Your body remembers what your mind forgets

Our autonomic nervous system defines how we live our lives. It constantly screens the world around us for signs of safety, danger or life-threat, without involving the thinking parts of the brain.

A regulated nervous system is able to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic system, bringing the body back to homeostasis (body’s ability to maintain internal stability and equilibrium), after a stressful or overwhelming experience.

For example, in stressful situations, slow, deep breathing can activate the vagal pathways that counterbalance both the flight-or-fight stress response and shutdown (freeze). This can help us feel safer and more grounded.

Becoming more informed about how our nervous system works and what it needs, can help us create more awareness and connection with our bodies and our emotions. This will improve the quality of our lives and relations.

As infants, we are able to experience and interact with the world around us through our physical senses (taste, smell, touch, etc). In other words, the way we perceive and make sense out of life, depends on the connection with our own bodies and the quality of that connection.

What if we lose contact with our bodies?

Dissociation is an aspect of the freeze-state response of the nervous system. Dissociation means losing connection with physical sensations, emotions, feelings and even memories.

It is a natural survival response of our nervous systems, especially when we experience an intense traumatic event that overwhelms our capacity to deal with it. Many of us have experienced dissociation at some point in our lives. We can dissociate when we are very stressed or burnt out, when someone dear hurts us, when we lose a loved one, etc.

When we experience dissociation, we might feel like we are not present in our own bodies. Like we are just watching things happen around us, with no emotional attachment.

That is how dissociation can both “help us” cope with an intense experience, and also make us disconnect from our bodies, emotions, feelings, memories. At extreme levels dissociation can make us disengage from life, finding it difficult to make decisions, be present in relationships, to go out with friends, find a job, etc.

Mindfulness, grounding, breathing exercises and somatic practices can help us re-connect with the body and regain a sense of self.

Self-compassion also plays a very important role in re-creating a healthy relationship with our bodies, feelings, sensations and memories. Another important element I have found in my journey through life, has been the concept of Titration.

"Titration" means carefully and slowly (+ consciously) introducing something — in this case, the memory/experience of trauma, in small dosages, observing the emotional and physiological reactions that this produces at every stage.

Because you are going very slowly, you are allowing the nervous system to find its natural flow between one state to the next, monitoring its reaction. This creates a safe space that allows for the innate, natural balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic, where self-regulation and processing usually happens.

Titration allows for the natural functions of the nervous system to surface, the natural rhythm and flow between different states — protecting against re-traumatization.

We don't become resilient by pushing down our emotions. We develop resilience when we give ourselves permission to feel and process those feelings.

How to manage dissociation and connect to your body, after a prolonged period of dissociation?

• Practice grounding, slow and deep breathing exercises.

• Pay attention to where emotions are felt in your body.

• Observe how you interact with the world around you, through your senses.

• Keep an emotions/sensations journal.

• Practice titration when you're experiencing difficult emotions.