May 27, 2024 • 48 mins
Relationship to the Body
Season 03, Episode 30
Our bodies are always speaking to us, but often we’re not able to understand or listen to what they’re trying to communicate.
In this episode, hosts Jennifer and Elisabeth unpack the complexities of our relationship to the body, including how our perceptions, emotions and beliefs about our bodies significantly impact our overall well-being. They dive deep into the impact the interoceptive system has on the nervous system, emotions and behaviors, especially in relation to disordered eating and body dysmorphia.
Jennifer and Elisabeth explore how past traumas shape our body image and inhibit our ability to express emotions safely through the body, sharing their own journeys from the cycle of maladaptive behaviors to loving acceptance.
Tune in to hear their insights into having a healthier, more compassionate relationship with your body!
Topics discussed in this episode:
- Exploring the relationship to the body
- How we develop our body image
- Interoceptive awareness and our ability to connect to the body
- The connection between trauma and the relationship to the body
- Understanding body dysmorphia and dissociation
- Sensory mismatch in relation to body dysmorphia
- The emotional aspect of the relationship to the body
- Building a healthier relationship to the body
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We take a deep dive this season, into
relationships. Complex Trauma
as an attachment wound. It seems
absolutely necessary to visit the topic of
relationship to our body, relationship to ourself,
and this is a topic that you and I love to explore. It's
(00:20):
really how we got started on this path of healing was
our disordered relationship with food and with our bodies.
I'm so happy to jump into this conversation today and hopefully take
it to a pretty deep level for folks to look at. If you're a coach,
therapist or practitioner and you want to learn how to work with the
body and the nervous system and the brain to create lasting,
(00:41):
sustainable change for your clients, join us for a free workshop
this January to teach a Neurosomatic Intelligence framework and
tools that brings change from the level of the nervous system
out into the world. Matt Bush, Melanie Weller and I
will be teaching. It's free and we'd love to see you there. The
link is in the show notes, or you can go to, neurosomaticintelligence.com
(01:02):
to sign up. Welcome
everyone to, Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous
system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. My
name's, Elizabeth Kristoff. I'm the founder of Brain Based Wellness, an online platform that
teaches you to train your nervous system for resilience and behavior change.
(01:24):
I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a Neurosomatic Psychedelic Preparation
and Integration Guide, bridging the powerful
modalities of neurosomatic intelligence and plant healing
medicine spaces. I don't think
there's any way we could avoid this being a big conversation.
This is the most sacred
(01:45):
relationship that we can enter into and having a
relationship to the body is a core cornerstone element to embodiment,
to presence. Based on
everything that we talk about, having an adverse relationship to the
body is actually quite dangerous. It impacts the way we speak
to ourselves, limiting beliefs, food patterns like
(02:07):
you said. It was those unhealed food patterns that
really brought me into this deeper work, because it gave me
so much compassion and
like a weight was lifted from me when I
learned that binge eating was a protective survival output.
When I heard those words, it just
(02:30):
like this giant puzzle of my life all came together and
I could see how I survived through food, but
also in that relationship, either to food, in the binge
eating way of either that thread or
through the diet culture thread. Both were very, very dangerous
and both kept me more disconnected from my body,
(02:52):
and it really kept me in an abusive
relationship in the way that I spoke to and believed about my body.
So, healing it and being in a different place now
is a really new experience, and
it's awesome. I think
even if people don't consider themselves having disordered
(03:12):
eating or like an abusive relationship to their body, there's
so many ways that we are disconnected from our body
or unable to hear its internal signals.
Sometimes, people can hear this and not think. It's a
very important component of healing and of
personal development and personal growth. But you and I know because
(03:34):
we see so many clients that are really high performing
individuals, really doing big things in the
world. Butm underneath, there's a really dysfunctional
relationship to their own body, and it robs them of
so much of their ability, like you were talking about, to be embodied, to be
present, to do the deep work of healing, because they can connect
(03:57):
to the body and process those things through, and also just takes a lot of
the joy out of life, like the success that they're building. They don't get
to experience because there's these deep loops of body shame
and body dysmorphia and abuse to their
body through diet, culture, and overtraining. I was just speaking with
one of my friends and clients the other day, and they were
(04:20):
going to meet some coworkers that they hadn't seen in a long time
that they had good, deep relationships with and really wanted to enjoy
that meeting. But the message to me was, all I
can think about as I'm getting ready is how much weight I've gained and what
they're going to be thinking about me in this moment. And this is like a
super successful person that's doing great things in the world that everybody
(04:42):
loves. In these other relationships is
like, you can't show up and be present and have the
experience of connecting with other people because you're stuck in the body loop. Oh,
that's so relatable. I mean, the closet meltdowns that I've
had over the course of my life trying to fit into where I'm going
into, whether that's the professional meeting, something with
(05:04):
pilates based or wherever I was practicing movement as a teacher,
either here on the podcast at Barton Springs, like, it
was constantly having to calm that
voice, and it got really. I mean, I
had so many limiting beliefs based on my value in the
clothes, size that I wore, or if this. If this
(05:27):
role showed up in this way, I had to sit perfectly to make sure that
my posture was in a certain way, so I could suck my gut in in
a certain way, depending on what I'm wearing. I would really posture
myself in the room in a way that made me feel the
most comfortable in my body. And it would be all that I could think about.
All that I could think about was all that. I mean, it
(05:49):
diminished the value. It buried me in
unworthiness because I couldn't see through
that fogged lens. So that client, I think that lady that you just
spoke of is very relatable for people. I think
so many people have this going on. I want us today to
take a deep dive. You know, there's so many components of this.
(06:11):
There's a physical component about regulation and safety. There's an
emotional component, there's a belief component. To
really look from a neurosomatic perspective about where all of this
comes from, how it lives in our body and our nervous system. I want
to start by really thinking about this idea that our perception of our own
body, it depends on the integration of our body signals from
(06:33):
outside of us, our extraception. We talk about that a lot, taking in sensory
inputs from our eyes, from our skin, from our
balance system in our inner ear, and the signals that we experience
inside our interoception, the felt sense inside of the body.
Both of these systems contribute to our body image.
That's the picture we have in our mind's eye; the size, the shape,
(06:56):
the form of our bodies and our feelings
concerning those characteristics. So, body image
is really this multidimensional physical and
psychological experience of embodiment.
It's all the things we talk about when we're talking about embodiment,
especially in the physical appearance, our awareness of our body and our emotions
(07:17):
and sensations that relate to it. This
includes, our feelings around our self perceptions,
our beliefs about ourself, our beliefs and attitudes towards our
body. We talk a lot, about creating safety
internally so that we can experience safe relationships and
be a safe space for ourselves to process emotions,
(07:39):
and also a safe space for other people to co regulate with.
All of this can be really difficult if we have these
big deficits in our input systems, these problems with
our interception, and because of that, have a
very disorganized, sometimes abusive relationship with our
body. So, from a neurosomatic perspective, so many things
(08:01):
affect the relationship to the body. Visual deficits, complex trauma,
dissociation, interceptive deficits, societal structures,
diet, culture, body hierarchy. I mean, there's so much so there's a lot to
dive into today and all this impacts our health and our
relationship with others. You know, when I hear you talk
about interoception, I wonder, if
(08:24):
I could've detected that I had a tumor in my body? If I had more
accurate interoception, if I could feel into my body more -can anybody do
that? Create new, that kind of deep relationship with
the body? Interoceptive ability is really important.
As we're going to get into it is going to play a role into
the sensory mismatch that we're going to talk about when we talk about body dysmorphia.
(08:46):
And the limiting beliefs are just so important
because back to that voice that comes in. I mean, is that the
sneaky voice of the harsh inner critic, or is that a loving, pillow talking
voice that is really kind and supportive to you throughout the day? This
really matters. It really matters because it has an emotional tag
to it. And that emotional tag, that belief tag,
(09:08):
that whole neurotag, that chunk, it gets all pulled
up together. We can't avoid the limiting belief without the unwanting behavior
and with the emotional component that comes to it.
Having a punishing or adverse relationship with
your body, it is going to come with a lot of toxic and chronic stress
that you don't really want to turn away from your
(09:30):
body.
It's interesting to know
that and understand I'm creating
dysregulation and internalizing a lot of stress by
not being able to connect to my body and to still have it be really
hard. I think it's hard for a number of reasons for
(09:50):
people to be able to really have, a level
of intimacy with their own body and
to feel those feelings. In addition to
all the parts of our society that disconnect us from our body, like diet, culture
and the myriad of ways we're taught to separate
our cognitive mind from our body. All our somatic
(10:13):
memories live in our body. This is where we
experience the physiological part of a trigger when we get re
triggered. That can be really challenging to stay connected in the body.
There are many reasons people would want to leave or
harm or punish their body because there's a lot of big
stuff in there that the cognitive mind has been repressing
(10:34):
for a long time because it's overwhelming and it's big.
