finding home in my body
the greatest thing i did in 2024
When I wrote this originally I was in a very good spot. I was feeling confident in my skills of self-regulation and grounding, and so grateful and full of love for myself and everything I’ve done this year.
And now I am in this moment.
This moment feels very different. I sat down to create visuals for this piece and all I could do was cry because the anxiety and overwhelm in me are so much today. It does not always feel good to be connected to my body and my feelings, but I know it is worth it.
Interspersed with my very hopeful writing are drawings I did this evening, crying on my couch, wishing I did not feel so shitty. There are big ups and there are big downs, but hey- at least I can feel it.
We don’t feel things separate from our bodies. In fact, I believe that our bodies often know things before our brains do. There is not a single person that experiences any emotion in their mind alone, but there are many people who think they do, because they have disconnected from that feeling part of themselves. It is very easy to leave your body to survive. One of the greatest skills we have as humans is our ability to disconnect when things become too much. A physical pain too great, a betrayal so hurtful, a scene so horrifying we literally cannot comprehend or process it.
I could write about this from the perspective of my professional work, but instead I want to talk about my personal experience seeking to reestablish a connection with my body.
A resolution I made to myself when I turned 30 was that I’d focus intently on my emotional healing. Unsurprisingly, I sought out a therapist to help me. I’m a year and a half deep in this work, and one of the hardest parts has been learning to tune into my body and feel my feelings. There’s a lot of talk in pop psychology about the idea of “feeling your feelings”. I have parroted this phrase more times than I can count, but I didn’t really understand how hard it is until someone asked me to try it.
I’ve always seen myself as an emotionally intelligent and attuned person with tons of self-insight. Ask me to identify an emotion and I can do it easily. When someone dies I can tell you that I am sad. When I see injustice I can tell you that I am mad. I am like an emotional encyclopedia, or the emotions wheel. People lean on me for validation and understanding of their feelings every day. I am keenly aware of those around me, always adjusting and readjusting, making sure all emotions are accounted for and noticed. So surely, I thought, I am no stranger to my own feelings.
The first time my therapist asked me to “drop in” to my body and experience what I was feeling when recalling a stressful event, I was met with dizziness, and disconnection- I felt like I was looking at myself from above. It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling, but having her watch me float away from myself felt very vulnerable. She quickly noticed that I was not present and gently tried to coax me back to myself, but I spent the following hours numb. (I have since learned this was my fight or flight kicking in, though I didn’t know it at the time).
That moment was jarring and uncomfortable, almost leading me to cancel my remaining appointments. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew that it didn’t feel good. Unfortunately, I decided I couldn’t bear the discomfort of disappointing my therapist, so I continued to see her. Every week there was a moment where we broached the topic of “dropping in” to my body or taking deep breaths together (my least favorite activity) and, every week, I politely declined.
“It feels too painful, huh?” she would say to me, and I would change the subject.
It was only through this process that I realized how disconnected I had become from my physical (and, therefore, emotional) self. So many things had hurt me, and each event overwhelmed me to a degree that I was incapable of processing at the time. After so many unbearable experiences, my body and brain stepped in to keep me safe by creating a mechanism for me to stop feeling. When I was young and didn’t have control over very much, this may have saved my life; I had the opportunity to continue surviving because of it. For years I lived separate from my body without even knowing it (and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you have lived like this too).
When I discovered my disconnection I was distraught; all I wanted was to feel safe and at home, fully embodied and present. Aside from the highest highs or most devastating lows, I did not know what was happening inside me. My feelings appeared unpredictable and out of control, only identifiable when I was in the extreme, and I didn’t know what to do.
And so began this journey of coming back to myself.
My therapist always tells me that my most important task is just to notice, so that is what I did for MONTHS. I took note of what happened in my body when I was around certain people or in certain places, and I wrote lists of sensations I could identify inside myself. Sometimes I was dizzy, other times my heart would race, often I would get a stomach ache. Every once in a while I was able to listen to what a sensation was trying to tell me, allowing it to be a messenger to let me know something is happening in here.
The first handful of times I even got close to feeling my feelings, I thought I might die. The anxiety and sadness I had inside me were so huge, I wondered if they might swallow me whole. But I kept at it anyway, knowing that I couldn’t keep doing what I had been doing. I paid close attention to what was happening around me each moment I floated outside myself, and patterns started to emerge.
Through pattern recognition I was able to start identifying my triggers. Once I was able to identify them, I started having space to predict them and intercept before I hit an extreme. Then, I began to practice staying in my body through them.
The first time I successfully stayed present through my overwhelm I was so happy that I cried.
What I’ve been afforded through this has been the chance to feel safe with myself, and there is not a part of my life untouched by that. Being able to attune to myself with the same attention that I can attune to everyone else has allowed me to access a quiet peace I didn’t know I had. When things are turbulent, if I can find that quiet peace, I can hold myself through whatever I am feeling.
I am certainly not in a perfect place and often feel like I have more hard days than easy ones, but the hope I’ve gained from the good days is enough to keep me here, fighting to be safe in myself. And I am always learning about what it means to be embodied and present. Just today I learned that sometimes “feeling my feelings” means sitting and sitting and sitting and acknowledging how awful it is- and I really hate that but I am going to try to do it!
I am endlessly grateful to have the chance to do this work, and to be in a place where it is safe for me to do so. There were many times in my life when this would not have been safe, and it is not lost on me that many people don’t have this luxury.
I am ending 2024 a little bit more embodied than when the year began, and there are few things that give me hope like that does. There is so much more I want to say about the necessity and complicated nature of embodiment in my work with people who use drugs, are unhoused, experience domestic violence, and so on- it’s not accessible for everyone, nor should it be utilized in every situation. But I think there are small (and safe) steps anyone can take to feel a little more grounded, a little more settled, or a little more aware of what they are feeling. Everyone deserves that.
I have also been writing and exploring about how connectedness to our bodies is important in our spiritual practices and spaces (!!!), and I am so excited to share that in 2025.
It has been a pleasure to spend the year here, and I cannot wait to see where this body and mind take me in the next one.