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Content Warning: Dissociation and Trauma Response
Dissociation is a way that your mind can cope with too much stress, like a traumatic event. When I was four, a traumatic incident happened which led me to dissociate to “survive”. Unfortunately, this survival tactic became my mind and body’s go to tactic when I would experience other stresses. When I began to hate my body, about the age of 8, my body used this technique and reinforced it to this day. Dissociation takes many different forms and is different for every person but for me it has led to the feeling of being completely disconnected from my body and my emotions along with bouts of memory loss. I can only describe it as an everyday, unconscious sense of numbness and emptiness. Sometimes my body kicks back and needs a release or needs to feel and then I go big - almost like a toddler not knowing how to regulate my behaviour. “Dramatic outbursts”, too much alcohol etc. are all part of this.
Luckily, I am in therapy and gently trying to recognise the triggers and work through them so I can try and restore the connection to myself. Therapy is great but it is obviously all very heady and when you have disconnected from yourself for so long, articulating your feelings is quite a difficult task. More and more evidence is coming to light to support the idea that sometimes you can start with the body to reconnect, which makes sense as the mind and body work together not alongside one another.
It’s difficult to explain having no sense of what your body feels like. There have been a few rare moments in my life when I have really “felt” my body. For example, I briefly went to a pilates class a few years back and had the most wonderful teacher. She would just tweak my body a little or tell me to make a small change and honestly floods of nerves would fire through like a dam had been open. I get pins and needles quite often actually, in weird places (one nostril before), which I am not sure if it’s connected to all of this but I am looking into it.
To try and reconnect with my body and my emotions, I have started to do small things. I try to do a body scan before falling asleep. If you’ve never heard of this, this is a great guided version. You basically check in with each part of your body and see which bits are relaxed, holding tension, in pain etc. It actually tends to help me relax before bed and helps me fall asleep so another win!
Shower meditation is also great for me. When I started meditating, I would shake violently so as you can imagine I immediately stopped that madness. I find guided meditation for short periods (10 minutes maximum) helpful but the shower is the best place. I watch how the water hits my skin and which bits it catches on first and move my body to see if I can change that and then I concentrate on how the water feels on my skin (the temperature, the texture etc. ). I do the same with shampoo, conditioner and body wash. It’s not very long but it just increases my awareness of my body and what it’s feeling.
These are just small things I have been doing but I am going to try to dig a little deeper with this over the next month. I am a huge Pinterest fan (it's where I find my personality) and every now and again, one of these “30 day ab challenges” or “30 day belly and booty” challenges pop up, which I have zero interest in but I thought what about a 30 Day Connection Challenge? I have designed 30 days of small tasks to try and tune me into my body. They have been entirely made up by me and have no scientific or medical merit but if you would like to join me you can download the challenge below. As you can see I have made it in full, Pinterest style!
Each box is a challenge for a different day - so 30 small challenges in total. Obviously, not everyone will be able to do everything on this so just swap it out for something you can do/have already done. I am not sure what the outcome of this challenge will be or if it will be helpful but I won’t know what works until I try something and why not this?
Challenge accepted.
For more information about dissociation please visit the Mind website.
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