The body is often where we face the outcomes of our
trauma. Our mind can repress it and cognitively, we
can shove it down and not have to experience it and come to the surface,
but in our body, it can express as disease or
pain or discomfort. So we have to
(10:55):
face sometimes, the consequences of stress and
trauma in our body. And that can lead us to, like, a real
adversarial relationship with our body, because it carries those
consequences.
We had a conversation
with, Luis Mojica and we talked about capacity. I think a lot of
times, we want a different capacity than we really have, and our body
(11:19):
tells the truth about that capacity. A lot of times, our
body has been holding so much and experiencing these years of stress and
dysregulation that maybe we weren't cognitively aware
of. And we want our capacity to be different, to handle different
levels of stress and performance in our life.
But, it can feel like our body is holding us back, because that
(11:41):
capacity of the body doesn't really measure what our expectations
are and this can lead to a really fractured, kind of punishing
relationship with the body. When the brain, when the
cognitive narrative and the body are not in sync and
they are not speaking together, and they are not
communicating together, this is not a good relationship.
(12:03):
We need for the capacity to grow, to experience
this, whatever we're experiencing in our bodies, and to know that what we're
experiencing is truth. One of the things
that you just talked about were those somatic memories living
in the body. Those memories are
often so rooted in shame and fear and
(12:26):
anger and death, what feels like
I'm gonna die every day in complex trauma.
Then it's like, you wouldn't have that
out in your flower vase every day. You'd hide it. You'd put it in the
garage, you'd shove it into a corner if that was something that you could
tangibly pick up. Like, we're not talking about high vibrational,
(12:48):
beautiful things. We're talking about hard emotions in the body
that create a lot of
inflammation, and I mean a lot of gut
dysfunction, a lot of bad feelings in the body, feelings
of unwellness in the body. When we talk about dangerous, these
emotions being dangerous in the body, we are talking about gut function. We're talking about
(13:09):
autoimmune, we're talking about cancer. We're talking about some really
big chronic illnesses and even
little ones that maybe even if you view eczema on the spectrum of
something a little bit smaller there before it moves into something a little bit
bigger, but when we can start
to communicate with the body a little bit
(13:31):
kinder, because when we've had this massive
disconnect, you need to start kind of
understanding your truths a little bit more.
So much of regulation allows for the
capacity of you knowing of your truths and that them being
okay, them starting to get a little bit more neutralized
(13:52):
in their emotional pain. But when you
have something where you're so disconnected and now you want to
form this relationship to the body, you have to start getting a little bit
kinder, a little bit more gentle. It's
really an experience when you
disconnect between cognitive and, and
(14:14):
somatic. When we kind of, I think these two start to
bring and bridge themselves together, it's almost a, very
hot vs cold - where presence and embodiment feel very infantile in
a way. Like, just baby, like, I'm here and oh, shit,
this is big. I'm here in the body now and it's a sort
of touch and go. You're sort of in and out, and then all of a
(14:36):
sudden, boom, one day you're in and things are harmonized much, much better.
Yeah, it's a process. You know, it's interesting that you brought up
eczema because I have this patch of eczema kind of like underneath
my right arm, in my right armpit and down the side of my body. It
started during a period of incredible stress for me - really, really
high stress period of my life that came. I have not been able to get
(14:59):
it to fully resolve and go away. I
used to carry a lot of shame around it. It was
like just one of those things that you don't want people to see. You want
to cover it up. Now, I just use it as a
signal from my body. I'm just monitoring it - to see if
my nervous system is getting better or worse, is my inflammation going down.
(15:20):
I'm just kind of inquisitive with it. I'll be like, hey, what do
you need? How you doing? Someone, actually, several people have
been like, you could just put steroid cream on that. But I don't want to.
I want to know if my body's and my nervous system is actually getting
better. I want to let that be a way that my body communicates with
me about if my neuropractic is really moving me forward in
(15:42):
a positive direction. It's just an output. Hell yeah. That's awesome.
It's a beautiful way to look at
your output in the way that your body speaks to you, because that's the thing.
Our bodies are speaking to us, and we are not listening. Yeah, it's
normal to have anxiety. It is normal to
get a rash if you're under too much stress. There's so much that
(16:03):
is not normalized about the way that our body speaks to
us that we're supposed to put band Aids on. Mm hmm. Yep
and it keeps blocking out those signals. I think
the thing that I see clients struggle with the most
is their weight, the way their body is shaped by
their extra weight that they carry. It's hard to
(16:25):
touch that part of the body., you know? We all do. Sometimes we'll do some
stuff with vagus nerve and we have to vibrate on. On the tummy or
we do some things. It actually, changed the way
I use cues because there's certain words
I think are really triggering for people like, to use the word, tummy, or
the word belly - I think sometimes, it's loaded.
(16:47):
It's loaded. It's a really loaded story.
That's one of the hardest things about the relationship
to the body and about cultivating the presence
and embodiment. As practitioners, we
know that these narratives are very layered, and we want
to support people coming into their bodies safely, feeling their emotions
(17:08):
safely, and supporting emotional processing that could
be holding them back from being present, connected in relationships,
and having the capacity to experience the good stuff
in life, like joy and pleasure. The next round of NSI is enrolling
now at, neurosomaticintelligence.com It's amazing how,
you can be in this really evolved place, the
(17:29):
people that we work with are really smart and, like,
emotionally intelligent and very progressive, including me,
including everyone. We can all
get stuck in these deep loops about body
size, and that pattern runs crazy deep.
Back to the binging and the
(17:50):
protective output. There were parts of my body that I would and I
know I've listened to clients say this, too, parts of my body that I
would hold onto and curse. I would be so abusive
to that part of my body. The language inside
of me is not going to get
me where I want to be in my body.
(18:15):
Yes, underneath everything else that people are
looking at and trying to grow and develop with, there's this relationship and the
difficulty of this relationship. Recently, in
our Facebook group, someone asked a question relating to body image and body
dysmorphia that I thought was really, really good question. They
were asking if you could be dissociated and also hypercritical of your
(18:38):
body at the same time. They just couldn't see how those two could link up.
They were like, if I'm detached from my body, I can't feel my body so,
how am I also hypercritical of it, have all this
hypervigilance and perfectionism around it? The answer, from
my perspective, is like a resounding, Yes! You can absolutely
have both. At the same time, you can have dissociation and the
(19:00):
interceptive deficits that come of that. Tthat can lead to actually more
objectification of your body because when we are
living under high stress, and dissociation
is a well worn protective output. It's something
that our body and our nervous system go to frequently. We know that -
we get better at it.. So that becomes a protective strategy
(19:23):
when body sensations are overwhelming. The more
we dissociate, the less those
pathways of being able to relay signals from our body to our
brain get fuel, get activation, and
so they atrophy. If we don't use it, we lose
it. Interception and
(19:45):
extraception as well, for body signals, both have a huge
impact on our ability
to connect to our body. When we don't
have that ability, we're more likely to objectify
our own body to be removed from it. Studies
have shown this.. There was a recent study in 2013 that
(20:07):
showed that the degree to which individuals are aware of their inner body
signals was inversely correlated with self
objectification. Meaning the more you could connect to your own
body, the less you objectified yourself and
the less you had a tendency to experience your body as an
object. The more we see our body as an object, the
(20:28):
more likely we are to have that abusive relationship with
the body trying to make it fit into a certain form.
With these studies, when they had two samples of healthy participants,
results showed that lower intraceptive accuracy,
like using people measuring their heartbeats
perception, was associated with higher body
(20:50):
dissatisfaction and, like, harsher critique of the body
and more objectification. Definitely, the
more dissociation we have, the more likely
we can be in that objectified relationship with our
body. Definitely. I definitely think that both
can be existing at the same time. That was me
(21:14):
existing at the same time for so long, dissociated and very
hypercritical of my body. People who
struggle with body dysmorphia also struggle with visual
deficits. A number of visual processing abnormalities are
present in body dysmorphia. That could include facial recognition,
emotional identification, aesthetics, and object
(21:35):
recognition. So, a few minutes ago, we were talking about sensory
mis-match and the interoceptive system. So,
sensory mismatch, is when the brain is receiving different information from
two systems of the brain that it needs to trust for
survival. Basically, in a nutshell, it chooses.
I'm going to let you explain sensory mismatch.
(21:58):
When we have sensory mismatch in the paradigm of
body dysmorphia, we're talking about mismatch being
communicated between the visual system and the interoceptive
system. They are not integrating, and they're saying two different
things. The way that the brain works is we don't see what's really there in
front of us, but we see what our brain projects, our brain
(22:19):
projects into our awareness, what we think we
should see, not what's actually there.
When I think about this visual deficit and body
dysmorphia, my own story, I have known for some time that I had a lazy
left eye. It's called atropia. I would
situate myself in pictures all the time so that it wouldn't be as noticeable.
