Losing Your Body, Losing Yourself
Sherry’s Silent Cry
Sherry walked into my office with her shoulders slumped and her chin practically kissing her chest. Her body screamed fear before she even said a word. I noticed her long sleeves barely covered the scars on her forearms. In a monotone that bordered on robotic, she confessed she couldn’t stop picking at her skin until she bled.
Growing up in a chaotic foster home where her mother barely pretended to care, Sherry never felt wanted. As a kid, she absorbed constant neglect and jaded comments like, “They gave us the wrong baby.” That’s the kind of toxic sh*t that molds you into thinking you don’t matter.
Losing Your Body
I soon discovered that many of my patients couldn’t feel large parts of their bodies. I’d hand someone a simple object, a key or a can opener, and they’d fumble to describe it. Their sensory perception was on f*ck-all. I discussed it with my mate, Alexander McFarlane, who showed that trauma screws up how we integrate what we touch, feel, and know about our bodies. When your inner sensors go haywire, you lose touch with the one thing that anchors you: your physical self. And when that happens, you might as well be a ghost wandering in your own life.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
How do we Know we’re Alive?
If you can’t feel your body, can you even tell if you’re alive? Sherry’s self-destruction wasn’t just emotional, it was physical. Without a full sensory connection, life becomes a bland, disconnected experience. I remember a patient who couldn’t identify even what he was holding.
That numbness, that chronic disconnection, robs you of the thrill of existence. It’s like living on autopilot, where the raw feedback from your body; the shivers, the tension, the warmth, is just missing. Without that, you’re not truly living; you’re merely going through the motions.
The Self-Sensing System
When your body talks, you should listen. Our inner sensory system tells us everything, from whether it’s time to grab a sweater because you’re freezing, to screaming at the dinner table because you’re starving. Trauma, however, scrubs out this internal chatter. It’s like someone turned down the volume on your gut signals. I’ve seen patients who, when asked to describe what they felt, could only give vague, detached answers. It’s as if their internal GPS has completely lost its signal, leaving them stranded in a sensory void. And without that feedback, you’re dangerously unaware of your own needs.
Connecting With Yourself, Connecting With Others
Recovery starts when you begin to feel your own skin, literally and figuratively. Sherry eventually got on board with a massage therapy session that changed everything. During the session, she suddenly panicked when her massage therapist kept her feet under control, her body forgot it was supposed to be present! That moment of terror sparked a breakthrough. Slowly, she learned to recognize her bodily sensations as part of her reality.
She began to see that reconnecting with her physical self wasn’t just about stopping the self-destruction; it was about embracing her whole f**king being. With time, Sherry stopped picking at herself, started spending calm evenings outside, and even joined a church choir. These changes weren’t miracles, they were hard-fought wins in a battle to reclaim her body and soul.
By understanding how trauma disconnects you from your body, you can start rebuilding that essential link. When you learn to feel, to really feel, you reclaim control. And that, in turn, opens the door to real, authentic connection with yourself and with others.
