Usually when women talk about body issues we mean our relationship with our external body, and how we emotionally respond to it. But there is a far more important body issue you need to consider - your relationship with your internal body.
We often think over-busyness and overwhelm is a mental and emotional state, but it is also very much a body issue.
In my next book I’m writing a lot about sensuality. Not in its hijacked meaning of feeling sexy. Connecting sensually to ourselves doesn’t mean squeezing our menopause bellies into circulation-cutting red lingerie and practising our come-to-bed eyes.
It means remembering this body you can abuse so much is a vital machine. The one you shove the wrong food and too much alcohol into, the one you can cruelly critique daily because it doesn’t look like Cindy Crawford at 30, even though you are 50 and don’t have squillions of money and a personal trainer. And yes, she looks great at 50 and will no doubt look amazing at 60, but since that is literally her job, she isn’t the standard that you have to beat yourself with.
Your body is vital and vibrant. It feels and sees, it hears and smells and tastes. It wants to be touched and it wants to inhale the green hues and scents of nature; it wants to look up from the computer screen and concrete grey to gaze upon the sky. It wants to move and spring and stretch and it wants to rest and replenish.
We hear so much about wellbeing these days but there is no well without being. And while being mindful is important, being bodyful is crucial too.
IQ is our intelligence, and EQ is our emotional intelligence but BQ is our body intelligence and for women, especially in the mayhem of midlife, we can become so disconnected from our connection to self, our BQ is scoring a D-minus.
Your mind and body rely on each other to be well, and when we lose connection with one we lose connection with both.
The body stores the psychological scars in it’s tissues and bones. After the groundbreaking 2014 book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, we understand that if we don’t deal with our stresses and traumas, our body will make us. The book explains that after a traumatic event, the brain's immediate response is to suppress it - either through forgetting or self-blame - to avoid social ostracism. However, the body doesn’t forget. This stored stress remains in the muscles and doesn't dissipate.The rational mind can't repair itself alone because that part of you is pretending that healing has already occurred. Women - through years of being on survival mode juggling all the balls and roles - can be in a perpetual state of emergency. Not all trauma has a capital T.
My body had always told me what was going on but I took a long time to listen.
As a developing perfectionist, the pressure I put on myself meant that by my 20’s I was having panic attacks. I was so constantly heightened, my tightened lungs were too squeezed to inhale deep breathes. But it was when my marriage ended, after ten years of survival mode, that my body really took my mental health into it’s (my) own hands.
I just kept shutting down the pain and the hurt and the panic. My mum was dying after needing 24 hour care for the previous five years. My marriage was over and I began the singular hell of single parenting most of the time, and not being with my kids some of the time. Most nights I had at least one, sometimes all three, squirmy sweaty little bodies in my bed. I was exhausted and so depleted I was barely functioning… and yet, function I kept doing. Because that’s what women do.
I didn’t have time to have a midlife crisis! I had to manage the crisis that was my midlife. I had to care for, and support, and put a brave face on, and look strong and even pretend to feel strong to myself. There was no wriggle room for worries bubbling to the surface so I pushed them all down like stuffing dirty washing behind the sofa when guests arrived.
I knew my brain was running out of ground as my breathing difficulties had returned. I had face-eating cold sores. But then I ended up with an abscess in my armpit. I was travelling to see my dad, and by the time I landed I was in excruciating pain and feverish. My dad wasn’t waiting for me, because when he’d offered, I hadn’t wanted to bother him so I said I’d get a taxi. By the time I got to my house and tumbled out of the taxi I was close to collapse. Later, as he gently squeezed the puss out of the abscess and cleaned the wound, he asked me why I hadn’t asked for help.
I didn’t want to be a bother.
I had to keep strong for everyone around me and I thought my body would keep up the lie for me. But our bodies are survival machines and they won’t lie for long.
I’ve just been speaking at the launch of the Irish Heart Foundation’s Her Heart Matters 2024 campaign about the fact that so many women miss the symptoms because they’re so busy outputting, they don’t have time to check in and listen to what they need to input.
In the weeks before my mum’s fatal stroke, she had complained about headaches and feeling unusually tired. I’d encouraged her to go to her GP but she kept saying she didn’t want to bother him.
Women need to learn to be a bother. And most of all, we need to be bothered about ourselves.
We feel energetically desperate most of the time, which leaves us energetically exhausted in our bodies. As we ignore the stress and keep going, we also shut down our connection to our bodies. We ignore the symptoms but in doing so we also ignore the sensations.
Sensuality.
Sensuality is like the lube of life; it is our connection to other - humans, animals, nature - but most of all, it is connection to self.
When we escape the shitness, we also escape ourselves. We check out because of the pain, but that means we also bypass the pleasure.
And it’s ok to seek pleasure. It’s ok to hear what your body is saying to you and what it needs.
To listen to your own voice.
To taste your own needs.
To see the context of your life.
To touch yourself with input and investment.
Smell the shit and the rose and know they go together.
Sixth Sense
Which is why not only do we need to access our five outward senses, we need to access the secret sixth sense.
There is actually a name for listening to what your body is telling you. Interoception is your brain’s perception of the state of your body, transmitted from receptors on all of your internal organs. So while your ears listen outwards, your brain is listening inwards.
Interoception is one of the fastest moving areas of neuroscience and psychology, and scientists have shown that our sensitivity to interoceptive signals influences our ability to regulate emotions. The better you can read your body, the better you can manage your mind.
What all this means is that if you can improve the way you tune in to yourself, you can have a proactive impact on managing your mental and emotional wellbeing - especially overwhelm and stress.
While many of the body’s messages happen subconsciously, many - like a tightening of the chest or quickening of breath - are ones you can easily read. This physiological response happens before you're even conscious of the emotion. It's only when the brain recognises changes in the body's internal state that you actually experience the feeling, which then influences your behaviour. Without the interplay between your brain and your body, emotions like happiness, sadness, or excitement wouldn't be possible.
You think you run because you are scared? But your body is already in flight mode and then you feel fear.
Interoception is simply the science of how your brain interprets the signals from your body but when you’re overwhelmed and disconnected to your body, you don’t hear them.
It isn’t counted as one of the five main outward senses. It is a secret sixth inward sense, that has a profound impact on your wellbeing. The reason you have senses is to literally sense external danger - something is too hot, there might be a noxious gas in the air, there is a fast car moving towards you, you’ve eaten something that’s gone off, or you can hear someone walking behind you. AND you have senses to sense pleasure and connection.
In my previous post I wrote about the power of grounding yourself as a way of connecting sensually to yourself, and with that connection to body, your sixth sense will also improve.
Our senses literally save us, but they also empower us:
Hearing who you are and what you want.
Tasting the vitality of life.
Being touched by both the pleasure and pain that is the human experience.
Smelling your skin in the game.
Seeing what is possible and seeing who you are in all our beauty and imperfections.
And most of all, feeling how you are.
Please listen. Please be sensually sensible so you can matter more in your madly busy, and bustling midlife.
I absolutely love hearing from you, and I’d love to know how you feel about listening to your body, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)
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