(22:41):
I would actively say inside, okay, open your left eye,
smile big with your left eye. It wasn't as noticeable to other people.
But then, of course, NSI comes along and I began to understand
that this was a deficit. I could train it because it was also
resulting in so much of my dysregulation by going into
my deficit, it was going into my threat bucket every day.
(23:02):
Llike all paths, it just got
more well worn. In times of heavy stress, you will
see that eye sort of kick off and want to do its own thing. But
all that to say, you know, and we can talk about the visual
training that we do that goes along with healing our left eye deficits.
I know you have the same thing, but this all affects the
(23:25):
way I perceive myself to look.
It's my perception and so, healing this deficit or working
to heal this deficit is a really big deal for me. It's a big deal
and it's a big goal. I feel it's impacts in
me and the way that I'm in, the way that I respond to things. We
recently posted a reel of us paddling down on one of
(23:46):
the rivers and I didn't even think twice about being in a
bathing suit. Being in a bathing suit on social media - that is a
whole new version of me that never existed before. Until last week.
I know that the training that I'm doing is really make a
difference in the way that I'm living my life.
I heard you say one time, that you
(24:09):
use to always look around for your body when you would be in public.
I mean ... I really related to that too, because I used to always look
for it like, do I look like that? Do I look like that? Do I
look like that girl? Very recently, probably in
the past couple of years or so. I've spoken on here
many times about how I came to terms with my body at, Barton Springs.
(24:29):
Being in swimming places
in a bathing suit was such a new experience for me a couple of
years ago - I hadn't done that for decades. It was that voice about
my own body. It started to quiet down, and
so did the voices about other people's bodies then, my own
body as a result, got to be more free in the world.
(24:53):
Training with intention, really shifts your
projections. There's a couple really important
things that I just want to highlight that you talked about. First,
definitely I did that all the time. I would walk around and think, does that
person's body look like mine? Do my legs look like that? Does this look like
that? I just couldn't get a clear picture of my body.
(25:14):
That comes from so much dissociation and
disconnection from the body. I can't feel it. But, also my proprioceptive
map, my body mapping abilities of knowing where my body is in
space - there's another deficit there that needs to be rehabilitated.
You mentioned that our visual system
isn't actually what's there, it's a projection. I
(25:35):
think that's super, super important for people to take just a pause and
think about for a second. What we're seeing
is a brain's projection, not the
real data of what's out there. Like, for example, our eyes
are always making little micro movements. They're always shifting around all the time.
If, we were really seeing what
(25:57):
was coming in directly through the eyes, the world would appear shaky,
but we don't because our brain takes that information in
and it kind of puts it all together in this 15 previous
second picture of what's going on around us, that's stable.
That information, just like every other sensory information
that's taken in through the world, is filtered. It's
(26:19):
filtered through our beliefs, our perceptions,
what data our brain thinks is important. To make it up to our
cognitive awareness. When
we look at our body in the mirror, we're really seeing a
projection of what our brain thinks we should see, not
what is really there. In that way, like our beliefs
(26:41):
and our deficits and
our sensory mismatch, it really creates an entirely new
experience of reality when we look in the mirror. That's
so, so important. Sensory mismatch
and just understanding how threatening that is to
our nervous system as just you were saying, is when different input systems
(27:02):
that our brain relies on to give us information about the
world around us and ourselves doesn't match. So, my
eyes are telling my brain that reality is one way. My ears,
the balance system in my inner ears are saying, reality is a different way. My
body map is saying, your body's this way in space,
and it doesn't match up. To create a clear,
(27:24):
cohesive, accurate picture, remember that our brains function on
pattern recognition and prediction and they
generate an output that's trying to keep us alive. When the information
coming in doesn't match up, our brain has to
decide, which one of these systems do I want to listen to to make that
prediction. Making that decision every single
(27:46):
second is actually incredibly energy costly to our
brain. It really drives up the level of threat that our
nervous system is under, because our brains always having to be like, "Which one is
right? Which one is right?" The stakes are high and survival is
the reason we're trying to generate that prediction. So, when our
visual deficits don't match up with our interceptive
(28:08):
system, it's really creating a high threat load.
If our brain decides to go with the visual information,
it's another reason why we might dampen those signals
coming from in our body, because our brain doesn't want all that conflicting
information coming in. Then, it decides that
another system just kind of falls down the hierarchy and
(28:30):
it gets better at what it does, so it just gets
better at not paying attention or relying on that
system. Yep. You know, we
have many episodes when we talk about
relationship to the body and food and disordered eating, and we always
talk about the nervous system, the brain, the body is using
(28:50):
food and our behaviors for regulation,
to create safety and to regulate the nervous system for
emotional regulation or perhaps repressing or suppressing big emotions
that we don't feel we have the capacity to deal with. Our beliefs
are the neurotags of beliefs that are in there, driving our
behavior. All three of these things have a component
(29:12):
in our interoceptive system because we have a part
of our interceptive system. We've talked a lot this season about the
insular cortex. There's a part in the back part of the
interceptive system where we integrate all of our sensory
information that's coming in, and we answer the question, "Am I
safe or unsafe?" Our interoceptive system integrates
(29:34):
our sensory information and then produces a response. That's
going to directly impact if we are dysregulated
or if we're regulated. Also, in our
insular cortex, in the middle part of our insula, that has a lot to do
with our emotional experience and it connects to our anterior
cingulate cortex, also talked about here, which contains our
(29:56):
beliefs about ourself, and it connects also to our limbic system.
That's what allows us to experience our emotions
in our body. Our insular cortex and our hypothalamus work
together to make feelings felt. They turn emotions
into physical sensations. So,
lot of the reasons why this can drive our
(30:17):
emotional relationship to sensations. Then that
creates behaviors like, overtraining or
maladaptive food behaviors or dissociation from the body.
Then, there's another part of the interceptive system that connects to our prefrontal
cortex, where our beliefs about ourselves live
and where all of our choices are made.
(30:40):
There's a huge component of our beliefs about
ourself and our decision making that's driven by our
interceptive inputs as well. If you're having
interceptive issues, it's hard to find safety in any of these
areas; regulations, emotions, or
beliefs. As it goes for food, your interoceptive
(31:02):
system is what tells you that you're full or you're
hungry. There's so much about our society or maybe
about our family growing up. It's so interesting, when I think about bingeing,
I believe it's part survival, definitely,
but it's also part learned, because my mom was a binge eater
as well, particularly in my very small years growing up.
(31:24):
She really taught me
how to binge and so
much. I would see her go training
super hard. She would binge, and then the next day, she'd be Jane
Fonda. She'd be out there doing her thing. I got that same pattern.
I would binge, and then I would train so hard. It was like
(31:47):
moving my body was punishment, not a
celebration of how strong I am or how
easily I move, or the ways in which I can move my body.
Movement was punishment for how I punished my
body with food. I think, too,
there's that which disrupts the connection
(32:09):
to the body. The whole diet culture thing, we're really
talking about a billions of dollars
industrial complex, an oppressive
system dedicated, billions of dollars dedicated to keep
you away from your body. It tells you where to eat, when to
eat, what to eat, how much to eat. Count this, count
(32:30):
that. I'm not saying that some
of those tools are not effective, but
there needs to be a balance in how much you also
know and trust your body to speak to you, to know,
when I eat this, that's not good for me. I feel
the inflammation happen in my body when I eat this. So,
(32:52):
there's also this balance of, like, first you need to kind of, you want
to come into the body and start learning about it and learning
to hear those signals. First of all, to
trust those signals, like we're saying, train them.
Train the communication of the body. Train the brain and nervous system
so that you are getting more accurate information. Then, start carving
(33:15):
out some of those beliefs, start excavating some of that. Why am I speaking
to myself like this? What is this behavior all about? Why
am I finding myself in the fridge or in the pantry or in
huge times of deficits, caloric deficits and
starvation? What is happening here? Am I
intentionally eating? What is happening? What's so big right now? Like, the keto thing
(33:36):
and the. ... What do you call it when you don't eat for a while?
Intermittent fasting. Oh, my God. Intermittent fasting.
There's nothing wrong with these things if you
are doing it safely in a body that you are sinking
with, you know, vibing with, It's really important.
The emotional component that you talk about, the emotional component is
(33:58):
huge because the emotions, just like
the well worn pathway of fighting or whatever. If
the well worn pathways fight, I speak for myself here, then there's a well
worn pathway for repressed anger.
It keeps you in the emotions and will keep you in the cycles
of emotional abuse with your body. Not
(34:19):
just, physical abuse when you're binging or
starving because then you have the emotional abuse layer of how you
are in your body. Totally.
One of the important things you were
talking about was how movement becomes linked with punishment.
