know what to do with. So my body was, Yeah, For lack of a better word, I just literally used it. It wasn't it, I was detached and this is what I did to it. Because I didn't know what else, What else to do with it. So my body was the obvious choice to blame it, To shame it, To tell it, You need to look different. And this is what I do to you. I give, I try to get control over controlling you. But again, It wasn't my body. I just used my body. I just put the blame on my body. I want to continue with the second example. And some of you who have been to some of my classes already know that I had five miscarriages and the first four were bad. And I don't want to go into that, But I want to go into the last one, The fifth one, Because that one hit hard, The hardest, I would say. And after the miscarriage, I hated my body. And saying that is because I never hated my body. But after that, I hated it. I thought it was incapable. It was useless. It was worthless. And it can't even do this, This, This little thing, What millions of women can do so easily, My body. What the hell? Why? Why are you so useless? So those were the thoughts that I carried with me. And what I did is I drank a lot in the first half a year, Nine months after that, I drank a lot. I smoked like a chimney. I either didn't eat at all, Or I ate too much, A lot of rubbish. I didn't exercise or just excessively. So I treated my, I literally, What's the word I'm looking for? I punished my body. Because it let me down so badly, Because I put all the blame on this useless body. So it needed punishment. And I gave him, I gave it punishment. And after, I'd say about eight months, I got to a point where I was physically exhausted. I slept bad, Of course. And like I said, No or very excessive exercise. I had no routine whatsoever for taking care of my body. And I was exhausted physically and mentally. And I remember sitting here on the balcony, And I was thinking, I didn't want to feel a pain anymore. And I don't want to feel numb anymore. My body felt numb. It was like, I can't have happy, But I also can't have sad. It's just like this numbness. And it was a constant repeating of my thoughts of your body's worthless. And I didn't say I'm worthless. Just be aware that I'm using this word specifically. I never said I'm useless. My body is worthless. My body is useless. My body is incapable. I shamed and blamed my body for not being able to do this very easy little thing that so many other women can do. And I said, I want to feel joy again. I want to have some sort of feeling. And I wanted to, To live again, Because it felt to me like I was so numb. I was in that bubble and nothing faced me in any kind of way. And I wanted to be okay with my body again. I didn't want to be in that war with my body anymore. And the change came when I gave myself permission to always feel the pain of my losses. So when it's there, Even if it's for the rest of my life, I gave myself permission to just feel the pain, That it's okay to feel the pain, To sit with the pain and to honor the children that I've never held in my hands, In my arms, And that it's okay. And you might see a theme here. Again, I used my body to blame and shame my body, To punish my body for something my mind wasn't capable of facing, Something my mind wasn't capable of doing. I couldn't face the pain and I used my body to act in some way, And to disconnect with my body, To be like, You're to blame, You're the bad one. And now we go to last week. My last story to share for today is what happened is that I got a soft tissue infection on my right foot. And I only noticed when I was lying down with fever and couldn't get up anymore. Walking was very painful. I went to see the doc, Got antibiotics, And they said, Don't move. And I started to see pictures of a limp. That's, Oh my God, My foot needs to get amputated. Oh my God, I will die from this. Oh my God, It will travel. Every step I took, I feared that if I, If the blood circulates too much, It will kill me. I need to sit here. Body, What have you done? Again, I disconnected. I blamed my body. I shamed my body. I was putting fear in my body. And after four days, It got worse. It got so worse that the whole foot was swollen and red and it slowly moved up my ankle. And I was like, This is it. This is it. What are you doing here? Oh my God, I'm dying. It's killing me. So I was filled with panic. But luckily, Having this experience and doing the job and work that I'm doing, Eventually I caught myself. I caught myself in that spiral. I was walking the dogs because I just needed to get out. I couldn't sit anymore. I wanted to walk for a bit and I walked the dogs. And while I was walking very, Very, Very slowly, Very deliberately, Soft, I caught myself like, I'm in this spiral. I'm blaming my body. I'm shaming my body. I'm telling my body that I don't