Losing Your Body By Numbing Out

For anyone who has been through trauma, you fully understand how your body is not your friend after these experiences.  Losing your body is so common among sexual abuse survivors because when you go through these experiences, it is a means of survival.

Consider for a moment that if you are experiencing sexual abuse where someone overpowers you and not only is the pain great, but the humiliation and shame are beyond comprehension, the only way to survive is by shutting down.  It is a means to survive.  It is a means to get through the experience because of the overwhelming nature of what is going on.

For a long time, I did not even realize how much I had shut my body down.  It took me going through a Conversion Disorder and being paralyzed to begin understanding this.  Even in the depths of the Conversion Disorder, I could not feel a needle being applied to the bottom of my feet.  I could not feel the pain in my back and neck.  I could not feel much.


As a kid, the only way I could feel was when I was being beaten.  The pain of the belt or board or hand hitting me was so intense that this is the only time when I could begin to feel.  Of course, after a few moments of this taking place, my body would become numb and shut down.  I would escape into a world of disconnectedness.

Throughout my childhood, I would grow so angry and confused and felt so much despair that I would begin hitting myself.  I would find sticks, rocks, boards or anything I could pick up and I would begin hitting myself until the pain got so intense and I had to stop.  I would hit myself with an intensity so great that it would have stunned most people.  I always did this when no one was around and could watch me.  I had to endure my own pain alone.  It would last until I could not take anymore and I could begin to feel something in my body.  Fortunately I passed out at the site of blood because if I had not, I would have most likely turned to cutting myself.

So many people who have been abused, never fully recover feeling their body.  It isn't easy when you've been taught as a child that feeling hurts.  Therapy helps, but without connecting the therapy to what the body feels, its only half of the solution.

Many people go through life and don't even realize that they are not feeling.  I was one of those, until I found Unified Therapy treatment by Dr. Paul Canali.  When I finally started to truly feel my body, it was one of the strangest things I ever experienced in life.  At first, it hurt and it was painful.  At first,  it brought up anger and sadness and despair.  Slowly, I learned that as I went through those moments, the other side of it was such a peace and understanding and awareness unlike I had ever seen before in my life.

Unfortunately many give lip service to feeling and experiencing life, but I know firsthand that there is so much more than the majority in this world understand.  If you can't feel pain in your day, you are numbed out.  If you feel too much pain, you are not fully in touch with your body or  your life.  If you are only attempting to see the positive in life, you are missing the balance needed to deal with life.  If medical suffering is controlling your life, you're exhausting the nervous system from being shut down and numbed for far too long.

Everyone likes to think they are enlightened and conscious but very few actually work towards those moments.  It is easy to fool ourselves and think that we have reached these moments, but even that is numbing.

Losing your body happens a little every day as you deal with the stresses of the day and the experiences that you've had all your life.  If you're not actively feeling your body and connecting to all parts of it (pain, joy, peace, sadness, etc), you are losing your body.

Meditation, Yoga, exercise and breathing can all help, but unless you are going in and touching the center of your soul, you're only half way there.  Unless you're going in and connecting to the felt-sense of the body, you're not fully awake.

In order to connect to your body, you need to connect through methods that reach down to the cellular levels of your muscles, tissues, mind, body, and everything in-between.  Surface connections won't get you deep into your body.  Numbing out won't get you into your body.

The great thing is that by connecting with all the deep areas of your body and your mind, there is great joy and peace that awaits.  It is far greater than you've ever experienced most likely.  It is a state that you never want to come out of, but you know that you need to because your life will forever change for the better as you do.

Stop numbing out by learning to go deep within so you can find yourself.  Find that individual that can help you walk through the fires into the peace that surpasses all understanding.  Don't hold on to what your own ego convinces you is true, but instead let go of what the ego has you believing is true.  In these moments, you will find so much more for your life.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 4/4/15 by Don Shetterly

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