When I think about that from a nervous system and a brain
(34:42):
health perspective, our brain's first job is our survival. Its second
job is for movement. We're made to
move and the quality of our movement and
the ability to move in so many ways, right?
Like move for emotional expression, move with quality
movement. As we walk through the world, what patterns are we bracing?
(35:04):
Are we moving fluidly? All of this is so
important to our health. If movement gets so inextricably linked
with punishment and harm to our
nervous system and our body, that can be really damaging for
living a life that is aligned with nervous system health.
To have movement as be an expression
(35:26):
of emotion and also something
that we are built to do and to enjoy.
That that can have a huge impact on
people.Tthe emotional
abuse that you are talking about with emotional repression. This
is so very layered because,
(35:47):
one, there's damage being done to our body and our nervous system
just when we're not allowing that emotional energy to move through.
Like, full stop. When I'm holding in all of these big emotions
that is damaging to my tissue, to my immune system, to my
nervous system, and then also, too,
with emotional repression or
(36:09):
suppression that always comes to. With the maladaptive
behaviors that we have to use in order to keep those
emotions suppressed. It leads u s- for you
and me, it often looks like binging. For a lot of people, it looks like
substance or social media scrolling or maybe
overtraining as a distraction from feeling those emotions
(36:30):
and being able to sit with them and move them through. When
we lose our ability to connect to our body and then to
be able to safely express and move emotional energy through,
that leads to more harm to the body and then to behaviors that also
harm the body and further disconnect us from ourselves.
Then we have the driving perfectionism around our bodies
(36:53):
and the hyper vigilance that happens mostly around
people. You know, I was saying in the beginning about the way that my clothes
would fit and how I would position myself in rooms and
at tables and around people and, God,
it would be constant. If I was wearing one of those body
shapers, I'd be so worried about, like, constantly,
(37:15):
is that little bit of fat poking up outside of my back, or is the
leg shaper doing something funny?
That drove me away
from the presence of the people I was with.
Sometimes those were really important, or
engagements with family that I'll never
be able to return back to, because I was
(37:38):
dissociated and in high driving perfectionism and hyper visions
around my body, which you can never meet. I could never
meet the expectation of what I walked into my
closet for and how I was going to walk out of that
closet. Like these two pictures, these feelings never
matched each other. That was hard. I feel
(38:00):
like decades of my life
were spent in obsessive perfectionism
about my body. That led to very abusive relationship
with overtraining, like you said, using it as punishment
for binge eating episodes.
This season is all about
(38:20):
relationships and talking about how we need those social connections.
We've explored how presence is an
important part of actually being able to get the healing benefits
of social connection, or any healing benefits. We have to
be present to experience the impacts of what that does for our
nervous system and for our health. In this way, when we're stuck
(38:42):
in these loops of hyper vigilance and perfectionism, we're never
really present to experience the social connection, the co
regulation, the community that we need
for our nervous system to be healthy and process stress,
and to have that social support that is so important.
Really, so many years of my life, where
(39:05):
every event that I went to, everything that I did,
I was really detached from being in the present
reality and connecting with people because my mind was
entirely focused on my
body. It's a really new experience to feel good
in my body. I mean, this is interesting.
(39:27):
I don't know always each day how I'm going to perceive my
body when I wake up. A lot of what
I experience in my body is inflammation. I notice that
now just from some gut health and some metabolic stuff
that has been impeded by stress and trauma. Right, like,
not cycling through the, "f's" properly. When we're in a, "f
(39:50):
response", you don't need your digestive system. I was in a chronic state
of, "f survival", and now I'm
trying to kind of get things moving back to the interoceptive system and
the gut and a healthy vagus nerve.
Although I don't necessarily
understand my perception of my body, each day
(40:11):
I show up for it and I meet it and greet
it with loving kindness and know that, like, I'm here to
meet you, where you are each day. It changes.
It really changes each day.
As I come into my
body, and I'm an embodied human and spirit, now, I
(40:34):
understand what I like to eat.
I understand what I do not like to eat. I understand the way
that my body likes to move. I don't do it for punishment, I
do it for joy. I do it because I want to and it's so
liberating. It's so liberating to
know that that real is out there. I don't give a, fuck about it. Amen.
(40:56):
How we
are anywhere, is how we are everywhere, right? If I can start
to liberate myself in my relationship to myself and my body, that really
does translate and carry through into so many other areas of
my life. You know, my ability to set boundaries with other people, my ability to
show up as my full self in other relationships. There's just
(41:18):
so much work with shame when we
start to really deconstruct all of this. You know,
as you and I both have experienced some consequences of trauma
- you're a
cancer survivor. I have autoimmune disease and we know how important
this relationship with the body is.
(41:40):
It's still been a journey to get
there. It really has. It's still really a journey for me to
get there and. But, I will say it's completely possible.
It took, beginning with healing my
deficits so that my nervous system had the capacity to
begin to deconstruct all these old patterns, behaviors,
(42:01):
beliefs, and then continuing to gradually
allow myself in minimum effective dose to take new actions,
to speak to myself differently, to practice, you know,
sensory stimulus with my body and body mapping and
spending time with my body and it does. It looks really different today. It looks
really different today! My relationship to myself shows.
(42:24):
I don't believe the relationship to the body has an end
point. This is the body, you are going to be in relationship with it and
it is going to change. Your body is going to change. The way
you move with it is going to change. And
so also allowing for that to happen. The body
is much different in your twenties than it is in your forties.
(42:46):
There's so many limiting
societal myths out there about the way we age. "Oh,
you just lose your vision" or, "Oh, it's just natural that that would
happen". No, that's your nervous system. You get to
decide what happens in your visual system. You
get to decide how your body
(43:07):
lives. For me, what I've experienced is
so much of the beginning, part of my journey was really
about learning the tools to regulate my nervous system,
understanding the emotional experience, getting myself super
balanced. And in that, that was a heavy load
to take on there for a couple of years to put my focus into. Now,
(43:28):
I have a heavy focus into like the physical part of my
body and a goal every day that I push for. For my
internal state to match the physical state
of my body. I want my body to
match how I feel inside. And so
these belief. Getting back to belief systems.
(43:50):
The beliefs that I now have - I'm worthy. I'm this big creator.
My voice is worthy, and I'm valuable beyond
measure. All these. I believe that,
but I haven't believed it for long enough that my
body has changed to the. You know, because you
are your brain, you are your subconscious mind. Your beliefs are all creating that
(44:12):
back to the perception. So, it'll be interesting, I think,
when I know, I've lived this belief system for so
long that there is a reflection in my
perception, even though I also understand that.
What I'm saying, is I can also train my body to do certain things.
I like to go to the gym, and I do those things.
(44:35):
Yes. But I don't overdo it like I
used to. To get the body I want, I'm not at the Pilates studio eight
times this week and weight training three times and moving, moving,
moving, punishing, punishing, punishing. I'm doing it super lightly
and in a way that feels like I'm at a good pace with
myself. I feel healthy about it. I'm honoring my capacity and finding
(44:57):
joy in some of that movement. It's
all super, super different about where the intention
is coming from and also having the ability
to listen to the signals. I think for us, a lot
of this journey began, really, with our food freedom program, and binge eating was
the output that led us to start to explore this
(45:20):
at a very deep level and pull up some of these patterns emotionally,
belief wise, and regulation. If
people are hearing themselves in this
conversation, you can join us on the site, on the brain based
wellness site for two free weeks of nervous system training and start to learn these
tools at, rewiretrial.com. Jennifer and I are on there live
(45:42):
and we love to work with people. But, you could also check out the, Food
Freedom Program. If you're someone who likes to self study and wants to take a
deep dive into this specific issue, there's a lot of really good
content there that is specifically targeted toward restoring
the relationship with the body, food, and movement. It's
a really incredible program, and I feel like over the decades,
(46:04):
I've done just about everything to heal my food narratives.
Right now, there's some very popular diet pills out
there. Well, I think they're really for diabetes or something. There's some
alternatives out there. I will tell you that
the way that we are encouraging you to go will not be the
fast route, and it will not be easy, which is why we are there
(46:26):
on site with you. That is why we are in the containers with
you and why we have such great practitioners to facilitate with brain
based wellness. You know, food freedom was
a huge program, and it really did change and shape the
way that I view food. I know that now because of where
I'm at in my food journey with my body. Yeah,
(46:49):
me too. I would love to see
all of you there in any capacity on the site,
rewiretrial.com or check out the Food Freedom Program. Thanks so
much, y'all. Thank you, guys. If you're a coach,
a therapist, or a practitioner, you may know that you don't want to go back
and revisit trauma over and over and over again in the name of healing.
(47:11):
You see that going there, doesn't always actually help your
clients move past it. Maybe, you feel what it does to your own nervous system.