trust it to heal and can do anything good. And it felt like, Again, A disconnection to my body. Like, What are you doing? Blaming and shaming again in a different way, For a different reason, In a different situation. But the same again. I blamed my body. I shamed my body for getting worse. And then I thought, What if I would tell my body that I trust it to heal? I will support it with my thoughts, With the antibiotics, Keeping still. But I want to let my body know I'm stopping the blaming. I'm stopping the shaming. I'm stopping the fear and the panic as much as I'm capable of doing in this moment. And I trust that it can get better. And the next day, Massively better. I'm not saying it's because I changed my mind, But I'm pretty sure there was an indicator of your words, Your thoughts create your reality. What you put in comes out. And I'm not saying mind over matter. And without the antibiotics, I would have gotten through it. I don't know. I will never know. But I'm glad that I had the antibiotics. I'm glad that I went to see the doctor. And I'm very, Very grateful that I caught myself in this spiral and deciding no, I want to trust you. I want to support you. I want to walk with you this healing way, This journey. I don't want to be opposite again. I don't want to punish you. I don't want to be at war with you. I want us to be in this together. And that's what I did. So that's the end of my examples. The big question is now what have these examples in common? I blamed my body. I shamed my body for something I created in my mind. For the first example, It was trauma. It happened. I took it with me in my mind. And I used my body to deal with it. Second example, Again, My body. Yes, The miscarriage happened in my body. But I couldn't deal with the grief. And again, I used my body. And the third time, My mind went into overload, Into panic, Into fear. And I put it on my body. Not as destructive as maybe the first two examples. But I did it just by telling it that you can't do this. You can't do this. By putting that panic, That fear onto it as well. And that's when the disconnect happens. And that brings me to a question that I want to ask you that I want you to reflect on is if you feel disconnected with your body in whatever way that might be for you. Because I'm pretty sure it's different to my stories, To my experiences, Because we're all different. And everyone experiences disconnect to their body different. And what role plays your mind in this? What is your mind telling you? And that brings me to what can you do to reconnect? How can you reconnect with your body? And if you're in a phase of disconnect with your body, The first thing, The first step is always to become aware that you are disconnected. That there is a disconnect. That this is what you do to your body, With your body. This is what you do in your mind with your body. This is what you think about your body. It's the awareness of this is what we're doing. This is what I do to and with my body. And these are the thoughts I have about my body. That's the awareness. Just be aware that you're doing it. Nothing else. And I sometimes my clients tell me it's too simple, But it's not. Because sometimes we don't want to have that awareness. We don't want to see it. And why can't it be simple? Why does it have to be heavy or hard to be effective? Simple can be effective as well. So become aware. Your body is not to blame. And then the second step is, And this is optional, It's not necessary, Because sometimes when we start to question what is the fear behind the blame, Particularly when you do it yourself, And you can end up in a spiral. And you can end up and blaming even more of what you do, Who you are, Why you are, Etc. So that's why it's optional. And it's really not necessary. Because the third step is acceptance. And you can go from awareness to acceptance without knowing the why. You don't need the why. The why is a nice thing to know, But it's not a necessity to have. So you go from awareness, I'm being aware that I'm doing this, And I accept that I'm doing this. And acceptance means that we're taking this as this is what is right now in this moment. It doesn't mean that it's we like what we see. It doesn't mean we hate what we see. It doesn't mean it's a standstill. It simply means that we accept that this is what we have in the here and now. Nothing more, And nothing less. So I want to urge you to invite you to try these steps, At least the two that becoming aware and the acceptance when it comes to reconnecting with your body. And what you will notice is as soon as you have that awareness, And you accept that this is what we have in the here and now, It will take so much pressure of your body and of your mind. And that automatically reconnects your mind with your body. And that brings me to the end of my lecture today.