Chap­ter 6: Los­ing Your Body, Los­ing Your Self, the jour­ney of heal­ing often begins with learn­ing to live with the ques­tions them­selves, as Rain­er Maria Rilke beau­ti­ful­ly expressed in his let­ters to a young poet. Just as with the chal­lenges in our emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal states, the answers to our strug­gles may come slow­ly, with­out our direct aware­ness. Instead, we might find our way toward under­stand­ing through the sim­ple act of liv­ing with the dis­com­fort of the ques­tions.

Sher­ry walked into my office, her body lan­guage speak­ing vol­umes before she even uttered a word. Her slumped pos­ture, with her chin almost touch­ing her chest, told me that she was hid­ing from the world in more ways than one. When she began to speak, her voice was flat and monot­o­ne, reveal­ing a deep emo­tion­al numb­ness that had tak­en root over the years.

Sherry’s sto­ry was one of neglect and deep emo­tion­al scars that had been left unad­dressed. Grow­ing up in a fos­ter home where she was sur­round­ed by oth­er chil­dren in need of care, Sher­ry had always felt like an out­sider in her own fam­i­ly. She shared mem­o­ries of her moth­er telling her that she didn’t belong, that she was the “wrong baby,” a com­ment that, though pos­si­bly meant as a joke, was laden with unspo­ken pain. This neglect wasn’t just emotional—it affect­ed her sense of self and place in the world, a painful real­i­ty that would con­tin­ue to shape her well into adult­hood.

The trau­ma of her child­hood wasn’t the only bur­den Sher­ry car­ried. Her adult life was marked by iso­la­tion, devoid of close rela­tion­ships, and filled with painful reminders of her past. She described a ter­ri­fy­ing inci­dent in Flori­da dur­ing a col­lege vaca­tion where she was abduct­ed, held cap­tive, and assault­ed for days. Despite the hor­ri­fy­ing nature of her expe­ri­ence, her moth­er, who she had turned to for help, reject­ed her plea for assis­tance, leav­ing Sher­ry with a pro­found sense of aban­don­ment.

As Sher­ry’s ther­a­pist, I came to real­ize that her strug­gles were not just psy­cho­log­i­cal but deeply somat­ic. She exhib­it­ed behav­iors like skin pick­ing as a way to feel some­thing, to regain a sense of con­trol over her body when every­thing else felt out of her reach. This com­pul­sive behav­ior, although harm­ful, wasn’t an attempt at self-harm but rather an attempt to feel alive when every­thing else felt numb and dis­tant.

Over time, I began to under­stand the con­nec­tion between trau­ma and the dis­con­nec­tion from the body. For many peo­ple with his­to­ries of trau­ma, phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions become a for­eign ter­ri­to­ry, dis­con­nect­ed from the mind. This dis­con­nec­tion isn’t just a psy­cho­log­i­cal issue but a somat­ic one, where the body’s inter­nal sen­sors fail to engage, leav­ing indi­vid­u­als feel­ing detached from them­selves and their sur­round­ings.

Research has shown that trau­ma, espe­cial­ly when expe­ri­enced at a young age, affects how we process sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion. Stud­ies on indi­vid­u­als with PTSD reveal that their brains strug­gle to inte­grate sen­so­ry inputs, which are vital for devel­op­ing a coher­ent sense of self. When this con­nec­tion is dis­rupt­ed, it becomes near­ly impos­si­ble to feel in tune with one’s body, lead­ing to fur­ther emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal issues.

Trau­ma affects our sense of “self” by inter­fer­ing with the brain’s abil­i­ty to reg­is­ter bod­i­ly sen­sa­tions, which are crit­i­cal for our emo­tion­al well-being. With­out this sen­so­ry feed­back, indi­vid­u­als may feel as though they are dis­con­nect­ed from their own body, lead­ing to feel­ings of being “invis­i­ble” or “unre­al.” This phe­nom­e­non is seen not only in Sher­ry but in many oth­ers with a his­to­ry of neglect and abuse, where the lack of con­nec­tion to their body becomes a core part of their suf­fer­ing.

One of the most effec­tive ther­a­peu­tic inter­ven­tions for these patients involves help­ing them recon­nect with their body. This process, known as somat­ic ther­a­py, focus­es on bring­ing aware­ness to bod­i­ly sen­sa­tions and re-estab­lish­ing the con­nec­tion between the mind and body. As these indi­vid­u­als begin to feel more ground­ed in their phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, their emo­tion­al well-being often improves, as Sher­ry’s case showed when she began mas­sage ther­a­py and became more open and engaged in her life.

The jour­ney to heal­ing requires acknowl­edg­ing the body as a vital part of the self, as it holds the key to under­stand­ing and pro­cess­ing our emo­tions. Learn­ing to lis­ten to our body’s sig­nals is an essen­tial step in over­com­ing trau­ma and regain­ing a sense of agency. When we are in tune with our phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions, we can begin to trust our­selves again and rebuild a sense of safe­ty and con­trol.

As we learn to inter­pret the sig­nals our bod­ies give us, we gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to care for our­selves and our emo­tion­al needs. This recon­nec­tion also helps indi­vid­u­als with trau­ma to nav­i­gate the world more con­fi­dent­ly, with­out the con­stant fear of being over­whelmed by their inter­nal state. The abil­i­ty to rec­og­nize and man­age our emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal respons­es is cru­cial for long-term heal­ing, and with the right ther­a­peu­tic sup­port, it is entire­ly pos­si­ble to reclaim our sense of self from the grip of trau­ma.