You experience the burnout that it creates too much stress for too long, and
you know that it's just not as simple as saying it's in the past. Let
it go, because the body is holding it and the past continues
to shape the present in reactions, in outputs that we experience, and in
(47:33):
responses. Trauma resolution is more than talking about the past
and deeper than cognitively distinguished to move forward. Trauma lives
in the now, in the body and the nervous system and affects the present moment
until we find a way to rehabilitate the system. If you want to learn
more about how to do that, get some practical, actionable tools and a
framework. We are now enrolling in the next cohort of neurosomatic
(47:55):
intelligence certification. You can go to, neurosomaticintelligence.com
to learn more. The link is in the show notes
can.
We take a deep dive this season, into
relationships. Complex Trauma
as an attachment wound. It seems
absolutely necessary to visit the topic of
relationship to our body, relationship to ourself,
and this is a topic that you and I love to explore. It's
(00:20):
really how we got started on this path of healing was
our disordered relationship with food and with our bodies.
I'm so happy to jump into this conversation today and hopefully take
it to a pretty deep level for folks to look at. If you're a coach,
therapist or practitioner and you want to learn how to work with the
body and the nervous system and the brain to create lasting,
(00:41):
sustainable change for your clients, join us for a free workshop
this January to teach a Neurosomatic Intelligence framework and
tools that brings change from the level of the nervous system
out into the world. Matt Bush, Melanie Weller and I
will be teaching. It's free and we'd love to see you there. The
link is in the show notes, or you can go to, neurosomaticintelligence.com
(01:02):
to sign up. Welcome
everyone to, Trauma Rewired, the podcast that teaches you about your nervous
system, how trauma lives in the body, and what you can do to heal. My
name's, Elizabeth Kristoff. I'm the founder of Brain Based Wellness, an online platform that
teaches you to train your nervous system for resilience and behavior change.
(01:24):
I'm your co host, Jennifer Wallace, a Neurosomatic Psychedelic Preparation
and Integration Guide, bridging the powerful
modalities of neurosomatic intelligence and plant healing
medicine spaces. I don't think
there's any way we could avoid this being a big conversation.
This is the most sacred
(01:45):
relationship that we can enter into and having a
relationship to the body is a core cornerstone element to embodiment,
to presence. Based on
everything that we talk about, having an adverse relationship to the
body is actually quite dangerous. It impacts the way we speak
to ourselves, limiting beliefs, food patterns like
(02:07):
you said. It was those unhealed food patterns that
really brought me into this deeper work, because it gave me
so much compassion and
like a weight was lifted from me when I
learned that binge eating was a protective survival output.
When I heard those words, it just
(02:30):
like this giant puzzle of my life all came together and
I could see how I survived through food, but
also in that relationship, either to food, in the binge
eating way of either that thread or
through the diet culture thread. Both were very, very dangerous
and both kept me more disconnected from my body,
(02:52):
and it really kept me in an abusive
relationship in the way that I spoke to and believed about my body.
So, healing it and being in a different place now
is a really new experience, and
it's awesome. I think
even if people don't consider themselves having disordered
(03:12):
eating or like an abusive relationship to their body, there's
so many ways that we are disconnected from our body
or unable to hear its internal signals.
Sometimes, people can hear this and not think. It's a
very important component of healing and of
personal development and personal growth. But you and I know because
(03:34):
we see so many clients that are really high performing
individuals, really doing big things in the
world. Butm underneath, there's a really dysfunctional
relationship to their own body, and it robs them of
so much of their ability, like you were talking about, to be embodied, to be
present, to do the deep work of healing, because they can connect
(03:57):
to the body and process those things through, and also just takes a lot of
the joy out of life, like the success that they're building. They don't get
to experience because there's these deep loops of body shame
and body dysmorphia and abuse to their
body through diet, culture, and overtraining. I was just speaking with
one of my friends and clients the other day, and they were
(04:20):
going to meet some coworkers that they hadn't seen in a long time
that they had good, deep relationships with and really wanted to enjoy
that meeting. But the message to me was, all I
can think about as I'm getting ready is how much weight I've gained and what
they're going to be thinking about me in this moment. And this is like a
super successful person that's doing great things in the world that everybody
(04:42):
loves. In these other relationships is
like, you can't show up and be present and have the
experience of connecting with other people because you're stuck in the body loop. Oh,
that's so relatable. I mean, the closet meltdowns that I've
had over the course of my life trying to fit into where I'm going
into, whether that's the professional meeting, something with
(05:04):
pilates based or wherever I was practicing movement as a teacher,
either here on the podcast at Barton Springs, like, it
was constantly having to calm that
voice, and it got really. I mean, I
had so many limiting beliefs based on my value in the
clothes, size that I wore, or if this. If this
(05:27):
role showed up in this way, I had to sit perfectly to make sure that
my posture was in a certain way, so I could suck my gut in in
a certain way, depending on what I'm wearing. I would really posture
myself in the room in a way that made me feel the
most comfortable in my body. And it would be all that I could think about.
All that I could think about was all that. I mean, it
(05:49):
diminished the value. It buried me in
unworthiness because I couldn't see through
that fogged lens. So that client, I think that lady that you just
spoke of is very relatable for people. I think
so many people have this going on. I want us today to
take a deep dive. You know, there's so many components of this.
(06:11):
There's a physical component about regulation and safety. There's an
emotional component, there's a belief component. To
really look from a neurosomatic perspective about where all of this
comes from, how it lives in our body and our nervous system. I want
to start by really thinking about this idea that our perception of our own
body, it depends on the integration of our body signals from
(06:33):
outside of us, our extraception. We talk about that a lot, taking in sensory
inputs from our eyes, from our skin, from our
balance system in our inner ear, and the signals that we experience
inside our interoception, the felt sense inside of the body.
Both of these systems contribute to our body image.
That's the picture we have in our mind's eye; the size, the shape,
(06:56):
the form of our bodies and our feelings
concerning those characteristics. So, body image
is really this multidimensional physical and
psychological experience of embodiment.
It's all the things we talk about when we're talking about embodiment,
especially in the physical appearance, our awareness of our body and our emotions
(07:17):
and sensations that relate to it. This
includes, our feelings around our self perceptions,
our beliefs about ourself, our beliefs and attitudes towards our
body. We talk a lot, about creating safety
internally so that we can experience safe relationships and
be a safe space for ourselves to process emotions,
(07:39):
and also a safe space for other people to co regulate with.
All of this can be really difficult if we have these
big deficits in our input systems, these problems with
our interception, and because of that, have a
very disorganized, sometimes abusive relationship with our
body. So, from a neurosomatic perspective, so many things
(08:01):
affect the relationship to the body. Visual deficits, complex trauma,
dissociation, interceptive deficits, societal structures,
diet, culture, body hierarchy. I mean, there's so much so there's a lot to
dive into today and all this impacts our health and our
relationship with others. You know, when I hear you talk
about interoception, I wonder, if
(08:24):
I could've detected that I had a tumor in my body? If I had more
accurate interoception, if I could feel into my body more -can anybody do
that? Create new, that kind of deep relationship with
the body? Interoceptive ability is really important.
As we're going to get into it is going to play a role into
the sensory mismatch that we're going to talk about when we talk about body dysmorphia.
(08:46):
And the limiting beliefs are just so important
because back to that voice that comes in. I mean, is that the
sneaky voice of the harsh inner critic, or is that a loving, pillow talking
voice that is really kind and supportive to you throughout the day? This
really matters. It really matters because it has an emotional tag
to it. And that emotional tag, that belief tag,
(09:08):
that whole neurotag, that chunk, it gets all pulled
up together. We can't avoid the limiting belief without the unwanting behavior
and with the emotional component that comes to it.
Having a punishing or adverse relationship with
your body, it is going to come with a lot of toxic and chronic stress
that you don't really want to turn away from your
(09:30):
body.
It's interesting to know
that and understand I'm creating
dysregulation and internalizing a lot of stress by
not being able to connect to my body and to still have it be really
hard. I think it's hard for a number of reasons for
(09:50):
people to be able to really have, a level
of intimacy with their own body and
to feel those feelings. In addition to
all the parts of our society that disconnect us from our body, like diet, culture
and the myriad of ways we're taught to separate
our cognitive mind from our body. All our somatic
(10:13):
memories live in our body. This is where we
experience the physiological part of a trigger when we get re
triggered. That can be really challenging to stay connected in the body.
There are many reasons people would want to leave or
harm or punish their body because there's a lot of big
stuff in there that the cognitive mind has been repressing
(10:34):
for a long time because it's overwhelming and it's big.
The body is often where we face the outcomes of our
trauma. Our mind can repress it and cognitively, we
can shove it down and not have to experience it and come to the surface,
but in our body, it can express as disease or
pain or discomfort. So we have to
(10:55):
face sometimes, the consequences of stress and
trauma in our body. And that can lead us to, like, a real
adversarial relationship with our body, because it carries those
consequences.
We had a conversation
with, Luis Mojica and we talked about capacity. I think a lot of
times, we want a different capacity than we really have, and our body
(11:19):
tells the truth about that capacity. A lot of times, our
body has been holding so much and experiencing these years of stress and
dysregulation that maybe we weren't cognitively aware
of. And we want our capacity to be different, to handle different
levels of stress and performance in our life.
But, it can feel like our body is holding us back, because that
(11:41):
capacity of the body doesn't really measure what our expectations
are and this can lead to a really fractured, kind of punishing
relationship with the body. When the brain, when the
cognitive narrative and the body are not in sync and
they are not speaking together, and they are not
communicating together, this is not a good relationship.
(12:03):
We need for the capacity to grow, to experience
this, whatever we're experiencing in our bodies, and to know that what we're
experiencing is truth. One of the things
that you just talked about were those somatic memories living
in the body. Those memories are
often so rooted in shame and fear and
(12:26):
anger and death, what feels like
I'm gonna die every day in complex trauma.
Then it's like, you wouldn't have that
out in your flower vase every day. You'd hide it. You'd put it in the
garage, you'd shove it into a corner if that was something that you could
tangibly pick up. Like, we're not talking about high vibrational,
(12:48):
beautiful things. We're talking about hard emotions in the body
that create a lot of
inflammation, and I mean a lot of gut
dysfunction, a lot of bad feelings in the body, feelings
of unwellness in the body. When we talk about dangerous, these
emotions being dangerous in the body, we are talking about gut function. We're talking about
(13:09):
autoimmune, we're talking about cancer. We're talking about some really
big chronic illnesses and even
little ones that maybe even if you view eczema on the spectrum of
something a little bit smaller there before it moves into something a little bit
bigger, but when we can start
to communicate with the body a little bit
(13:31):
kinder, because when we've had this massive
disconnect, you need to start kind of
understanding your truths a little bit more.
So much of regulation allows for the
capacity of you knowing of your truths and that them being
okay, them starting to get a little bit more neutralized
(13:52):
in their emotional pain. But when you
have something where you're so disconnected and now you want to
form this relationship to the body, you have to start getting a little bit
kinder, a little bit more gentle. It's
really an experience when you
disconnect between cognitive and, and
(14:14):
somatic. When we kind of, I think these two start to
bring and bridge themselves together, it's almost a, very
hot vs cold - where presence and embodiment feel very infantile in
a way. Like, just baby, like, I'm here and oh, shit,
this is big. I'm here in the body now and it's a sort
of touch and go. You're sort of in and out, and then all of a
(14:36):
sudden, boom, one day you're in and things are harmonized much, much better.
Yeah, it's a process. You know, it's interesting that you brought up
eczema because I have this patch of eczema kind of like underneath
my right arm, in my right armpit and down the side of my body. It
started during a period of incredible stress for me - really, really
high stress period of my life that came. I have not been able to get
(14:59):
it to fully resolve and go away. I
used to carry a lot of shame around it. It was
like just one of those things that you don't want people to see. You want
to cover it up. Now, I just use it as a
signal from my body. I'm just monitoring it - to see if
my nervous system is getting better or worse, is my inflammation going down.
(15:20):
I'm just kind of inquisitive with it. I'll be like, hey, what do
you need? How you doing? Someone, actually, several people have
been like, you could just put steroid cream on that. But I don't want to.
I want to know if my body's and my nervous system is actually getting
better. I want to let that be a way that my body communicates with
me about if my neuropractic is really moving me forward in
(15:42):
a positive direction. It's just an output. Hell yeah. That's awesome.
It's a beautiful way to look at
your output in the way that your body speaks to you, because that's the thing.
Our bodies are speaking to us, and we are not listening. Yeah, it's
normal to have anxiety. It is normal to
get a rash if you're under too much stress. There's so much that
(16:03):
is not normalized about the way that our body speaks to
us that we're supposed to put band Aids on. Mm hmm. Yep
and it keeps blocking out those signals. I think
the thing that I see clients struggle with the most
is their weight, the way their body is shaped by
their extra weight that they carry. It's hard to
(16:25):
touch that part of the body., you know? We all do. Sometimes we'll do some
stuff with vagus nerve and we have to vibrate on. On the tummy or
we do some things. It actually, changed the way
I use cues because there's certain words
I think are really triggering for people like, to use the word, tummy, or
the word belly - I think sometimes, it's loaded.
(16:47):
It's loaded. It's a really loaded story.
That's one of the hardest things about the relationship
to the body and about cultivating the presence
and embodiment. As practitioners, we
know that these narratives are very layered, and we want
to support people coming into their bodies safely, feeling their emotions
(17:08):
safely, and supporting emotional processing that could
be holding them back from being present, connected in relationships,
and having the capacity to experience the good stuff
in life, like joy and pleasure. The next round of NSI is enrolling
now at, neurosomaticintelligence.com It's amazing how,
you can be in this really evolved place, the
(17:29):
people that we work with are really smart and, like,
emotionally intelligent and very progressive, including me,
including everyone. We can all
get stuck in these deep loops about body
size, and that pattern runs crazy deep.
Back to the binging and the
(17:50):
protective output. There were parts of my body that I would and I
know I've listened to clients say this, too, parts of my body that I
would hold onto and curse. I would be so abusive
to that part of my body. The language inside
of me is not going to get
me where I want to be in my body.
(18:15):
Yes, underneath everything else that people are
looking at and trying to grow and develop with, there's this relationship and the
difficulty of this relationship. Recently, in
our Facebook group, someone asked a question relating to body image and body
dysmorphia that I thought was really, really good question. They
were asking if you could be dissociated and also hypercritical of your
(18:38):
body at the same time. They just couldn't see how those two could link up.
They were like, if I'm detached from my body, I can't feel my body so,
how am I also hypercritical of it, have all this
hypervigilance and perfectionism around it? The answer, from
my perspective, is like a resounding, Yes! You can absolutely
have both. At the same time, you can have dissociation and the
(19:00):
interceptive deficits that come of that. Tthat can lead to actually more
objectification of your body because when we are
living under high stress, and dissociation
is a well worn protective output. It's something
that our body and our nervous system go to frequently. We know that -
we get better at it.. So that becomes a protective strategy
(19:23):
when body sensations are overwhelming. The more
we dissociate, the less those
pathways of being able to relay signals from our body to our
brain get fuel, get activation, and
so they atrophy. If we don't use it, we lose
it. Interception and
(19:45):
extraception as well, for body signals, both have a huge
impact on our ability
to connect to our body. When we don't
have that ability, we're more likely to objectify
our own body to be removed from it. Studies
have shown this.. There was a recent study in 2013 that
(20:07):
showed that the degree to which individuals are aware of their inner body
signals was inversely correlated with self
objectification. Meaning the more you could connect to your own
body, the less you objectified yourself and
the less you had a tendency to experience your body as an
object. The more we see our body as an object, the
(20:28):
more likely we are to have that abusive relationship with
the body trying to make it fit into a certain form.
With these studies, when they had two samples of healthy participants,
results showed that lower intraceptive accuracy,
like using people measuring their heartbeats
perception, was associated with higher body
(20:50):
dissatisfaction and, like, harsher critique of the body
and more objectification. Definitely, the
more dissociation we have, the more likely
we can be in that objectified relationship with our
body. Definitely. I definitely think that both
can be existing at the same time. That was me
(21:14):
existing at the same time for so long, dissociated and very
hypercritical of my body. People who
struggle with body dysmorphia also struggle with visual
deficits. A number of visual processing abnormalities are
present in body dysmorphia. That could include facial recognition,
emotional identification, aesthetics, and object
(21:35):
recognition. So, a few minutes ago, we were talking about sensory
mis-match and the interoceptive system. So,
sensory mismatch, is when the brain is receiving different information from
two systems of the brain that it needs to trust for
survival. Basically, in a nutshell, it chooses.
I'm going to let you explain sensory mismatch.
(21:58):
When we have sensory mismatch in the paradigm of
body dysmorphia, we're talking about mismatch being
communicated between the visual system and the interoceptive
system. They are not integrating, and they're saying two different
things. The way that the brain works is we don't see what's really there in
front of us, but we see what our brain projects, our brain
(22:19):
projects into our awareness, what we think we
should see, not what's actually there.
When I think about this visual deficit and body
dysmorphia, my own story, I have known for some time that I had a lazy
left eye. It's called atropia. I would
situate myself in pictures all the time so that it wouldn't be as noticeable.
(22:41):
I would actively say inside, okay, open your left eye,
smile big with your left eye. It wasn't as noticeable to other people.
But then, of course, NSI comes along and I began to understand
that this was a deficit. I could train it because it was also
resulting in so much of my dysregulation by going into
my deficit, it was going into my threat bucket every day.
(23:02):
Llike all paths, it just got
more well worn. In times of heavy stress, you will
see that eye sort of kick off and want to do its own thing. But
all that to say, you know, and we can talk about the visual
training that we do that goes along with healing our left eye deficits.
I know you have the same thing, but this all affects the
(23:25):
way I perceive myself to look.
It's my perception and so, healing this deficit or working
to heal this deficit is a really big deal for me. It's a big deal
and it's a big goal. I feel it's impacts in
me and the way that I'm in, the way that I respond to things. We
recently posted a reel of us paddling down on one of
(23:46):
the rivers and I didn't even think twice about being in a
bathing suit. Being in a bathing suit on social media - that is a
whole new version of me that never existed before. Until last week.
I know that the training that I'm doing is really make a
difference in the way that I'm living my life.
I heard you say one time, that you
(24:09):
use to always look around for your body when you would be in public.
I mean ... I really related to that too, because I used to always look
for it like, do I look like that? Do I look like that? Do I
look like that girl? Very recently, probably in
the past couple of years or so. I've spoken on here
many times about how I came to terms with my body at, Barton Springs.
(24:29):
Being in swimming places
in a bathing suit was such a new experience for me a couple of
years ago - I hadn't done that for decades. It was that voice about
my own body. It started to quiet down, and
so did the voices about other people's bodies then, my own
body as a result, got to be more free in the world.
(24:53):
Training with intention, really shifts your
projections. There's a couple really important
things that I just want to highlight that you talked about. First,
definitely I did that all the time. I would walk around and think, does that
person's body look like mine? Do my legs look like that? Does this look like
that? I just couldn't get a clear picture of my body.
(25:14):
That comes from so much dissociation and
disconnection from the body. I can't feel it. But, also my proprioceptive
map, my body mapping abilities of knowing where my body is in
space - there's another deficit there that needs to be rehabilitated.
You mentioned that our visual system
isn't actually what's there, it's a projection. I
(25:35):
think that's super, super important for people to take just a pause and
think about for a second. What we're seeing
is a brain's projection, not the
real data of what's out there. Like, for example, our eyes
are always making little micro movements. They're always shifting around all the time.
If, we were really seeing what
(25:57):
was coming in directly through the eyes, the world would appear shaky,
but we don't because our brain takes that information in
and it kind of puts it all together in this 15 previous
second picture of what's going on around us, that's stable.
That information, just like every other sensory information
that's taken in through the world, is filtered. It's
(26:19):
filtered through our beliefs, our perceptions,
what data our brain thinks is important. To make it up to our
cognitive awareness. When
we look at our body in the mirror, we're really seeing a
projection of what our brain thinks we should see, not
what is really there. In that way, like our beliefs
(26:41):
and our deficits and
our sensory mismatch, it really creates an entirely new
experience of reality when we look in the mirror. That's
so, so important. Sensory mismatch
and just understanding how threatening that is to
our nervous system as just you were saying, is when different input systems
(27:02):
that our brain relies on to give us information about the
world around us and ourselves doesn't match. So, my
eyes are telling my brain that reality is one way. My ears,
the balance system in my inner ears are saying, reality is a different way. My
body map is saying, your body's this way in space,
and it doesn't match up. To create a clear,
(27:24):
cohesive, accurate picture, remember that our brains function on
pattern recognition and prediction and they
generate an output that's trying to keep us alive. When the information
coming in doesn't match up, our brain has to
decide, which one of these systems do I want to listen to to make that
prediction. Making that decision every single
(27:46):
second is actually incredibly energy costly to our
brain. It really drives up the level of threat that our
nervous system is under, because our brains always having to be like, "Which one is
right? Which one is right?" The stakes are high and survival is
the reason we're trying to generate that prediction. So, when our
visual deficits don't match up with our interceptive
(28:08):
system, it's really creating a high threat load.
If our brain decides to go with the visual information,
it's another reason why we might dampen those signals
coming from in our body, because our brain doesn't want all that conflicting
information coming in. Then, it decides that
another system just kind of falls down the hierarchy and
(28:30):
it gets better at what it does, so it just gets
better at not paying attention or relying on that
system. Yep. You know, we
have many episodes when we talk about
relationship to the body and food and disordered eating, and we always
talk about the nervous system, the brain, the body is using
(28:50):
food and our behaviors for regulation,
to create safety and to regulate the nervous system for
emotional regulation or perhaps repressing or suppressing big emotions
that we don't feel we have the capacity to deal with. Our beliefs
are the neurotags of beliefs that are in there, driving our
behavior. All three of these things have a component
(29:12):
in our interoceptive system because we have a part
of our interceptive system. We've talked a lot this season about the
insular cortex. There's a part in the back part of the
interceptive system where we integrate all of our sensory
information that's coming in, and we answer the question, "Am I
safe or unsafe?" Our interoceptive system integrates
(29:34):
our sensory information and then produces a response. That's
going to directly impact if we are dysregulated
or if we're regulated. Also, in our
insular cortex, in the middle part of our insula, that has a lot to do
with our emotional experience and it connects to our anterior
cingulate cortex, also talked about here, which contains our
(29:56):
beliefs about ourself, and it connects also to our limbic system.
That's what allows us to experience our emotions
in our body. Our insular cortex and our hypothalamus work
together to make feelings felt. They turn emotions
into physical sensations. So,
lot of the reasons why this can drive our
(30:17):
emotional relationship to sensations. Then that
creates behaviors like, overtraining or
maladaptive food behaviors or dissociation from the body.
Then, there's another part of the interceptive system that connects to our prefrontal
cortex, where our beliefs about ourselves live
and where all of our choices are made.
(30:40):
There's a huge component of our beliefs about
ourself and our decision making that's driven by our
interceptive inputs as well. If you're having
interceptive issues, it's hard to find safety in any of these
areas; regulations, emotions, or
beliefs. As it goes for food, your interoceptive
(31:02):
system is what tells you that you're full or you're
hungry. There's so much about our society or maybe
about our family growing up. It's so interesting, when I think about bingeing,
I believe it's part survival, definitely,
but it's also part learned, because my mom was a binge eater
as well, particularly in my very small years growing up.
(31:24):
She really taught me
how to binge and so
much. I would see her go training
super hard. She would binge, and then the next day, she'd be Jane
Fonda. She'd be out there doing her thing. I got that same pattern.
I would binge, and then I would train so hard. It was like
(31:47):
moving my body was punishment, not a
celebration of how strong I am or how
easily I move, or the ways in which I can move my body.
Movement was punishment for how I punished my
body with food. I think, too,
there's that which disrupts the connection
(32:09):
to the body. The whole diet culture thing, we're really
talking about a billions of dollars
industrial complex, an oppressive
system dedicated, billions of dollars dedicated to keep
you away from your body. It tells you where to eat, when to
eat, what to eat, how much to eat. Count this, count
(32:30):
that. I'm not saying that some
of those tools are not effective, but
there needs to be a balance in how much you also
know and trust your body to speak to you, to know,
when I eat this, that's not good for me. I feel
the inflammation happen in my body when I eat this. So,
(32:52):
there's also this balance of, like, first you need to kind of, you want
to come into the body and start learning about it and learning
to hear those signals. First of all, to
trust those signals, like we're saying, train them.
Train the communication of the body. Train the brain and nervous system
so that you are getting more accurate information. Then, start carving
(33:15):
out some of those beliefs, start excavating some of that. Why am I speaking
to myself like this? What is this behavior all about? Why
am I finding myself in the fridge or in the pantry or in
huge times of deficits, caloric deficits and
starvation? What is happening here? Am I
intentionally eating? What is happening? What's so big right now? Like, the keto thing
(33:36):
and the. ... What do you call it when you don't eat for a while?
Intermittent fasting. Oh, my God. Intermittent fasting.
There's nothing wrong with these things if you
are doing it safely in a body that you are sinking
with, you know, vibing with, It's really important.
The emotional component that you talk about, the emotional component is
(33:58):
huge because the emotions, just like
the well worn pathway of fighting or whatever. If
the well worn pathways fight, I speak for myself here, then there's a well
worn pathway for repressed anger.
It keeps you in the emotions and will keep you in the cycles
of emotional abuse with your body. Not
(34:19):
just, physical abuse when you're binging or
starving because then you have the emotional abuse layer of how you
are in your body. Totally.
One of the important things you were
talking about was how movement becomes linked with punishment.
When I think about that from a nervous system and a brain
(34:42):
health perspective, our brain's first job is our survival. Its second
job is for movement. We're made to
move and the quality of our movement and
the ability to move in so many ways, right?
Like move for emotional expression, move with quality
movement. As we walk through the world, what patterns are we bracing?
(35:04):
Are we moving fluidly? All of this is so
important to our health. If movement gets so inextricably linked
with punishment and harm to our
nervous system and our body, that can be really damaging for
living a life that is aligned with nervous system health.
To have movement as be an expression
(35:26):
of emotion and also something
that we are built to do and to enjoy.
That that can have a huge impact on
people.Tthe emotional
abuse that you are talking about with emotional repression. This
is so very layered because,
(35:47):
one, there's damage being done to our body and our nervous system
just when we're not allowing that emotional energy to move through.
Like, full stop. When I'm holding in all of these big emotions
that is damaging to my tissue, to my immune system, to my
nervous system, and then also, too,
with emotional repression or
(36:09):
suppression that always comes to. With the maladaptive
behaviors that we have to use in order to keep those
emotions suppressed. It leads u s- for you
and me, it often looks like binging. For a lot of people, it looks like
substance or social media scrolling or maybe
overtraining as a distraction from feeling those emotions
(36:30):
and being able to sit with them and move them through. When
we lose our ability to connect to our body and then to
be able to safely express and move emotional energy through,
that leads to more harm to the body and then to behaviors that also
harm the body and further disconnect us from ourselves.
Then we have the driving perfectionism around our bodies
(36:53):
and the hyper vigilance that happens mostly around
people. You know, I was saying in the beginning about the way that my clothes
would fit and how I would position myself in rooms and
at tables and around people and, God,
it would be constant. If I was wearing one of those body
shapers, I'd be so worried about, like, constantly,
(37:15):
is that little bit of fat poking up outside of my back, or is the
leg shaper doing something funny?
That drove me away
from the presence of the people I was with.
Sometimes those were really important, or
engagements with family that I'll never
be able to return back to, because I was
(37:38):
dissociated and in high driving perfectionism and hyper visions
around my body, which you can never meet. I could never
meet the expectation of what I walked into my
closet for and how I was going to walk out of that
closet. Like these two pictures, these feelings never
matched each other. That was hard. I feel
(38:00):
like decades of my life
were spent in obsessive perfectionism
about my body. That led to very abusive relationship
with overtraining, like you said, using it as punishment
for binge eating episodes.
This season is all about
(38:20):
relationships and talking about how we need those social connections.
We've explored how presence is an
important part of actually being able to get the healing benefits
of social connection, or any healing benefits. We have to
be present to experience the impacts of what that does for our
nervous system and for our health. In this way, when we're stuck
(38:42):
in these loops of hyper vigilance and perfectionism, we're never
really present to experience the social connection, the co
regulation, the community that we need
for our nervous system to be healthy and process stress,
and to have that social support that is so important.
Really, so many years of my life, where
(39:05):
every event that I went to, everything that I did,
I was really detached from being in the present
reality and connecting with people because my mind was
entirely focused on my
body. It's a really new experience to feel good
in my body. I mean, this is interesting.
(39:27):
I don't know always each day how I'm going to perceive my
body when I wake up. A lot of what
I experience in my body is inflammation. I notice that
now just from some gut health and some metabolic stuff
that has been impeded by stress and trauma. Right, like,
not cycling through the, "f's" properly. When we're in a, "f
(39:50):
response", you don't need your digestive system. I was in a chronic state
of, "f survival", and now I'm
trying to kind of get things moving back to the interoceptive system and
the gut and a healthy vagus nerve.
Although I don't necessarily
understand my perception of my body, each day
(40:11):
I show up for it and I meet it and greet
it with loving kindness and know that, like, I'm here to
meet you, where you are each day. It changes.
It really changes each day.
As I come into my
body, and I'm an embodied human and spirit, now, I
(40:34):
understand what I like to eat.
I understand what I do not like to eat. I understand the way
that my body likes to move. I don't do it for punishment, I
do it for joy. I do it because I want to and it's so
liberating. It's so liberating to
know that that real is out there. I don't give a, fuck about it. Amen.
(40:56):
How we
are anywhere, is how we are everywhere, right? If I can start
to liberate myself in my relationship to myself and my body, that really
does translate and carry through into so many other areas of
my life. You know, my ability to set boundaries with other people, my ability to
show up as my full self in other relationships. There's just
(41:18):
so much work with shame when we
start to really deconstruct all of this. You know,
as you and I both have experienced some consequences of trauma
- you're a
cancer survivor. I have autoimmune disease and we know how important
this relationship with the body is.
(41:40):
It's still been a journey to get
there. It really has. It's still really a journey for me to
get there and. But, I will say it's completely possible.
It took, beginning with healing my
deficits so that my nervous system had the capacity to
begin to deconstruct all these old patterns, behaviors,
(42:01):
beliefs, and then continuing to gradually
allow myself in minimum effective dose to take new actions,
to speak to myself differently, to practice, you know,
sensory stimulus with my body and body mapping and
spending time with my body and it does. It looks really different today. It looks
really different today! My relationship to myself shows.
(42:24):
I don't believe the relationship to the body has an end
point. This is the body, you are going to be in relationship with it and
it is going to change. Your body is going to change. The way
you move with it is going to change. And
so also allowing for that to happen. The body
is much different in your twenties than it is in your forties.
(42:46):
There's so many limiting
societal myths out there about the way we age. "Oh,
you just lose your vision" or, "Oh, it's just natural that that would
happen". No, that's your nervous system. You get to
decide what happens in your visual system. You
get to decide how your body
(43:07):
lives. For me, what I've experienced is
so much of the beginning, part of my journey was really
about learning the tools to regulate my nervous system,
understanding the emotional experience, getting myself super
balanced. And in that, that was a heavy load
to take on there for a couple of years to put my focus into. Now,
(43:28):
I have a heavy focus into like the physical part of my
body and a goal every day that I push for. For my
internal state to match the physical state
of my body. I want my body to
match how I feel inside. And so
these belief. Getting back to belief systems.
(43:50):
The beliefs that I now have - I'm worthy. I'm this big creator.
My voice is worthy, and I'm valuable beyond
measure. All these. I believe that,
but I haven't believed it for long enough that my
body has changed to the. You know, because you
are your brain, you are your subconscious mind. Your beliefs are all creating that
(44:12):
back to the perception. So, it'll be interesting, I think,
when I know, I've lived this belief system for so
long that there is a reflection in my
perception, even though I also understand that.
What I'm saying, is I can also train my body to do certain things.
I like to go to the gym, and I do those things.
(44:35):
Yes. But I don't overdo it like I
used to. To get the body I want, I'm not at the Pilates studio eight
times this week and weight training three times and moving, moving,
moving, punishing, punishing, punishing. I'm doing it super lightly
and in a way that feels like I'm at a good pace with
myself. I feel healthy about it. I'm honoring my capacity and finding
(44:57):
joy in some of that movement. It's
all super, super different about where the intention
is coming from and also having the ability
to listen to the signals. I think for us, a lot
of this journey began, really, with our food freedom program, and binge eating was
the output that led us to start to explore this
(45:20):
at a very deep level and pull up some of these patterns emotionally,
belief wise, and regulation. If
people are hearing themselves in this
conversation, you can join us on the site, on the brain based
wellness site for two free weeks of nervous system training and start to learn these
tools at, rewiretrial.com. Jennifer and I are on there live
(45:42):
and we love to work with people. But, you could also check out the, Food
Freedom Program. If you're someone who likes to self study and wants to take a
deep dive into this specific issue, there's a lot of really good
content there that is specifically targeted toward restoring
the relationship with the body, food, and movement. It's
a really incredible program, and I feel like over the decades,
(46:04):
I've done just about everything to heal my food narratives.
Right now, there's some very popular diet pills out
there. Well, I think they're really for diabetes or something. There's some
alternatives out there. I will tell you that
the way that we are encouraging you to go will not be the
fast route, and it will not be easy, which is why we are there
(46:26):
on site with you. That is why we are in the containers with
you and why we have such great practitioners to facilitate with brain
based wellness. You know, food freedom was
a huge program, and it really did change and shape the
way that I view food. I know that now because of where
I'm at in my food journey with my body. Yeah,
(46:49):
me too. I would love to see
all of you there in any capacity on the site,
rewiretrial.com or check out the Food Freedom Program. Thanks so
much, y'all. Thank you, guys. If you're a coach,
a therapist, or a practitioner, you may know that you don't want to go back
and revisit trauma over and over and over again in the name of healing.
(47:11):
You see that going there, doesn't always actually help your
clients move past it. Maybe, you feel what it does to your own nervous system.
You experience the burnout that it creates too much stress for too long, and
you know that it's just not as simple as saying it's in the past. Let
it go, because the body is holding it and the past continues
to shape the present in reactions, in outputs that we experience, and in
(47:33):
responses. Trauma resolution is more than talking about the past
and deeper than cognitively distinguished to move forward. Trauma lives
in the now, in the body and the nervous system and affects the present moment
until we find a way to rehabilitate the system. If you want to learn
more about how to do that, get some practical, actionable tools and a
framework. We are now enrolling in the next cohort of neurosomatic
(47:55):
intelligence certification. You can go to, neurosomaticintelligence.com
to learn more. The link is in the show notes
can.
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